Seek Out The Truth…

As you engage with your community and especially your customers, prospects and trusted advisors ALWAYS seek, ask for and encourage the truth. Too often people meet with others in their industry and have drinks and chat over how great everything is going and how wonderful their respective companies are. It is nice to meet with friends and exchange pleasantries but DO NOT mistake these meetings for confirmation that you are doing the right things. If you want to get better YOU MUST seek out the truth.

Here is what I believe…

If you are not getting better every day you are getting worse. There is no such thing as standing still.

In order to improve your business you need to understand your strengths yes but you also must understand your weaknesses either real or perceived. If you are not meeting the needs of your community and fulfilling your deliverables than someone else will. Engage in REAL conversations with people who are friends and foes. Here are some of the people you should seek out:

• customers
• employees
• industry experts
• competitors
• business partners
• lost customers
• customers on deals you lost

Some of the questions to ask and data to acquire about your company:

• Did you end up purchasing a solution to assist with your business needs ?
  • if so who and why
  • if not, would you consider doing business with us in the future, why or why not
• How would you describe your experience in dealing with us
• What could we have done differently in the sales process
• Were there aspects of our product/solution functionality that did not meet your needs
• Were there aspects of our implementation/methodology that caused you concern
• Was our pricing competitive
• Was our sales representative professional and effective at addressing your questions
• What is your perception of our Company
• How would you describe us versus our competitors

It is important that you talk to many different people and get many different viewpoints. What you are looking for is a pattern that comes across from several non-related sources that become themes. It is this data that you need to assess and evaluate as you look to steer your business forward and become the better tomorrow than you are today!

Don’t let people tell you what they think you want to here DEMAND the truth. Good luck and let me know how it goes.

Is Your Message Clear?….Twitter Your Business Description

Had an great conversation while attending the conference on the value of simplicity. Many organizations, including mine, can be accused of complicating their message and making it difficult for their employees, their customers, their prospects and their community at large to understand what they do.

An attempt of this for Ivara would be as follows:

“Ivara provides business intelligence software to improve physical asset performance and reliability in capital intensive industrial companies”

While this is a very valuable exercise I would caution against over-simplifying. Twitter is a great tool BUT if it takes you 160-180 characters to appropriately state your message that is not the be all and the end all. The point is be able to articulate to your community what you do in a memorable, repeatable, accurate statement so when you get a couple minutes to introduce yourself in the elevator or at the conference people will get it. Another great exercise is to do this with your Executive team and ask each of them to do this and compare. The variation in what comes forward will provide evidence of how clouded your message may be in the market. By the time the message gets from Exec to employees to customers to prospects, etc, etc imagine what a mess it can be if it is not crisp from the start. It’s like a bad game of “telephone” from when you were a kid!

Couple to-do’s for you as you look to grow your community:

1. Send me your “twittered” messaging and let me see if I can clearly understand it and would remember it
2. Ask your co-workers to do this and send it to you via email within 15 minutes. Significant variations will tell you that a follow on meeting to clarify this statement is required.

Send your messaging and let me know how your to-do’s go. Clarity of messaging is key for all stakeholders and community members.

Conferences, Community and Social Media

Had the good fortune this past week to attend one of the premier conferences in our industry (RCM09) and meet with several of the main players in our space, the asset health and reliability space, and with several customers and prospects who are looking to take the next step in their asset performance journey.  Here is a picture of our booth:

One of the leaders in our community and the conference organizer Terry O’Hanlon is embracing social media as a content delivery, engagement and community building tool.  The conference had it’s own Twitter handle which was helpful in a couple different ways:

1. It allowed those who were attending to talk up the event and virtually meet new people and set up meetings before even arriving at the conference
2. It allowed people who were not able to attend to participate with the rest of the participants and hear what was going on and follow along from their office
3. It acted as a news media source.  During the conference there were major announcements and press releases and conference updates that needed to be communicated and this was a great media to disseminate the information

As you look at how you build your community a few points and suggestions as a follow on to my previous post as you look to take the next steps.

1. Just Do It! – Be a leader and get started today.  Control the medium, control the message, control the space.  Start distributing content that is of value and point people to where the content resides.  Become the trusted advisor for resolution to their business issues and point them to others when they have problems that you are unable to solve.
2. You Don’t Have To Do It Alone – who are the leaders in your space and what are they doing online.  Reach out to them and work with them to set up a site, or better yet post to your site.  Talk to your customers and partners and determine how and what will add value to them and work with the ‘gurus’ of your space to deliver it.
3. Start twittering, blogging, etc at your conferences and let people know you are there.
4. Consolidate your online contribution and make it easy for people to find you - If you have a website that is your principle communication vehicle is your blog linked to the website and vice versa so they are easy to find?  Is your Twitter handle and link on your blog and website?  What about your business collateral?  Put it on your business card.  Put it in your email signature line.  make it easy for people to find all your contributions and thoughts on your community so that they know where to go and don’t have to search.

Remember that building a community takes time, patience, dedication and is an investment in your company, your community, your customers, your employees and your prospects.

Some math to show the reach of social media.  The Twitter conference handle generated 86 followers in a couple weeks.  Lets assume 1/3 were already using Twitter (my estimate from reviewing the list) and that means that approx 60 new people in my community were reached using social media due to the commitment and effort of one of our respected industry leaders.  Over time if those 60 users add 60 users each in the community (fairly conservative assumption) the community has grown to 3600 in fairly fast order.

Now maintaining those new community members and growing that community is dependant upon the continued flow of VALUE ADD content.  I and all of us at IVARA will do our part to contribute and lead this great community and care and feed for customers, partners, employees and prospects.  For now we have our IVARA BLOG, our IVARA TWITTER  and many webinars, etc that link through our website.

What are you doing in your space?  Are you investing in and giving to your community, if you don’t someone else will…step up and make the commitment, get started today.

Please comment on your thoughts, experiences, successes, failures so we can all grow our communities together.

Building a Community….Step 1

My company Ivara operates in a fantastic market that is full of opportunities to engage with a robust, knowledgeable group of employees, customers, competitors and thought leaders.  While the current economy presents challenges for us and our customers alike it is also a great opportunity for us to band together and share our experiences (good and bad) and help each other come out the other end of this downturn a stronger, more profitable and better serving community than we were before.  To that end we all have to do our part in the community and it starts with adding value.  I am a huge Twitter participant and one of the biggest messages that you get from engaging in this medium is exactly that…engage! 

Like everything in life, you get out of something what you put into it and when building a community you should always be making deposits into the community bank so that at some point you are able to make a withdrawal.  As I am familiar with it I will use my industry as an example but it could be applicable to any industry.  Our industry is focussed on supporting industries on the road to operational excellence and providing people, process and technology to facilitate and sustain change in their organization ensuring improved uptime, productivity and quality from their operations.  Many operational and maintenance folks are not entrenched in the online world to the same extent we are….and why would they be?  Historically, other than personal interest, there has not been a ton of value add content and guidance online to assist them in improving how their assets run and are maintained.  This is the first challenge in building a community….providing enough valuable content consistently for them to want to engage with you using a new medium. 

How do you get offline people online???

In a word…persistence!  Over weeks, months and years continue to provide meaningful free content for people so they can use what you know to improve their business and solve their day to day business problems.  Then connect the content to the people.  The content can be delivered in an immeasurable number of ways.  We have started in the last year or so with a program to deliver blog posts, twitter updates and webinars online in addition obviously to the company website.  All of these are good delivery vehicles especially at the beginning where less sophistication for your community is probably better.  We have now added a free online reliability conference that is open to any and all customers as well as some prospects.  What works in your space?  Give it some thought, plan out some ideas, throw out some trial balloons and feel your way along.  the only thing I know 100% for sure is you MUST start and you must start now.  If you don’t someone else will.  Be there for your customer and community, be a leader and show them you are committed not to your own success but to theirs and that you want to provide them with tools, ideas, resources that will help make them look like stars in their organization.

I am fortunate that we have a community with many other people who are true experts in our field who have been forging the path online for us to follow.  It is now time for me and our Ivara to step and contribute to the community and make our overdue contributions to the community bank.

How has it been building a community in your industry?  What lessons have you learned?  please share so we can all learn and foster healthy, vibrant communities in our respective spaces.

We have a long way to go but I am committed and persistent and believe in our community!

Weekend Reading

I am a reader!  I love to read but rarely find the time to be able to dedicate hours to get into a book.  Wasn’t convinced that audio-books were for me but I have spent a chunk of time on the weekend listening to the legend Seth Godin new book Tribes on my iPod.  If you have not “read” a book using audio I would encourage to give it a try.  When Seth is making a point that is particularly relevant for me I like to stop, pause, replay and give it some thought, even make notes on how that applies in my situation.

Tribes (link to paper book) is a great read for any business leader and there are several good points that I will use to write further blog posts about my thoughts on certain topics but some of the highlights are:

• “Be Remarkable” – think about it!  be worthy of remark.  It is easy to become irrelevant and become  a ‘one of’ in your industry.  Don’t be afraid to rock the boat, in fact you have a responsibility to rock the boat.  More to follow in separate post but in the meantime think about it…are you worthy of remark?  Is your Company?
• The Rules of the Game Change Everyday – If you are playing the game by the rules of yesterday it is clear you will not win the game of tomorrow.  YOU MUST CHANGE.  YOU MUST FORCE CHANGE IN YOUR ORGANIZATION. Past success is in no way an indicator of future performance.
• Lead your Tribe – People want and need to be led.  Find the Tribe members in your company, find the Tribe members in your customer base and provide the voice, tools and ability for them to get together and drive the change you need.  EVERYONE in your organization can be/is a leader.  Permission is not required, only initiative and faith.

Whether it is Seth, or Tom Peters, or whoever reading and pushing yourself to think about things differently is critical to driving change and being successful.  What have you read this week?  How did it effect the way you think about your world whether it be politically, professionally, personally.  Continue to grow as a personal….there is no such thing as standing still, you are either moving forward or moving backwards.

Conquering Fear

I Twittered today about potentially starting to use some video-blogging to add a new delivery media and to engage better with my audience. Interested in any thoughts people may have around pro’s and con’s and why they think it is good or bad. I enjoy blogs that have a mix of video and written posts and given that most communication and engagement is done orally I think people tend to engage better when they can see and hear the person delivering the content. The underlying assumption is that the content is good, without that the media is irrelevant. I will try to keep the content as or more interesting and historic posts.

Biggest problem…I’m worried I am going to suck at video-blogging so I am a little afraid of taking this leap. Not doing something because your afraid is weak. Leadership involves making decisions and taking action that is risky and may not work. We do learn from failure and accepting failure is healthy as long as you learn from it and do not make the same mistakes over again so here is the deal…..

I am going to prepare, plan, practice and take the leap. What I need from you is honesty. Tell me what you think, tell me if it sucks, tell me if it rocks. I want to continue to deliver content that is useful to my audience and I want to continue to improve and find better ways to get you better stuff. If video-blogging is neither better for you nor an improvement let me know. Watch for it….it’s coming.

What is your fear? Post your stories here, tell us how you conquered your fear and what the result was. Was it worth it? How has it changed your personal or professional life?

Take the leap…don’t be afraid of failure be afraid of complacency!

How Was Your Day Today?

This is a question most spouses and friends ask each other when they go home at night. How do you normally answer this question? “It was ok” or “same old stuff” are common responses. If this is your response day in and day out I want to encourage you to change that.

Doing the same thing day in and day out is not the right thing for you or for your company. Look at new ways to do things and challenge the “we’ve always done it that way” paradigm. Customers want and demand for us to get better everyday. I am big believer that people and Companies that remain status quo are getting passed and risk becoming irrelevant. Every day you either move forward or backwards because if you aren’t improving your competitors are.

Take a minute each day and look at what you are doing and why you are doing it and how you can do it better to add more value to your customer. Talk to peers over lunch about it. Push yourself, your peers and your boss everyday to get better and try to come home each night with a story, anecdote or example for your family (or your dog) that is not “the same old stuff”.

Push yourself to get better…start tomorrow, don’t wait.

Post stories and examples here, share and encourage each other. YOU can make a difference.

I’ll Take Anger over Apathy

I had the good fortune of having a call with a somewhat angry customer today.  Yes….good fortune.  As I start to reach out to customers in my new role I am hoping to get one of two reactions:

1. I love your software and have received countless benefits and value through it’s implementation and use.
2. Your product is killing me!

If customers are not loving your product and pushing you to make it better or screaming at you because it is not working properly that means they have given up and are apathetic about you and your product.  As long as your customers still have emotion, engage with them and get to Know Your Customer. 

While it is always good to get positive feedback from your customers and delivering value some of the best feedback comes from struggling customers.  These customers can provide you with key actionable inputs and feedback that can help drive further value for happy customers and turn around unhappy ones.

As you meet with more and more customers you start to pick up data points that form trends.  These trends then can then drive product strategy decisions.

Go to your customers and look for the unhappy ones as much or more than your happy ones and drill into there problem and struggles with your product.  Often a turned around customer will be a more engaged, passionate customer than one who was happy to start with

Let me know how it goes for you and make sure you take the angry phone calls before apathy sets in.

Know Thy Customer

Seems like a pretty common sense piece of advice...and it is, BUT DO YOU? In the upcoming months I need to spend time on the road going out and meeting with customers and prospects to ensure I have an accurate perspective on how 'they' see our product. It is very easy to get caught up in the act of navel gazing and convincing yourself everything is alright. It is also easy to carefully and conservatively maneuver through the difficult end of this year and 2009 convincing yourself that sales are down due to the poor economy and you would be right....in part. If your value proposition is compelling and provable aren't troubled economic times the best time to help your customers with their business problems? A few rules for getting to know your customers:

1. Be generous with your customers - make the conversation about them not you. Find out what their biggest pain points are and see if there are ways you can assist them. If their biggest problem is NOT one you can solve, help them anyway. Connect them to a business partner with expertise, or a peer from another company who has successfully fought and won the same battle.
2. Research and prepare - take the time to print out articles on their company and industry and read them ahead of the meeting. Understand the macroeconomics of their industry and vertical to build their trust and confidence that you are a knowledgeable and trusted advisor.
3. Remember your Mother - I remember my mom telling me that I was given two ears and one mouth for a reason and they should be used in that proportion. Remember, you are there to learn! Learn what business problems are occurring at your customer and in his industry. Learn what they like and more importantly DO NOT like about your product. Learn how YOU can help THEM. In order to achieve the goals of the meeting remember to listen twice as much as you talk.
4. Follow Up - Drop your customer a note when you return to the office that follows up on the meeting and thanks them for their time and interest in discussing their problems with you. Follow up with them on the commitments you made at your meeting whether that be a proposal, a contact's phone number you promised them, copies of materials they requested.

This process puts you in a position where once a month or quarter you can call your customer check in and see how they are doing. They may not need your services this trip but if you help them with their business problems whatever they are...your time will come. In the mean time you walk away with valuable information on how your product is used, perceived, the value it is driving and the problems customers are having with it. All in all a pretty worth while trip for both party's.

Let me know how this works for you or if you have a different approach

Changes and Challenges

It has been a long while since I posted to this blog. I have missed the therapeutic effect of thinking through issues, problems, successes and strategies and getting comments on those thoughts from people who follow me and who I follow.

There have been so many things that have gone on in the past few months that could be written on personally, professionally, politically, macro-economically, etc, etc. I will start to work through my thoughts on all of those things in the upcoming days and weeks. I have gone through many difficult and trying times in the past weeks at work and have been presented with the opportunity to lead a group of highly dedicated, focussed and smart people at Ivara Corp as President. We, like many businesses, are going to be entering some very uncertain times in the marketplace and have had to make some very difficult decisions to proactively prepare for this uncertainty. Some of those decisions, which occured over the past week, were the most difficult that I have made in my professional career and I feel deeply for the people that were affected by those changes and will continue to work with them as required to ensure they will land on their feet, which I have no doubt they will.

Looking forward we have a year filled with Change and Challenge but with change comes opportunity. Opportunity for us to refocus on the customer experience, to gather information about why our customers like us and don't like us, to change our product and our offering to meet the ever evolving needs of our customers in the market. It is important that we engage now more than ever with our customers and prospects to stay close and work with them to drive value in their business and grow the Ivara community. While change is a true constant it is not easy. People like the routine and comfort of consistency but the reality is that those who lead change in the marketplace, who allow their community to take them places they otherwise may have resisted, who are open to and embrace change engage their community and drive forward. A truly engaged and passionate group of employees, customers, prospects and stakeholders are unsettled with the status quo. They love what they do, what the company does and because they are engaged they want to make things continuously better than they were.

I love Apple! I love their products and I love their pace. Apple is a company that realizes if it does not constantly antiquate and cannibalize it's own products someone else will. Is the current iPod a great product? Most would argue yes (and sales numbers would support) but in very short order Apple will release a new iPod that will make the current perfectly good product obsolete. Apple does not accept the status quo, they know that the market will continue to change, customers will want new things and that engaging with their community will require them to provide those things (at the expense of their own existing product line) to ensure the community is and continues to be engaged and they remain the leaders of their space.

I will continue to blog here but will also do so at Ivara's blog. I will continue to Twitter personally and will begin to do so at Ivara. One of our great employees Jason Diller has started a Yammer initiative internally which is growing through his care and feeding and is facilitating much needed cross departmental communication. All these tools are just that...tools. Yammer and Twitter and blogs and Facebook are all excellent tools to facilitate community. This will be a year of change for me, this will be a year of change for Ivara and this will be a year where we start to form and engage with our community in new ways. I don't have all the answers and I don't have a silver bullet because their isn't one. I will look to engage through meeting face to face with employees, with customers...both happy ones and especially those less so...with trusted advisors and through social networks. Collectively this group of passionate people will generate the ideas required to drive Ivara forward to success through these turbulent times.

Success is a process, one that in my role I will support and foster among a great tribe of people at Ivara and within our community. Our success will be a group success and will come from ideas, thoughts, challenges and changes that I will endeavour to enable but will inevitably come through the community of dedicated employees, customers and prospects who will push us to the change we need.

I look forward to meeting with each of you along the way.