Month: May 2015

Chasing Bubbles: How to rein in unrealistic ideas and get the most out of brainstorming

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You may not have blown many bubbles lately, but it’s hard to argue the delight and whimsy that comes from taking a deep breath and creating gleaming spheres of light that float on the breeze. Am I right? Such joy is also the case with unabashed brainstorming and letting your creative juices flow to develop new and exciting ideas.

Although everyone has their own take on how ideas should be sourced. For example, the fine folks at Fast Company can’t seem to make up their mind on whether “brainstorming” is a good idea or not.

Screenshot

Since 2011 they’ve reversed their decision 5 times by posting contradicting articles on the topic. But whether you call it brainstorming, team-building exercises, creative collaboration or whatever, there’s definitely a need to call one of these pow-wows every once in a while to get fresh ideas on the table.

However in this post I’m not going to focus on what you should call it, but instead outline some recommendations for structure, defining goals before you get started and how to rein in unrealistic ideas without being labeled “dream-crusher”. (Because no one wants that written on their name tag.)

Bubble Making 101

Before you start looking at the calendar and sending Outlook invites to the whole office, it’s important to have an outline of what you want to accomplish. Also make sure your boss (or whoever the key decision maker is) has signed off, because if you’re going left and they’re going right it’ll end up being a waste of everyone’s time.

Here’s a quick list of things you want to be sure you have locked down:

What’s the task at hand? Are you coming up with something new or revamping something already on the market?

What’s the goal at the end of the brainstorming? Do you want a list of 500 general ideas or 10 further developed concept ideas?

How much time do you have for the meeting? If this is an all-day affair, there’s definitely room to include some unstructured time, but if it’s only 2-3 hours you’ll need to make sure you have a firm agenda and stick to it.

Who’s driving the bus? It’s important to identify who will be running the session and that they keep everyone focused on the task at hand.

Beneath The Suds

Technically the definition of brainstorming is throwing any kind-of idea out there to see if it sticks, but it’s also important to be realistic. If there are things you know the company will never go for, set up those guardrails early and enforce them. Otherwise you’re devoting time and resources to develop ideas that will never see the light of day, and much like our glistening bubble friends, they may look pretty but they don’t last long.

Stay on TaskIn addition to that, be wary of good ideas that get blown up by unnecessary or unrealistic add-ons. (If a small bubble is shiny, then a bigger bubble must be even shinier!) Whoa there. This goes back to what was said in the beginning: know your goals for the session and what’s really possible to execute.

From personal experience, I’ve seen lengthy conversations develop over the discussion of completely over the top, high-cost and potentially unmanageable marketing ideas. How is that a good use of anyone’s time? That’s why it’s imperative to stay on task, with one eye on the goal and the other on the agenda.

Runaway Bubbles
You might be thinking at this point, why do we keep talking about bubbles? (Or maybe, “I need to stop and pick up some Calgon…” Who knows ☺) But for the purposes of this post, the idea of chasing a bubble seemed like a good analogy to illustrate how quickly ideas can be developed, overblown and then quickly fade away. So in this last section, let’s quickly talk about reining in bad ideas before they get out of control.

pigWe covered some of this in the paragraphs above, but that’s if you’re able to put the kibosh on something before it even gets started. But what if something is already in play? Maybe the purpose of your brainstorm session is to correct a bad idea that’s already been executed. In which case it’s important to proceed thoughtfully – otherwise you risk putting lipstick on a pig – and in our case we’re trying to save Wilbur from a Mary Kay makeover.

Bad ideas can get started in a number of ways, but a likely culprit is someone making a decision for an area of the business that they shouldn’t be. For example: accounting making a decision for marketing or vice versa. If that’s the case, don’t be afraid to shut it down. Accounting shouldn’t be dictating a marketing campaign just like marketing isn’t telling them how to pay invoices.

Of course it’s always better to play nice in the office and across departments, so if this is the situation you’re in, the best way to unravel the knot is to open up a dialog.


“What’s the total cost?”

“What’s the expected ROI?

“Does this speak to our demographic?

“Does this bring us new customers?”

“How long has the program been running and what have we gained – or lost?”

“Does this align with our brand?”

These will vary depending on the program and your business model, but you get the idea behind the questioning. It’s to identify: “Why are we doing this” and “What are we getting out of it?” Oh and remember to let the bubbles float on by… there’s no ROI if you catch one.

Welcome To The Jungle: My customer service experience with Amazon.com

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The subject matter for this post is a little out of the norm for the blog, but having good customer service is certainly a cornerstone to running and maintaining a successful business. So as marketers, if you’re focusing on driving traffic to your business, you’d better be sure your house is on order on all sides. Customer service being at, or near, the top of that list.

What brought this up was the experience I had with Amazon recently when trying to return an item. Which you’d think would be a no brainer, except I seemed to have stumbled upon their Achilles’ heel because what I needed to return was larger than a hardcover edition of Lee Child’s latest thriller.

It’s actually a hybrid trainer; meaning it’s half elliptical and half recumbent bike and truth be told, I’d love to be able to use it and didn’t really want to return it. However after running into some issues with key pieces of the equipment not coming together as they are supposed to and receiving ZERO help from Proform customer service, I decided to join a gym and return it. (Extinguishing my dream is home workouts and multitasking during weekend TV binge-watching.)

Welcome to the Jungle

Welcome To The Jungle

What happened next is hard to describe concisely, but I’ve tried to whittle it down to the main plot points of the story, which began with a simple “chat” session between myself and customer service. On this chat I explained the issues with the equipment, the lack of support from Proform and that I was ready to give up and just return the darn thing. The person on the other end was sympathetic and said they would begin the return process, all I needed to do was take apart the equipment and pack it up, they would provide a prepaid UPS label and schedule the pick-up.

All of that sounded simple enough, until reality set in and I realized a couple things: #1 The original box and packaging had been recycled and was gone. But more importantly, the box had been the size of small refrigerator. Where in the world was I going to find something that size to hold everything? #2 This thing is the size of a smart car and extremely heavy. When it first arrived I had to open the box where it had been left and take it in piece by piece. So how exactly was this repackaging going to happen… in my front yard? That’s classy.

I reached out to Amazon again, explained my story for the 2nd time and included the aforementioned details that had occurred to me after the initial call. This new person said Amazon has a “large item returns” department and he would pass along my information to them – and since it was the weekend so he said they would call me on Monday.

Well no one ever called, however someone did schedule a pick-up with UPS and they came to my house twice trying to collect the equipment. I had to call UPS, apologize for the miscommunication and cancel the pick-up. (Frustration was beginning to build.)

The following Tuesday, I called Amazon and explained for the 3rd time what was going on. This person was less sympathetic, told me my item did NOT qualify as a large item return (read: baffling) and brought back the original course of action: pack it yourself and we’ll give you a label. (Frustration is now rising from defcon level 5 or 4.)

KermitIt was clear I wasn’t going to get anywhere with this person so I asked to speak to a manager, she got on the phone and recanted my story for the 4th time. Her solution was even better than any I had heard so far… she wanted to know if I could just take the equipment to UPS and have them pack it up? Yes, you read that right. In the stunned silence that followed, I fought back the urge to tell her how completely asinine that idea was and to ask if she knew the difference between returning a mixing bowl and returning an elliptical machine? I finally responded and said that was not a viable option and wanted to get back why the mysterious black-ops large item return team couldn’t help me?

But you could tell we were getting close to passing her level of influence, so she told me she’d reach out to them and call me back. A few hours later she did call back (twice actually) but unfortunately I was not in a place to take calls and planned to get back to her shortly. However when I checked the two messages she left on voicemail, neither one included a call back number. Neither one. She did say in the messages that the large item team had agreed to help and that I needed to call them back to set it up. Which would have been fine and dandy if I’d had a phone number to reach them. (Defcon level 4 moving to level 3.)

Level 1-5Following these completely useless voicemails, I emailed Amazon and told the whole story for the 5th time. What I got in response was unbelievable.

The person who emailed managed to simultaneously apologize while also rescinding the offer of large item team helping. He then trotted out the old “pack it yourself” routine and signed off with an insulting offer to apply a $10 credit on my account for my troubles. It was at this point we completely skipped over level 2 and landed firmly at Defcon 1. Man your battle stations people.

After giving myself a chance to calm down, I called Amazon yet again. When I was connected with a customer service agent I started the conversation as follows, “I just want to put this disclaimer out on the table; I realize what’s been going on is not your fault and I am certainly not blaming you. But I want you to know that I am beyond frustrated by what’s happened over the last few days.” The woman thanked me for my candor and said she wanted to help.

So for the 6th and final time, I told the whole sordid story. After hearing everything I had to say, reviewing the notes on my account and speaking to her manager she responded with this, “Well I have good news and bad news. The bad news is I can’t help you return the item, but the good news is we’re going to issue a full refund.”

Wow. I didn’t see coming.

And while I’m extremely relieved the situation has been resolved and grateful they were willing to “make it right”, it leads to the bigger issue I’d like to address. Why did it take 6 different encounters to find someone competent who could actually help? Although I think everyone can agree this situation is not limited to Amazon, but applies to all companies with customer service departments; it’s all in who you talk to. But why? Don’t they all go through the same training and isn’t there testing to pass the training??

Let’s also call my situation what it really is… making it right is just the nice way of saying they paid me off. And sure, a couple hundred dollars isn’t even a blip on the radar for a company of their size. But if they keep doing that because folks are continually subjected to their gauntlet of ineptitude then surely it will start to affect them at some point.

Looking at the bigger picture; investing in better training, on-going training and spot checks (aka secret shoppers) would help shore up these gaps. In the meantime perhaps they should discontinue including, “Earth’s Most Customer-Centric Company” in their email signatures, as I don’t think they’re there just yet.

Starting a new job: Expectation vs. Reality

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Job Expectation vs RealityAs time rolls on, often a job gets monotonous or perhaps you get typecast in certain role or with specific responsibilities and growth opportunities are not available. Whatever the tipping point may be, there inevitably comes a time for all of us when we’re ready to move on. Which leads me to the meat and potatoes of this post (fyi we’re going to skip over most of the job search/interview process as that deserves it’s own story) but once you’ve landed that new job, how do you deal with your expectations of the job versus the reality of the day-to-day?

A new job, as with everything else in life, should be taken with a grain of salt. For example: we all know that the food images in commercials are not exactly how the food is going to look when you get to the restaurant… the swimsuit the model is wearing is going to look different on you… the DIY project is probably going to look a little different than the finished project on HGTV. But you get the point – and starting a new job is no different. Hopefully though the chasm between what was advertised and what life is like in your new office isn’t worlds apart, but if it is, that’s what were to discuss and talk about how to cope.

JOB EXPECTATION

Unicorn Farm Now Hiring

So you found a new job that seemed to be everything you were looking for, add to that you’re ridiculously qualified for it and you got through the interview process with flying colors. Now it’s time to do meet the team and do the work.

Integrating into a new office has its challenges to be sure, but as long as you stay open-minded and aware of your surroundings everything should be fine. Typically within 2-4 weeks the social piece starts to work itself out and even if you haven’t made an office “bestie” yet, at least by now people have started to recognize you.

Some companies also have a meet and greet process wherein your new boss will give you a list of people they’d like you to meet as it’s likely you’ll be dealing with these folks on the regular in your new role. Now don’t get me wrong, the premise of this idea is a good one, but let’s face it they’re basically asking you to go on a series of “blind dates”. Which is awkward. My recommendation (if you can swing it) is to put off these “dates” until you’ve been in the job a couple weeks, have been to a few meetings and have started to receive assignments from your boss. At that point you’ll actually have questions for these folks or at least have a better idea of what your job will be and how you might be interacting with them.

But let’s get the focus back on the expectation piece. Specifically what happens when the job was advertised a certain way, but once you’re actually doing it things are completely different? Taking into account a 10-20% margin of BS that might have been added to the job description by a hiring manager, what about the rest?

I like to give analogies to illustrate a point, so we’re going to use Jake (no, not from State Farm), who was just hired as an Email Marketing Manager for our example. Jake has been working in email for 5+ years and was running all the email campaigns at his previous company; he worked with the creative team to develop the assets, the clients to gather the content and the analytics team to add tagging to all emails for reporting. He’s done it all! But his previous employer had no plans to promote him from Email Coordinator to anything more, so when he saw an opportunity for advancement at another company he applied.

The job was advertised as a leadership role in Email for all of the new companies current clients and Jake was excited for the challenge. But as the weeks have rolled by and Jake is acclimating to his new role, things are not as expected. Jake isn’t being allowed to lead or give input on email campaigns, creative, analytics or reporting. He’s only been tasked with chasing down information and delivering it to other teams (who were already in place when he started) to bring to completion.

JOB REALITY

Making a suggestion#1 You’re an expert in your trade, but no one wants to hear what you have to say.

Whether it’s email marketing, landscaping, health & wellness or real estate, I think we can all agree this is/would be frustrating. You’ve worked for many years to learn, grow and establish yourself in a certain area and would love to share that knowledge but it’s not being accepted. What to do?

Solution Recommendation: Talk to your new boss and with a professional approach state your case. Explain that you were under the impression you were hired for your background in “____” but it’s been difficult to get a seat at the table to share that knowledge. If it makes sense have an example to share, but be sure not to present it in a “throwing under the bus” way. You never want to position yourself as you vs. another person/team. (Even if that’s actually what’s happening.)

#2 You were told you’d be leading but all you’re doing is chasing.

Again this side effect could be applied to a job in any industry and the way to resolve it is universal.

Solution Recommendation: Talk to your new boss. Unless it’s your boss who’s sending you on 1 fool’s errand after another, then it might be time to go to HR. But no matter who you talk to, be sure to have documentation or examples to share professionally. Also it can’t hurt to practice what you’re going to say and create a list of talking points for yourself. (Remember this isn’t like venting to your friends at happy hour.) These people have other things to do and while they should be inclined to want to help resolve this, that doesn’t mean they want to listen to you vent.

Organize your thoughts, bring 1-2 examples and keep things succinct. Stay away from naming name’s when at all possible and put the unpleasantness your bringing up back on you. For example: “I want to understand the process” not “The current process doesn’t work”.

Hopefully having these conversations will bring about a shift and your new work-life will improve for the better. If that’s not the case, carefully consider what your next steps might be.

If the job is tolerable, look into taking online classes in your free time to continue to build your skill set while you’re there. Just because you’re not learning anything new from this employer doesn’t mean you should allow your skill building to languish. Try to tough it out for at least 12-16 months, network as much as you can and then begin looking for something else.

If the job is not tolerable, it’s time to dust-off the resume and begin job-hunting again. One bright side though, now you have additional questions to ask on future interviews to be sure you don’t get into this same situation again.