3 E's of Effective Leadership

Been in a few leadership seminars, and the oft-repeated terms reminded me of the article from a few years back, so decided to share it again. (originally published in March 2016).

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The greatest responsibility of a leader is to make their employees successful. This is, more often than not, the one trait that does not garner enough attention from those measuring leadership success. It is about how well the employees are flourishing under one's leadership!

Use the 3 E's to answer this question; perhaps a better measure than (or in addition to) the usual promotions, team size, numbers, etc.

• Empower your employees (go do it!) – set clear goals and expectations, but don’t stymie free thinking. Establish the culture where managers can think freely and are “empowered” to make decisions that move the project forward.

• Enable your employees (provide the required resources!) – get down from the “I know all” pedestal and learn about the daily struggles of a manager in balancing deliverables and getting  projects prioritized for delivery. Then make sure to provide the required resources and/or remove the organizational hurdles to “enable” employee success.

• Engage your employees (give a pat on the back more often!). Employees are more engaged when they are recognized. But, do it on a regular basis, not just once a year. Even the small achievements should be called out at weekly reviews or other team gatherings. It will go a long way in keeping them motivated and “engaged” towards the company’s success.

Just like the other assets within the company, employees also need nurturing, albeit with a human touch!

Why do Customer-Centric Organizations Fail?

In an earlier post on customer-centricity I had argued that executive reviews rarely go beyond the numbers (revenue, subscribers, traffic, etc.) and fail to capture a more powerful growth engine – our customers. But, what if our strategies are built around customer success, yet the goals are not achieved? 

There could be a multitude of reasons namely, market saturation, competitive pressures, product quality, marketing success, operational effectiveness, etc. While most of the listed here may be in play, in some form or the other, I want to bring our attention to “operational readiness.” 

We can hire the best consultants to design our product, consumer and marketing strategy, but it is our operational readiness that will determine how well we deliver on this strategy. 

Let’s take an example, we have our corporate mandates such as; expand our footprint, diversify our product offerings, increase ARPU, reduce cost, sign a new partnership, etc. We conduct due diligence, come up with a strategy to achieve that objective, and with a fancy deck, will have all the approvals needed for a launch. However, there is often a need for "incremental investments" and a shift from "corporate ways" that are critical for our operations to deliver. 

In my experience at leading new product launches and customer-facing site enhancements, the build phase often springs up unexpected surprises that either cause delays, or force a go-ahead with a compromised product/service features. These could be in the form of systems and process updates (may require capital investments), shift in strategy to offer a "beta" version of the product, shrink the scope of support offered through CRM, etc. As a P&L manager, it is important to highlight the larger gains and keep the project ROI positive and within acceptable range.

A well thought out and “realistic” implementation plan should be integral to the strategy deck for a new initiative. 

So, don’t underestimate the value of conducting due diligence and investments around building operational capabilities to meet the strategic goals. That is one activity which will significantly impact the success of; new product launch, analytics integration, a website redesign, and systems upgrade, etc.  

The bottom-line is that the cost of an unsatisfied customer is far too high to under-estimate the costs of poor delivery. 

In one of my client engagements, I had to re-evaluate the product features and SLAs that were agreed upon with the partner, as these were leading to customer complaints and unacceptable levels of churn. Part of the strategic redo included a better communication collateral for sales and marketing channels. The compromises made during the launch to meet the deadlines would come back to bite so quickly - no one had imagined! 

Making Mobile Strategy Attractive to the Bottom-Line

Smart phone users like to touch, play games, shop, watch videos -- make sure your mobile strategy conforms to "Entertainment" – low attention span is the only thing I will add to round out the observations on the impact of evolving smart phone adoption! 

As these devices grow, so does the need for a mobile as a marketing vehicle for brands. Free Wi-Fi, in the enterprise world is a step to entice customers, but how do we justify the ROI? Video viewing is prominent, so were other activities mentioned below. Consumers like entertainment on their devices, but what is the view from the provider’s (enterprises) perspective?

In the test for device usage (that I conducted with one of our restaurant partners), the content (non-video) was secondary and direct access to FB, twitter or other social book marking sites was prominent, followed by search and weather/local.

How do we balance the market need for a service and internal investments in providing that service? I talked about Challenges to Mobile Strategy in an older post. Monetization of a mobile experience is a real challenge, so ROI of the investment is a tough one for executives to swallow. However, if the there is increased in-store sales, patrons’ use of local coupons and promotions, greater brand exposure, positive mentions of the brand, etc., then the short-term investment could pay off big time over the long run. Traditional businesses have realized the latter, but need for immediate gratification appears to be trumping a full-blown and integrated strategy for mobile as a channel.

Approaching your portal strategy & design

Portals or business websites are an important element of consumer branding and engagement. Defining a portal largely depends on the business and its “key” goals. And, goals vary widely as we go from business to business. For instance, shopping cart for easy consumer purchase (amazon, eBay, etc.), content promotion (MSN, Yahoo, Aol, etc.), account management (CapitalOne, Verizon, etc.), or brand presence on the internet (corporate sites).

While apparently disparate, these goals have a fair amount of overlap and managers see it as such, which is the primary reason portals tend to be “one size fits all” hodge-podge of “stuff.” In other words, managers often try to cater to their “diverse audience,” instead of focusing on the core products/services that the audience comes to their portal for.

I am purposely staying away from calling out the specific site designs that are prompting me write this article, but I am sure, if you see it you will know!

I believe all portals serve 3 common goals, irrespective of their market focus:

1. Improve brand image – this is letting the consumers feel a sense of pride as and when they connect with your brand. The key to achieving that is to offer the best-in-class product/service, complemented by such features as; intuitive/easy navigation, simple user interface, access to FAQs & customer support, etc.
2. Educate – from bringing most current and relevant content to the audience, or educating about your company’s products and services.
3. Drive sales – make it easy for the consumer to complete the cycle of product research to order (be it online or offline) – don’t forget to complement this with the industry best post sales support.

Note too that the above goals are not mutually exclusive, but need to complement each other, with focus on the key corporate objective.

 These goals are sure to address many of the seemingly divergent goals. But, if done right, we have the opportunity to create a great touch-point for our brand that will bring the consumer back and refer us to their family and friends (http://www.analyticsheaven.com/2010/03/one-metric-to-define-website.html).

The audience is always diverse, but our product or service – by design – addresses a specific need. The more we focus on the need, the better we serve our “diverse audience” through our communication vehicles (such as portal!).

Making sense of Twitter data

Marketers are trying very hard to make sense of the twitter data, but the range of "emotions" conveyed by the tweets and the lack of quantitative framework, make it extremely difficult to measure and apply the insights into real-life business improvements.

But, there are cool new ways evolving and recently, Harvard Business review had an interesting blog on "four ways of looking at twitter." Here's the link to the full article (http://blogs.hbr.org/research/2010/02/visualizing-twitter.html). The author talks about a couple of new visual aids (ex., Twitter Venn diagrams) being developed that may provide some quantitative feel to the tweets!

I decided to test my theory on "lack of analytics in strategic, operational and ecommerce decision-making" by running the Twitter Venn for the terms strategy, analytics and ecommerce. Below is the Twitter Venn that comes up:



This is a bit surprising even to me - the frequency of analytics and ecommerce tweets is relatively small, but more telling is the lack of overlap in analytics/strategy/ecommerce. I have worked with businesses where double-digit gains are easily achieved by merging the above three concepts. The tweeters, with a stake in strategy, analytics and ecommerce, just need to be thinking more congruence and overlap to realize those benefits.


Incidentally, I have been helping businesses build sustainable growth models by applying analytics to ecommerce strategy and planning (http://www.wsapartners.com for more info).