Category: Innovation

Friday, 9.06pm

Sheffield, U.K.

There is nothing new under the sun but there are lots of old things we don’t know. – Ambrose Bierce

Do you think we live in a world where what we see and read is better than ever before?

There is clearly more stuff. More people are writing and creating words, music and video. They are coming up with games and apps and platforms.

All shiny and new.

So, what makes one creation better than another? Why do you sit and watch one box set, unable to turn away, for week after week while others you abandon after the first ten minutes?

One test – much loved by the analytics folk – is to look at what people do. If they can watch your behaviour, see how you vote with your mouse and remote and money, then they can figure out what you like and give you more of it.

The thing with analysis is that it looks back at what has happened. You can try and do more of what worked in the past but, as the financial folk keep reminding us, past performance is no guarantee of future results.

Also, this whole thinking in aggregate, in big numbers, in terms of markets is applying statistics to people. And no one really wants to be a statistic.

Take consumer behaviour, for example. In his book Buy.ology, Martin Lindstrom writes about Socrates and how he told his students to think about a mind like a block of wax. If an image is pressed into the wax and stays there, then we remember it. If not, it’s like it was never there. In other words, it leaves an impression.

Lindstrom goes on to describe how the things that leave an impression on us, from touching a hot stove to being embarrassed when we told someone how we felt about them, shape the way we start to respond to things.

But, while we share many of these things none of us have exactly the same. Imagine all these experiences like strands hanging down in front of you. You pick and weave your experiences into your own unique sense of identity.

So, while a statistical approach can be approximately right the ideal approach is one that is made just for you. Not one that is designed to make you feel special but one that actually is special.

John McPhee is an American non-fiction writer. I heard about him in a podcast and was interested enough to take a look at the cover of his latest book, Draft No. 4: On The Writing Process, but not interested enough to buy it.

Until I read this review by Michael Dirda on the Washington Post that had these lines:

“However, its opening two chapters, in which McPhee presents his various systems for structuring articles, do require a bit of perseverance. There are graph-like illustrations, circles, arrows, number lines, maps and even an irrelevant excursus about an outmoded text editor called Kedit. The upshot of it all is simply: Take time to plan your piece so that it does what you want.”

There are two points that the writer makes: drawing pictures is a waste of time; and text editors are irrelevant.

Well, if you have read this blog for a while, you’ll know that drawings are a big part of how I write. And I write with a text editor, possibly one even older than the outmoded one that the writer of the Post excoriates.

So, of course, I had to buy the book. Because now I desperately needed to read those two chapters.

And that’s the funny thing about people. They don’t act in the way you want them to. Just because you think things should be one way doesn’t mean everyone is going to agree.

So, that takes us back to asking how we know when something is good. And one answer is that it’s good if it’s been around a while.

Like pencils.

Pencils?

If you’re a writer, you know how to use a pencil.

What’s newer than a pencil?

Pens, text editors, Microsoft Word, some kind of SAAS program?

If you write with a pencil your words will still be legible a few hundred years from now.

Penned words may start to fade.

Plain text will be readable as long as we have computers.

Your Word documents from even ten years ago are probably lost.

And that SAAS company went bust not long from now.

In other words, choose things that have some history because they have shown they can last.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Thursday, 9.01pm

Sheffield, U.K.

All things are ready, if our mind be so. – William Shakespeare, Henry V

The English insult is different from that commonly seen in much of the world.

Instead of a middle finger raised aloft, they hold up the index and the middle, palm facing inward.

This custom, apparently, comes from days when the longbow was used in battle and the French would threaten to cut off those two fingers of any prisoners to ensure they never drew a bow again.

And so, in battle, the longbowmen held up those fingers to tell the other side what they thought of them.

The longbow, apparently, came into its own at Agincourt in 1415. 8,500 English soldiers, 7,000 of which were longbowmen faced around 50,000 French troops.

They won – helped by their arrows – which travelled towards the enemy faster than they could run and walk towards them.

But, what does this have to do with business or sales and marketing?

It’s a story that can be used to look at the same situation from different points of view.

Let’s look at tactics, for example.

The losing side were just as brave as the winning side. If anything, they might have been braver, trusting in their armour to protect them from those pesky arrows.

They had a plan, to head towards the other side and so that’s what they did.

That’s a little like having an army of salespeople taught to smile and dial. They hit the phones, make the calls, make their numbers and succeed.

Is that approach, that works like a cavalry charge, all might and muscle and fury, going to work?

Increasingly, it seems to me, it doesn’t. A cold approach, whether on the phone, email, snail mail, is easily stopped, ignored or turned away.

The arrows, on the other hand, are multiple points of contact. Some might miss, some might hit, and the ones that hit may make a difference.

So, the way I think about this is to imagine that you want to build a pipeline of business. You could reach out to people directly or you could send a shower of arrows their way.

You could advertise where they are going to see it, you could engage with them in the places they are going to be, you could work with them on things that they feel are important and you could get introduced to them by people they already trust.

Is that going to increase your chances of success?

Possibly. Even probably.

I guess it simply comes down to this.

There are lot of things you could do.

You could focus on just one of those things – something you’re strong at, and just do that thing.

Or you could do as many of those things as you can at the same time.

For some people the focused approach will work. For others, the wider one.

Unfortunately, there is no right answer.

There is just what happens when you finally join battle.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Monday, 9.04pm

Sheffield, U.K.

Don’t think free as in free beer; think free as in free speech. – Richard Stallman

IBM has bought Red Hat for $34 billion.

Things have come a long way…

Twenty years ago, on a machine that I can’t remember, I started up a CD of Red Hat and went through the installation process.

Red Hat wasn’t my first try at GNU/Linux.

That was Slackware, on 3.5 inch disks, but it was the first distro that I can remember using properly.

I’ve often wondered why I was drawn to GNU/Linux, why Windows seemed quite so undesirable, even all that time ago.

Why choose something so small and fragile instead of a dominant operating system?

I think it might have been because of my dog.

Years before that install, I went out and chose a puppy. A Pointer – black and white, with floppy ears, a wobbly walk. It was the one that came over and said hello so, of course, I had to have it.

It was an age when computers were coming into our lives. And my dad suggested we name the puppy Unix. So, Unix he became. And I wonder sometimes whether the draw that GNU/Linux, a Unix like system, has for me is because of that connection.

But there is more than that.

When you come from a country that has a history when it was colonised by those with superior technology you learn that you need to have your own if you are not going to be controlled once again.

So, self reliance is important. It’s good to be reluctant to give up freedom, even when it seems convenient.

The last twenty years, for me, longer for others that started before I was born, have seen people working on a strange concept. The idea that programs and computers should work to serve society, not to control them.

The common connection these people have, is their desire for freedom. The desire to be able to use their machines without being controlled by someone else.

A few centuries ago, many monasteries were among the richest organisations around. How did that happen, when the monks were committed to a life of prayer and meditation? It was because of the power of volunteering. The power when people come together, to work for a goal bigger than themselves.

So, it’s strange and reassuring, to see that power is still capable of taking on the strongest in society and winning.

Richard Stallman wrote as far back as 1996 that it was just fine to charge to distribute free software. You could charge nothing, a penny, a dollar or a billion dollars. He didn’t think you would get a billion, however.

Red Hat got 34 of them, just 22 years later.

Freedom looks to be winning.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Monday, 8.41pm

Sheffield, U.K.

The essential thing “in heaven and earth” is . . . that there should be long obedience in the same direction; there thereby results, and has always resulted in the long run, something which has made life worth living. – Friedrich Nietzsche

If you’ve been glancing at recent blog posts, you’ll notice they are about selling. Consultative selling, to be precise. I figured I’d try and write a book on the topic – and focusing on it for a few months seemed a good way to pull together a first draft.

Why? I’m not a salesperson. I’m not particularly good at the sales process, prospecting, keeping records, following up, closing. It’s also pretty dull really.

I’m not sure many people are great at being salespeople. We used to say about a product that we bought it inspite of the salesperson, not because of him. We could see it would do what we wanted. And I’ve not really seen a situation where a pure salesperson brought in more money during his or her employment than they cost.

But, sales and marketing is not something you can simply hand off to someone else either. It doesn’t matter what you do – you are going to survive by earning a commission on the value you create. Very few people get away with having to do nothing of value.

A job, for example, is a commission only role where you get a third of what you make the company. That’s a basic rule of thumb – you need to bring in around three times what an employee costs you to make it worth employing them.

The better you sell yourself, the more likely it is that you’ll get a good job – or grow your business – or excel in your profession.

Marketing and sales, then, is something everyone has to do. So, it makes sense to figure out how to do it less badly. Not do it well necessarily – not to superstar levels where you can get your own TV channel and sell lots of books – but to the point where you don’t make simple mistakes that cost you business.

And that really comes down to learning how to play nicely with the other children.

Which brings us to an essay by Larry Wall, the creator of Perl, that touches on the issue.

If you’re a doer – someone who does a creative job – then you probably have certain character traits. These are impatience, laziness and hubris.

I find this easiest to explain in the context of computer programming. There are lots of people right now in the world that go to work every day and use spreadsheets. They spend their time working through and checking the data, copying and pasting stuff and checking their work and colour coding it and checking their work.

Most people use spreadsheets like a … well, you can think of an analogy. The point is that it’s flexible enough for anyone to open up a new sheet and put in something and do some calculations. So they do that. Usually badly.

Spreadsheets are easy to use. But they are also a hugely powerful programming languages that you can use to make your life a lot easier. If you want to hire someone to do Excel, give them simple problem that involves VLOOKUP. Let them use the Internet to look for answers. If they can use that function correctly, you can hire them.

Someone who has learned that is on their way to being a programmer. And programmers are lazy. They don’t want to do the same thing twice. So, if they have to, they write code to make their lives easier.

They are also impatient. They don’t want to wait. So they’ll work on how to make things work faster or talk to each other better or share information more effectively.

They are also comfortable with hubris. No sooner have they created a solution that they think of all the things they would chance and get busy creating the next version that will make the old one obsolete.

If you’re a company founder, you probably think the same way. You’re creating a new business because you’re impatient with the way things are now. You’re probably too lazy to struggle on with the hard road when you can build a better one. And you’ll start over if you have to – from scratch because it’s so much easier to build from scratch than fix something that is stuck and broken.

As Wall writes, these three characteristics are individual ones and they give us drive and passion and help us be unreasonable and change things.

But… they don’t help us change the world.

For that, we need to work with others. And others are difficult to work with. They don’t think like us.

I found that when I had to do something on my own it was easy. I had an idea and did it.

When there were more people involved, sometimes we agreed on what to do and actually managed to do it.

With even more people… life turned into a slog through chest high mud. You couldn’t get anything done because other people needed to be involved, to give input, to be mollified and pacified and socialised.

But that’s the price you have to pay if you want to be a part of society.

So, the mirror image, the flip side to laziness, hubris and impatience are the virtues that are needed if you want to be more than just yourself. To be a part of your community.

And those are patience, humility and diligence.

You need to be patient with those who disagree with you or cannot keep up with you. You need to be humble so that you don’t think your way is the only way. And you need to be diligent – to keep working on something until you do something worth doing.

Not understanding that we need to be able to hold and apply these opposing concepts at the same time is at the root of much of the failure we see in the world today.

What’s the point in being a successful business person if you’ve lost your family and relationships in the process?

What’s the point of creating a hugely profitable company if everyone that works for you hates your guts?

What’s the point of being a lone voice speaking of a better way to do things if no one else will engage with you?

The point that Wall makes is that it’s okay to have either or both or a different way altogether. The virtues described in the two triangles are not opposites – they just are.

There are many ways to become successful – to reach whatever goals you define as success for you.

But… if you want to succeed as a person and as a part of society… you would do well to keep these two sets of words in mind.

They may help choose the right action – as you and as us. Then you’ll do something new and cool and play nicely with everyone else and hopefully end up having a good time.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction. – E.F Schumacher

Wednesday, 9.05pm

Sheffield, U.K.

Do you ever wonder if you have a responsibility – a fiduciary duty of care – to the world around you?

Most people probably do. They’re concerned about their environment, feel sorry for those in more unfortunate situations and try and be good people.

But is that enough?

Take the minimialism movement, for example. Some there would argue that you have a responsibility to live in the smallest house possible.

The smallest one that lets you do what you need.

But we’re not driven by needs. Well, we are to a point. But that point is fairly low – we know that millionaires are not ten times happier than those with a hundred thousand in the bank, who in turn are not twice as happy as those with fifty thousand.

They’re all about the same. Some of us, it could be argued, feel that the more we have the less content we are.

It’s like that saying – first you own stuff, then your stuff owns you.

So, is the right approach to have less stuff? Or less but better stuff?

For example, let’s think of a simple activity like taking notes during a sales meeting.

You need paper. Should you spend a little bit more and get a pad made from recycled paper or spend as little as possible and go for a cheap notebook with low grade paper?

Should you buy a cheap biro, an expensive fountain pen or a silky smooth Japanese 2B pencil?

Which approach do you think will get you the business? What will your prospect think?

It’s hard to tell. I’m told that some people always look at your shoes to tell what kind of person you are. I’d fail on that test.

But then you have a book like The Curmudgeon’s Guide To Practicing Law – which has possibly one of the best chapters I’ve read – Chapter 8 on page 93, to be precise.

It’s titled Dress For Success and all it says is:

I don’t give a damn what you wear. Just make sure the brief is good.

Perhaps you don’t need to worry about this at all. You can try and be something you’re not and sell successfully to people you don’t respect or you can be who you are and work with people you like, admire and trust.

Which brings us to E.F Schumacher and his book Small Is Beautiful: A study of economics as if people mattered.

You don’t really need to read the book. The title alone tells you all you need to know.

Think about what you’re trying to do in a consultative sales process? Are you trying to make a sale? Or are you trying to help someone decide whether what you do is something they need?

Take the words you use to say what you do… Churchill once wrote Short words are best, and old words, when short, are best of all.

Why would you use a long word when you have a short one that does the same job?

Take the design of a web page or a brochure. We think sometimes that our prospects make decisions based on how your stuff looks. For any real purchase of any significant value, however, you can bet they read your stuff before making a decision.

A simple design that helps them get the main points should work just as well as a pretty one.

What about systems? How many steps should your sales process have?

One, if possible. Two, if you can’t have one. Three, if two isn’t possible.

Really, you should have as few things to do as possible.

What about customers? How many should you go after? How wide should your market be?

If you try and sell to everyone, you’ll end up with no one buying from you. If you want to succeed, you need a niche. Successful large businesses are often a collection of niche businesses.

However big your company, these days you’ll probably find that if you want to get something done, it’s down to you. Perhaps with a few colleagues you trust. A small team.

The real point here is that scale and size is an illusion. If you own a very big company employing lots of people, you probably spend most of your time with three or four people. If you’re an entry level employee at the same company, you probably spend most of your time with three or four people.

If you want to get your point across, speak as you would to one person. Keep everything small.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh