Do You Make Things Too Complicated? Take the Razor to Them.

This time of year, we often hear people say “appreciate the simple things.” They’re usually not talking about business, but my holiday wish for you (after health and happiness) is to look at everything your business does and ask, “Is this as simple as it can be?” Or even, “Is this necessary at all?”

Other BNET writers and I have mentioned Occam’s Razor before. It’s the fourteenth-century equivalent of “K.I.S.S.,” and it is a philosophy I believe in wholeheartedly. At its essence, it says that the more complicated something is, the more likely it is to be wrong. Or conversely, the simplest solution will usually be the best. This doesn’t mean that there are not extremely complex things in life and business — there’s no simple way to launch a space shuttle — it just means that keeping complexity to a bare minimum in any given situation is likely to yield the best result.
Information overload, the Web and new media, 24/7 communication and connectivity, and powerful (not to mention cheap or free) business tools invite over-complication like never before. Most of us fall into the trap without even knowing it. So, give yourself a gift this season and take an “Occam Inventory.” Look at the way you and your business do things and see if you can take the Razor to them. Are you really keeping things as simple as they can/should be?

Here are five easy places to start (warning-reckless use of question marks ahead):

• Meetings - Do you have too many? What do they actually accomplish? Does everyone really need to be there? Many studies and surveys have challenged the value of meetings. For most companies it’s probably unrealistic to have none at all, but take a hard look at the quantity and quality of your meetings and see what they are really doing for you. My bet is that most businesses can have fewer people, meeting less often, for less time, and get more done.
• Information - Many organizations bury themselves in reports, graphs, charts and other data. Obviously business is about information; facts and figures need to be measured and reviewed. But are you overdoing it? Are you really using every stack of printouts that’s put on your desk, or are you gathering data as an end and not a means? Do you have analysis paralysis? I once worked with a guy who constantly asked me to print reports, some of them inches thick, which would invariably collect dust on the corner of his desk, untouched. One day I asked why he was asking for all of this stuff and not reading it. His answer was “in case the CEO asks me a question and I need an answer.” Not sure if that qualifies as “complication,” but at a minimum it was a complete waste of time and resources. Ask yourself if you really need all that data, or if you can simplify, and actually get much more done with much less. C’mon… even with a new cover sheet, you’re probably not going to read that TPS report.
• Bureaucracy - is your company wrapped in red tape? Do you have a form, procedure, rule and regulation for every little thing, and if so, are they all necessary? Really? Organizations often create work and paper-shuffling where it serves no real purpose. Whenever I see stacks of forms behind someone’s desk and wonder what happens with them, I think of the last scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark. If you hire, fire, buy or sell, of course there’s unavoidable paperwork. But has your company gotten carried away? Are forms, procedures and rules making you efficient, or just bloated?
• Media - It’s so easy and so deliciously tempting. Your company can have a Facebook page, blog, Twitter page, YouTube channel, smartphone app, streaming video content, and all these cool icons on your Web site. But as I often say, just because you can doesn’t mean you should. If you have a solid, well-executed online/media plan and a clear vision of how every element serves your business, go for it. But if you are like many companies, you’re doing a lot of stuff just because others are… because it seems like you should. If you are dedicating resources to keeping up with the digital Joneses, is it doing anything for your business? Are you doing more than you need to? What has your Bebo page done for you lately?
• Customer experience - Do you make your customers jump through hoops to do business with you? Is your voice mail system unnecessarily complicated and annoying? Web site overdone and/or impossible to navigate? Do you ask for too much information, especially information that you don’t really need or won’t really use? If you only pick one area of your business to Occamize, make it this one. Do not allow one iota of unnecessary complexity into any customer interaction or process.

In business, things tend to build inertia (”that’s the way we’ve always done it”) and we don’t often put on the brakes to challenge them. But I guarantee that if you perform an Occam’s Inventory honestly and without a personal or defensive agenda, you will find areas where you can simplify your business. Save time, money, paper. Make customers and employees happier and more productive. Do less and get more done.

Please share your thoughts, and have a happy, uncomplicated holiday season.    

By Michael Hess

Sales Quiz: Which Product Pitch Sells Best?

SCENARIO: A customer has asked you for a one-line description of your product. You don’t have the opportunity to do a solution sell, or to find out about the customer.

You’ve got one chance to pitch your product in a way that’s most likely to get the customer to buy. Irritatingly, your marketing group has mandated that you use one of three pre-written product messages.

Here are your choices. Pick the best, then click on the link below for the correct answer:

• MESSAGE #1: “Our product is the most advanced in the world today. It represents thousands of hours of research and testing. It is covered by a comprehensive guarantee and is responsible for helping hundreds of companies similar to yours.”
• MESSAGE #2: “Our product increases your productivity. It will allow your firm to operate more profitably by maximizing your performance while lowering your cost of ownership, while simultaneous eliminating busy work.”
• MESSAGE #3: “Our product performs the functions that customer request most often. It helps you have a better experience, and solves the problems that are keeping your and your firm from fulfilling your most important goals.”

Which message is compelling?

#1: "Our product is..."

#2: "Our product increases..."

#3: "Our product performs..."

The Result?

• #1: "Our product is..." 6%
• #2: "Our product increases..." 56%
• #3: "Our product performs..." 39%

What is the correct answer?

The correct answer is #2. Here’s why. According to Dean Schantz, a senior consultant with Corporate Visions, the three generic messages correspond to the three ways that sales reps tell about offerings.

• #1 is an “IS” message that explains what it IS that you’re selling.
• #2 is a “MEANS” message describing what it means to the customer.
• #3 is a “DOES” message telling what customer can do with offering.

Customers are almost always more interested in what an offering means to them, than what it is or what it does. To illustrate this, here are the same messages, along with the kind of concrete details that would normally appear in a sales message:

• #1: The “IS” message. “The CPU100 is the most powerful computer chip in the world today. Our scientists worked thousands of hours to research and test this technological marvel. It has been wildly successful and now has a 75 percent market share.”
• #2: The “MEANS” message. “The CPU100 means that you’re can get your work done more quickly. You don’t have to wait for web pages to display or for your documents to print. You can get your computer work done quickly, in order to get back to things you truly enjoy.”
• #3: The “DOES” message. “The CPU100 crunches through numbers faster than anything else on the market. With it you can download large documents, display giant pages of rich media, and still have processing power left to edit a high resolution video.”

As you can see, for most customers, the “MEANS” message is going to be far more compelling because it edges into the reasons that the customer might actual buy the offering.

However, it must be said that product-focused messages are, in general, not very compelling. However, if you’ve got to talk product, you’d best talk about it in terms of what that product’s usage will mean to the customer.

8 Questions to Ask Before Every Presentation

Good career advice need not be complicated and sometimes the best tips are the most straightforward. Keen to prove you’re a master of the complexities of your industry or role, you may focus on the tricky parts of your job and forget the basics. Chris Brogan is having none of that when it comes to presentations.

Writing on the American Express OPEN Forum recently, the prolific public speaker recounts how many presenters forget the basics of preparation and planning. To tackle this epidemic of under-preparation, he has put together a simple list of eight questions every speaker should have answered before they step in front of a crowd.

• My main goal of this presentation is for the audience to ______.
• The top 3 things I need the audience to take away from this presentation are ____, ____, _____.
• In the first few minutes (no more than 2), I will capture this audience by _____.
• If my gear dies, the main 3 things I will tell them are ____, ____ , ____.
• If they start looking bored or confused, I will shift gears by _______.
• At the end of this presentation, I want people to ______.
• When I’m done the presentation, I will _____ .
• When following up with people after this presentation, I will offer them _____.

How many embarrassments (and hours of audience boredom) could have been averted by using this simple checklist? The questions are just part of a much longer post on the art of the presentation, so those looking for more insights on the topic should check it out in full.

10 Reasons Why Your Network is Your Biggest Asset

What’s a senior executive’s biggest asset? Most would say it’s their network. Not their social network, their real network. Ten thousand Twitter followers or Facebook fans aren’t worth ten solid network relationships to an executive.

Not that social media isn’t one way to make those contacts, but they’re only effective if and when they become real relationships. That means someone you can call, email, or get together with when you need to, and vice versa.

Vistage International is an organization of senior executives and business leaders with over 14,000 members, worldwide. One of the top reasons people sign up? The network.

I’d even go as far as to say that senior-level executives can’t be really successful without a robust network. Sure, they may pull in a decent paycheck, but they won’t rise to the top. If this is news to you and you aspire to be a successful manager or executive, then it’s time to take your head out of the sand and start networking. Here’s what you stand to gain from the effort:

10 Reasons Why Your Network is Your Biggest Asset:

1. Introductions. Whether you’re an entrepreneur in need of venture capital or a marketing VP looking for the best PR firm, you’re more likely to find it through your network than by any other means.
2. Opportunities. Over a 30-year career, most of my major career and business opportunities came from my network. Business associates, friends of friends, casual conversations, business meetings, social events, whatever. But you’ve got to pay attention.
3. Sorting out thorny problems. Anyone who thinks they’ve never met a work problem they can’t resolve has never been a CEO. The problem with problems is that they keep getting escalated until there’s nowhere left to go. The buck has to stop somewhere. And getting a fellow exec to help sort out a monster problem is a big plus.
4. Recruiting. Perhaps the most critical job of any manager is to hire talented people, and the best place to find them is through your network. And not just for direct reports, but also for recommendations on peers, key employees, board members, you name it.
5. Ideas. I don’t know about you, but most of my best ideas come from bouncing them around with like-minded people.
6. Competitive intelligence. It’s a big, hairy global market and smart executives dig for competitive intelligence. Much of that info comes from sales and marketing, but where do you think they get it from? That’s right, their network.
7. Sensitive issues. Top executives often face sensitive issues they can’t discuss with others at the company. Sometimes they just need an outside perspective from another CEO. For example, some of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison’s friends are Apple CEO Steve Jobs and Mark Hurd (when he was CEO of H-P, as well). Makes sense, doesn’t it?
8. Seeing the big market picture. A huge component of any manager’s success is her ability to anticipate significant market changes. While nobody has a crystal ball, if you get enough anecdotal data from enough sources, you can get a pretty good picture of what’s going on.
9. Moral support. Business is full of tradeoffs. Rarely are critical and complex issues black and white. When top execs wrestle with gray issues, it’s nice to be able to pick up the phone for advice and support.
10. You don’t know what you don’t know. While there are exceptions, know-it-alls don’t typically get ahead. Smart managers know what they don’t know and that means they depend very much on comparing notes with others in their network.

Is your network your biggest asset?

10 Ways to Stop Communication Overload

We used to complain about all the useless back-to-back meetings and being copied on hundreds of unnecessary emails. Now we long for those days. We used to say there’s no such thing as over-communication. Now we’d do anything to make it stop.

Communication is out of control and it’s taking all the fun - and productivity - out of work.

Don’t get me wrong, communication is as important to business success and organizational effectiveness as it used to be. There’s just too much of it. For whatever reason, the old problem of protecting domains by limiting the flow of information has morphed into a new problem of hyper-collaboration where everybody’s included in everything.

If you ask me, the communication pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction, although I’m not really sure why:

• Is it simply the umpteenth fad, an overemphasis on communication, collaboration, and teamwork because that’s the way we’re supposed to do things now?
• Is it an overreaction to the virtualization of the workforce, an attempt to control and reel in all those remote teams, telecommuters and flextime users?
• Is it just because we can, now that we’ve all got smartphones, a million ways to message and chat, social media, virtual meeting and collaboration tools?

Whatever the reason, communication overload has reached epidemic proportions and it’s killing precious productivity and effectiveness at a time of economic strife and global competition, when our already overwhelmed and under-resourced management teams and workforces can least afford it.

Here are 10 Ways to Stop Communication Overload:

1. Every meeting - physical or virtual - must have an objective, an agenda, a start time and an end time; everybody who attends every meeting must have a specific and definitive purpose for being there.
2. Stop adding people to processes and groups. Every person you add to every process, group, communication, team, whatever, adds complexity and reduces productivity because people tend to say and do things, then others tend to respond, and so-forth. It’s always easier to herd fewer cats.
3. Question the broad use of predefined email distribution lists, reconsider every individual you cc on an email, and most importantly, don’t automatically hit “Reply to All.”
4. Reconsider internal meetings to prepare for other internal meetings, layers and layers of review meetings, the wisdom of “all hands” meetings, and panicked, kneejerk reactions to involve the whole damn world in a crisis.
5. Encourage and reward employee accountability, risk-taking, and initiative for resolving problems on their own.
6. If anybody out there is still trying to make matrix management work, stop. It’s a brilliant organizational concept that’s nearly impossible to execute without creating mass confusion and, ultimately, way more problems than it solves.
7. Be leery of noncritical management fads that are sure to create tons of meetings with amorphous results. Remember OD - Organization Development?
8. Question the ubiquitous “I want to be involved” and “keep me in the loop” micromanaging / controlling mentality.
9. Don’t use collaboration or communication tools for the sake of using them. If the net ROI isn’t clear, don’t do it.
10. Never forget that, now more than ever, time is everyone’s most precious asset.

Look, I’m not suggesting we return to the old school of isolated silos that control the flow of information. It’s just that we’ve gone too far the other way and need to take some of this communication and collaboration stuff off the table and create a little balance or, if nothing else, some time for people to actually get some work done.