ben damiano 3/14/21 ben damiano 3/14/21

Strategy

What is strategy?

Strategy is Future Competitive Advantage.

What will the future look like? What will people need and expect? How will demographics, technology and other global shifts create new competitors or recharge current competitors and how will categories blur, blend and maybe even disappear?

Amidst these new expectations and changing competitive dynamics what advantage will your company offer? A differentiated or better product? A competitive moat of network effects, scale or some other dynamic? A better experience? Speed and value?

While Strategy firms can be amazingly helpful in guiding companies through these questions, most leaders already have a gut instinct on what needs to be done. The deep dive documents, the chanting strategists and the long march of meetings are to bring others along and to provide an intellectual and analytical framework for a decision that clearly had to be made.

If you work for a firm and you have an idea of where the future is going and how changing people’s expectations and emerging technology are going to create challenges or opportunities, you should go to your management and share your thinking.

All you need to talk about is future competitive advantage.

Some key future trends to help build new strategies or interrogate existing strategies.

William Shakespeare has great advice to anyone who aims to be a strategist. In his play Julius Caesar, he writes:

We at the height are ready to decline.
There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.

Simply stated pay close attention to shifting trends and tides and make sure you align your venture with where the tide is going.

There are three unstoppable trends that every company and individual must align with wherever they are in the world regardless of the industry in which they compete: 1) Globalization with a new flavor, 2) The Three Demographic Divides and 3) The Third Connected Age of Technology.

1) Globalization with a new flavor.

Globalization will continue to thrive despite the hand wringing of Western institutions and periodicals. However, it will no longer be a unipolar form of Globalization driven by the West, but a multi-polar mix significantly impacted by Asia, primarily China and India, who between them account for a third of global population and possibly half of future growth.

By the end of 2018 only 2 of the busiest container shipping ports in the world were in the West (Rotterdam in the Netherlands at Number 12 and Los Angles at Number 18).

At current fertility rates Africa’s population will increase from 1.2 billion to 2 billion in 2050 and 4 billion in 2100 becoming home to almost half of the world’s population.

Just as Earth is not the center of the Universe, the West while being critically important is unlikely to be the center of globalization that the world revolves around with less than 10% of the population and a third of the global GDP soon declining to less than 25%.

2) The Three Demographic Divides: a)The Divide of Race/Ethnicity, b) The Divide of Urban and Rural and c) The Divide of Generations

These “Divides” in the US were most recently seen during the presidential election. Look carefully and it was not “Red State” or “Blue State” but rather Urban/Rural, Caucasian/Non-Caucasian and Young/Old.

The population of the United States next year under 18 years old will be multi-ethnic and the country whose population growth has slowed to a crawl of less than .35% in 2020 will continue to become a multi-racial mongrel mix of beliefs and dreams that walls and nationalistic rage may seek to make more difficult but cannot truly impede. This blend of talents and cultures will be seen not only a key to innovation but a way to remain a leader as a 1.3 billion plus China continues to accelerate.

The most significant and not as well understood of these divides is the worldview differences between those younger than 30 and those older than 55. These differences are replicated in almost every nation as new generations brought up with mobile and social Internet, a lack of assets and lower expectations plus a dramatic difference in values and goals from climate change to capitalism come to express themselves and enter the workplace and politics. In the US this generation will in the next 10 years inherit 30 trillion or 30% of all US Wealth( most of it going to a fifth of them) and this will add fuel to their burning belief of the need to change.

From financial products (Lemonade, Robin Hood, Square, Bitcoin) to fashion (Virgil Abloh, Kylie Jenner) to media usage (Twitch, TikTok), a new language and infrastructure is being forged which will be turbo-charged like never before due to the disproportionate and long-term impact of Covid-19 on these younger generations. (Not since the Great Depression have so many young adults lived with their parents. In July, 52% of young adults ages 18 to 29 years old resided with one or both of their parents, surpassing the previous peak in 1940, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of Census Bureau data. )

Their voices do not ring today in boardrooms or councils of power (almost all of whom are much older) but make no mistake the drumbeats of their reality will soon throb in the bloodstream of every business and political discussion.

But in the US, it is not just the young but the older to whom not enough attention is being paid.

Every day 10,000 people turn 65 years old and due to modern medicine will live active lives for 15 to 25 years. A segment of them controls most of the wealth in the US while a larger group has no significant assets to retire on. Ageism, Medical Rationing, and many more issues will likely create some intriguing inter-generational dynamics.

These divides occur in every nation. Watch Japan as its population declines by over 25% in the next 30 years unless they allow Immigration or Fertility rates change, or China grappling with the aging population due to the one Child Policy, or countries like India and Egypt challenged to find jobs for their youth.

3) The Third Connected Age

In 1993/1994 we entered the First Connected Age where we were connected to information via what would eventually be Search (Google/Baidu) and connected to transaction via what would grow to become E-Commerce (Amazon/Alibaba).

Around 2007/2008 we entered the Second Connected Age where due to smart phones (Apple/Samsung) we were connected all the time and due to Social Media (Facebook/We Chat) we were connected to everybody.

These first two “Connected Ages” have impacted everything from Elections to a re-ranking of the Fortune 500. It has created great wealth and benefits to people and also brought about the destruction of many livelihoods and the middle-class jobs. It has enabled Uber, Airbnb, Dollar Shave Club. Remember when Facebook paid just 1.5 billion dollars for Instagram with its handful of employees? That was worth more than the Eastman Kodak market cap on that day when Kodak had tens of thousands of Employees. Kodak is now worth half a billion while Instagram is probably the most valuable part of the 800 billion market capitalization of Facebook.

But we have not seen anything yet as we enter the Third Connected Age where we will enjoy four new types of connections as data connects to data and writes software (AI), and all our devices are connected to Supercomputers (Cloud), with much faster connections (5G) and new interfaces to connect (Voice today and AR/VR tomorrow).

Why strategies often fail in implementation

Companies often allocate large swaths of senior management time and budgets for outside specialists to help them sculpt and then move the strategy forward.

A cavalcade of consultants convey and communicate with countless charts creative choices to the C-Suite.

A flurry of futurists frame, focus, and filter the way forward with the finesse of fortune tellers.

Masters of the Universe market M&A moves that might make multiples move upwards and mean many more millions in market-cap.

PR professionals produce and promote points of view that provoke the press to perceive with pristine perspectives.

These efforts when successful result in the first three key steps to strategy implementation

1) A simple and differentiated strategic blueprint.

2) An M&A plan to acquire skills, markets and technology.

3) A re-organization since the future does not fit in the containers of the past.

These are essential ingredients to a recipe of change and growth none of these will work without helping grow and change the people in the organization.

Because while firms are a collection of ideas, technologies, patents, brands, ecosystems and people, it is people who are the key since they create the ideas, technologies, patents, brands and eco-systems!

Michael Tyson said, “Everyone has a plan till they get punched in the face”.

Boards and leadership of firms come quickly to the realization that everything is easy until people get in the way.

Telling people that change is good, threatening them with job loss if they do not change or creating communication materials and slogans to goad them into a cult like devotion to the new dear leader or the way forward rarely works in the short run and will likely fail after the threat of flagellation fades.

Because if there is nothing in it for them, people will out-wit, out-wait, out-pretend, and out-maneuver “management”. Until then they will fill the time genuflecting and bowing and going through the monitored motions of attending the right meetings, muttering the motivational mantras and stating the slogans required.

The keys to implementing strategy.

If a strategy is to be leveraged in ways that transform an organization, it is key to remember that the only true transformation happens is when the mindsets and behaviors of the people working for the firm transform.

If you want your organization or team to grow and change you will need to ask your team to initiate a) a three-question exercise while leadership b) delivers three clear answers to employees.

The Three Question Exercise every team should consider doing so they can both understand, get aligned with and contribute to strategy.

1) How do you expect our customers/consumers/members needs and expectations to change in the future?

2) What are our key strengths and weaknesses in meeting and aligning with these shifts?

3) If we had no constraints except, we had to ensure that what we did was legal, that it was technologically possible and financially broke even in 3 years or less what products and services would we design?

This exercise makes people look up from their day to day and understand risks and opportunities and helps them realize the need for doing things differently. As importantly it gets them to contribute and activate the strategy in their areas of competence and expertise.

The Three Clear Answers management needs to deliver to company staff in order for them to align with and implement the strategy:

1) Why are the recommended changes good for their personal career growth?

2) What are the monetary or other incentives to change?

3) When and where will training be provided to help them learn the new skills needed?

Change does not happen because of M&A, press releases, re-organizations or a new leader, all of which undoubtedly play a role.

An organization changes and grows when the people in the organization change and grow.

ben damiano 3/7/21 ben damiano 3/7/21

The Turd on the Table

Most successful companies and individuals defeat themselves.

This comes from some combination of hubris, incestuous thinking and improperly aligned incentives.

Intel was so deluded by its success around Windows computing and 86 architecture that they missed mobile computing and were late to the needs of Cloud computing. It has been superseded by Nvidia, Taiwan Semiconductor and AMD. And yet another CEO has come and gone.

Wells Fargo was so crazed and incentivized to drive revenue by opening new accounts that they started accounts for dead people and established multiple accounts for customers who did not need them. Billions of dollars of fines and 4 CEO changes in less than 6 years is a result of this besotted behavior.

Soon a trail of emails will show that Boeing for years was aware of the software problems with the 737Max but a zeal to ship, a disconnected or badly informed Board of Directors, and miscommunication deeply damaged this world class firm.

Massive growth leading to a dilution of talent and difficulties in maintaining standards, a lust for lucre combined with deep divides between values of senior partners and a new generation of purpose driven talent as well as wedge between US and European and Asian leadership has badly impacted the reputation of McKinsey as one scandal after another engulfs the firm. Economist magazine rightly identifies the issue as one where the partners may be suffering from collective self-delusion!

All these world class firms with superb talent and brands will most likely recover strongly and remain leaders but many of these problems could have been avoided or lessened if only someone had called out or leaders had paid attention to the turd on the table.

A. What is the turd on the table?

It is something that is brown and moist, and people know it is a piece of poisonous waste, but they pretend it is a brownie. They are aware of the stink but perfume over the aroma. Here are some flavors of turd:

Mismanagement. For instance, management (particular leaders or leadership teams) is disconnected from reality and refusing to acknowledge the facts—or they’re guilty of bullying, discrimination, or harassment.

These are incredibly touchy issues, since the former means confronting powerful people in denial and the latter means addressing an individual’s unethical or immoral behaviors.

Toxic cultures. Organizations are highly defensive about their cultures, even when they become cult-like and inflexible or fear-driven. Telling a leader that the culture has become poisoned requires courage.

Financial improprieties. Here, the problem may be a company over-inflating revenue, such as Enron, or one that takes short-term measures to goose the numbers, such as Wells Fargo. Confronting these improprieties that have major short-term benefits and may involve illegal or unethical actions is a challenge.

Major industry shifts. A leader may refuse to address big changes in customer behavior, or the competitive landscape, or mammoth technology changes requiring tough decisions (such as Kodak and digital emergence). It’s easier to rationalize or deny shifts than articulate the business-altering trend and the need for rethinking everything.

People problems. The boss or some person with influence is acting like a jerk, or is playing favorites, or is blind to internal or external developments. In many ways, this is the biggest turd on the table, in that it requires confronting a powerful individual about his or her issues.

B. Why is it hard to call out the turd on the table?

Being punished. You’ve heard the phrase “Don’t kill the messenger”? In many cultures, people who bring up messy, problematic subjects tend to draw the ire of others in the room. If it can’t be dealt with logically and analytically—if it causes people to feel upset, embarrassed, or confused—then raising these issues creates consternation. And sometimes it creates condemnation.

People are afraid of being punished—verbally reprimanded or worse—for talking about difficult subjects. For instance, they don’t want to address how the CEO intimidates everyone or how the CIO’s tendency to play favorites is lowering morale.

Being wrong. In a data-driven world, people like accuracy and correct decisions. The reasoning goes, if you follow the data, you’ll get it right. Of course, that’s not always true. In these cultures, employees are often plagued by self-doubt:

Am I reading the situation correctly? Is there a subject flaw in my thinking? Have I analyzed the situation incorrectly? Self-doubt is a highly effective censor.

Being asked to do more work. Or, as they warn you in some stores, “If you break it, you buy it.” People fear that if they raise problems or difficult issues, they will be asked to deal with them.

Being Disliked. Truth tellers aren’t popular in companies, especially when they’re telling hard truths. Most employees want to be liked by their colleagues and bosses. Articulating troubling issues will get them branded as troublemakers. This is especially true if they don’t have facts and figures to back up their insights and opinions.

C. Why do talented people miss the turd?

Narrow Obsessive Focus. When you’re viewing the data constantly and thinking about it endlessly, you’re viewing the turd through distorting, rose-colored glasses. We have all worked with managers like this, people who are insulated by all their software and systems and benchmark developments in a formulaic manner—i.e., they always compare their performance with traditional competitors or use other established measures. As a result, they miss untraditional competitors or unmeasured innovations. They see only what their screens show them. Thus, they fail to raise problematic issues because they can’t see them clearly. At first the music industry did not see—and then did not understand—the impact of the iPod and iTunes on wresting away control of the industry; what did a technology company understand about music? GM and Ford focused on each other and VW and Toyota and not Uber and Tesla till these “outsider” companies eclipsed them.

Accepting Data Without Questions. We take refuge in the data, believing it to be holy. We accept whatever the machine spits out and forget to ask how the data was collected and compiled, or what biases were in the algorithm.

Even if our instincts are prompting us to call a turd a turd, we don’t because the data says it’s actually a brownie. Today many marketers celebrate how well their online campaigns are doing and how they wish to allocate more money to these programs, despite limited overall gain and often a decline in their total business. It is like a patient who is getting sicker and sicker but believes the vital signs on the monitor, which seem to be glowing healthily. Could it be that they are not measuring the right thing, or the measurement is wrong?

Myth Making and Hero Cultures. Magical thinking prevents people from stating unpleasant truths because many companies cultures’ have religious fervor, and one does not want to be ex-communicated!

In many companies, cultural success myths are powerful, and they often relate to formulas or other numerical concepts that helped the company achieve success. Obviously, there’s validity in these cultural stories, but at times the stories become sacrosanct and that’s when they become a problem (e.g., it’s heresy to speak against the company ethos or its leaders and founders). Data-centric or founder worshipping companies that have been highly successful are especially vulnerable to drinking the Kool-Aid, since people who work in these companies often have fierce beliefs in their technology or their heritage, and they have trouble violating these sacred beliefs.

D. How to encourage the calling out of the turd if you are part of leadership.

1. Anonymous tip lines or suggestion boxes. This is like training wheels for turd table talk. Yes, it’s old-fashioned, and employees may be skeptical at first about whether their suggestions will be read or acted upon, but it provides a starting point for people to voice their truths. Some companies use up and down voting of questions to address key issues at All Hands Meetings.

2. Leadership modeling of truth talking. This is a simple but effective way to integrate truth-telling into the culture. At the end of every important meeting, meeting leaders should ask the following two questions:

(a) Is there something that has not been said that should have been said?

(b) Can someone please say why what we discussed or agreed on today might be wrong?

The Navy SEALs have a practice that after every operation, they have a debrief where everybody leaves their titles at the door. It does not matter if you are a newbie or a commander; everyone is asked to talk about what they and everybody else in the team could have done better.

3. Truth-telling incentives. Nothing aligns values and behaviors like incentives. Rewarding rather than punishing people who challenge the status quo with financial benefits, promotions, and verbal approval sends a powerful message. If you want people to take risks and challenge the status quo, you need to reward such people and such behavior.

4. Admitting wrong. Bosses hate to say, “I made a mistake,” or “That was a dumb decision.” When bosses admit they were wrong, especially when they do so with humor and vulnerability, they convey it’s okay to admit mistakes and point out what didn’t work. Sometimes the turd on the table is a bad leadership choice, and when the leader points it out, it signals to others that it’s okay not only to admit mistakes but to note when bosses do something wrong. Every CEO has overcome significant boo-boos.

They survived and thrived because they realized they were wrong and rectified their mistakes.

5. Storytelling. Dramatize the positives of identifying the turd on the table. Bring in outside speakers who can lay out scenarios in which organizations benefited when people started telling the truth.

6. External middle and senior level hires. One way to ensure new mindsets and thinking is to ensure that a certain percentage of talent is hired externally including from outside the industry or the country the company is strong in. These new folks can bring not only new skills but often question the status quo.

E. Becoming a Turd Slayer!

Do not fear the turd.

Call it out. Shine a bright light on it. Place it on a pedestal. Address the damn thing!

Here are some suggestions for you to become a “turd slayer”

a) Say what you think. In business we care what is between your ears. If you cannot say what you think (hey if it is wrong you will be told so, in fact even if you are right you will be told you are wrong…). Truth eventually has a habit of breaking in. Why not open the door and save time and damage?

b) Assume the person you are trying to be diplomatic to about an issue knows what the issue is. If you bring it up, you will be more respected by them. If they did not know, you will earn an ally.

c) Do not go with the crowd if your instinct says no. Often group and crowd dynamics take over in much decision making. People think about what their boss wants to hear rather than what they should say. People worry about the impact of their career rather than what is right. Sooner or later too many people are dodging their own shadow and playing mind games that lead to slow and bad decisions.

d) Do not work for a boss who cannot bear the truth or whom you fear. We are living in a time of change and most of the time senior folks need to be told that their core beliefs may no longer be true. I have seen too many companies from newspaper to magazines to many other companies hasten their decline because their leadership did not face reality, in part because their staff was scared of them.

e) Tell all the truth but tell it slant: Once you have decided to address the turd on the table, you might want to do so in a way, so the message gets through. Ideally it is in a way that does not make the person receiving the news “lose face” so much of this is best done person to person. In other times some humility, self-awareness, metaphors or humor will be called for. Emily Dickinson says it best in her poem, too much of shock and you will have blinded someone to the turd!

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant Success in Circuit lies Too bright for our infirm Delight The Truth must dazzle gradually Or every man be blind

So, let’s address the “turd on the table” wherever it might be.

For instance, this post might be a turd in itself.

We would then call it a “meta-turd”.

ben damiano 2/28/21 ben damiano 2/28/21

Scale!

Illustration by Yukai Du — Illustration by Yukai Du

One of the long-standing tenets of business are the advantages of scale.

Scale has provided companies with many benefits from higher margins due to lower costs, to insulation from competition due to moats of marketing spending and widespread distribution.

Challenges to Legacy Scale

Over the past decade however the benefits of scale have diminished and in some cases are proving to be a disadvantage:

Scale of Distribution: With direct-to-consumer marketing enabled by the Internet and platforms like Shopify, widespread retail distribution is no longer as effective an advantage. Clearly distribution matters but there are ways to route around the big stores by going direct and creating demand that forces buyers to stock your product.
Scale of Communication: New media behaviors by people particularly search and social are leading to communication channels where spending power is no longer a competitive edge as it was in television or print where marketers cornered key inventory at advantageous prices. Platforms like Facebook enable millions of small businesses with personalization and targeting capabilities to discover customers and be discovered. As content supported by advertising declines to less than a third from nearly two thirds ( hello Netflix, HBO Max, Amazon Prime) scale of spending while still being important is losing its potency.
Scale of Manufacturing: The “Everything as a service” platforms from Amazon Web Services to Foxconn allow smaller companies to gain the edges of scaled manufacturing, distribution and technology without any of the legacy disadvantages of size.
Scale of People: From IBM to GE to Unilever to Walmart there are hundreds of thousands of employees and therefore ability to recruit and grow a range of talent and offer career advancement. Scale of people continue to be important to execute complex and large tasks but there are also new ways to re-aggregate talent. And a generation of talent wants to work in smaller and more entrepreneurial environments. In the post Covid world as we move to unbundled workplaces there will be far more ways to build teams both globally and in real time than every before.

Legacy scale still matters in most industries and is critical in quite a few like semi-conductors. In fabricating advanced chips, a new fabrication plant can cost over 4 billion dollars and there is no way around scale. Today TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) dominates due to its scale.

However while we can never underestimate legacy scale, there are new forms of scale that every smart company recognizes and is expanding into.

The Rise of New Scale

While there is a diminishment of legacy scale , there is also a rise of new types of scale that are becoming increasingly important.

Scale of Data: Increasingly companies are realizing that collecting, refining and leveraging data is what is driving the modern fast growing and highly valued companies from Amazon to Google to Uber. Data enables a new form of scale which is that of mass personalization.
Scale of Networks: On the Internet network effects play a dominant role in creating winners. Dominant platforms such as Facebook, Netflix, and Tencent (WeChat) enjoy flywheel effects of more users attracting more users and therefore marketers and businesses.
Scale of Influence: Today individuals have tens of millions of Instagram followers or leverage Twitter to reach hundreds of millions of people with single posts and tweets. If you look at scaled entities on social media, they are individuals. People are seen as authentic and certain folks like Elon Musk can move markets.
Scale of Talent and Ideas: One of the lessons of history is that every advance in technology places a premium on superior talent. Technology is a lever and when married with great talent a company enjoy major scale effects.

A vivid example of how the new scale works is Kylie Cosmetics. Kylie cosmetics was launched by Kylie Jenner to sell lipstick. In less than two years Kylie Cosmetics sold 900 million dollars of product making the 21-year-old the fast billionaire ever. Kylie cosmetics had less than 50 full time employees, outsourced manufacturing to Seed Beauty a contract manufacture and all e-commerce and fulfillment to Shopify. The single media channel besides PR that Kylie Cosmetics used was Kylie Jenner’s Instagram account with 120 million followers+ (more than the ratings of the top 10 prime time television shows combined)

This era of New Scale began to emerge in 2007 when the smart phone and social networks came to be. With mobile search, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, You Tube, Shopify, Amazon Web Services and lots more the ground was laid for massive disruption of business in marketing today which has further expanded via enabling technologies from Square to Stripe to Paypal to Etsy among many others.

If we look at how Dollar Shave Club and others took on Gillette it was through a combination of You Tube advertising, Contract Manufacturing, Direct-to-Consumer Selling, and leveraging word of mouth on social media. Procter and Gamble’s second to none expertise in brand building, distribution at Walmart and spending scale on television did not stop double digit share declines when new approaches and mindsets were needed. Procter soon built and learned these skills but it did result in an 8 billion dollar write down for the Gillette acquisition.

The scale that many of today’s successful marketers enjoyed were the old scale which are not only diminishing but are seen as disadvantaged because not only are they not agile due to size but less authentic as a zone of control world is being replaced by a zone of influence world, and less customized as they struggle to use modern data, communication and manufacturing techniques.

So now they are aggressively buying the new companies as much for their expertise and talent as for the revenue and brands they have spawned. Coty spent over a billion dollars for half of Kylie cosmetics. Now new and legacy scale merge.

But many companies that enjoy legacy scale and now incorporate data and network scale sometimes forget one other scalable element: Talent and the influence and ideas they beget.

Scaling Talent and Ideas.

Today we are living in a world where the best companies realize that a key differentiator is talent.

Google pays its best engineers 5X to 10X its good engineers because they can be 100X more productive. While the returns to talent in non-software businesses may not be as radical there is no doubt that one superior player is worth some multiple of an okay player.

But how many companies are set up for this reality that talent is the key differentiator?

Great talent offered the scale of networks and scale of data can and will impact outcomes and returns disproportionately.

Fixating on the silicon and spread sheet side of the equation (digital data and networks, measurable input costs) without also emphasizing the carbon and story side (human talent, creativity, culture) is unlikely to lead to optimal outcomes.

In today’s world most companies care about two things:

a) How to grow or re-ignite growth.

b) How to cut costs and expenses to remain competitive.

World class talent cares about two things :

a) How to grow their income, their skill set and their reputations.

b) The purpose, values, and culture of the place they work at and the people they work with.

The challenge for many companies is how to reduce costs (talent being a key cost) while ensuring they have world class people in a world where capital is plenty and talent scarce.

One way is to make sure to recognize the difference between arrows and archers.

Buying cheap arrows is one thing but buying cheap archers is another. A great archer will hit the bullseye with one or two arrows in very little time. An okay archer may need dozens of arrows and could waste a lot of time. Great archers cost more but use fewer arrows to hit the target. Cheap archers blow through a lot of arrows and can hit you in the butt!

Talent should not be weighed or bought by the pound or by some algorithmic driven FTE rate.

Where silicon (technology) can replace carbon(humans) it should, and it will in most cases.

But do not believe that all talent is substitutable with technology or some other talent. In today’s world technology allows leverage and therefore amazing network and scale effects can result from world class human capital.

There is a difference between a rump steak from a diseased cow and a few ounces of fine Kobe beef which buying by the pound cannot differentiate! (Apologies to the vegetarians…think ordinary mushrooms vs truffles)

Scaling Yourself

You are talent.

We are all gig workers with some of us having longer and better paid gigs as the work place becomes unbundled, companies work to manage variable cost (labor), half-lives of skills shorten and measurement increasingly become real time.

To thrive you need to play the scale game.

Here are some suggestions on how to scale your talent:

a) Plan your career over a long-time scale (most college graduates will work for fifty years till 70) and therefore work to remain relevant and reputable in the long run. (If you are 50 you have 20 years of work ahead of you and 3 to 4 significant shifts in the workspace so stop thinking “I will be retired soon and not have to deal with this new nonsense”

b). Scale up your skill set by setting aside to learn, investing in education and raising your hand to new opportunities and assignments. Change sucks but irrelevance is even worse.

c) Scale your reputation recognizing that truth will out and so do the right thing, be generous, do not take short cuts and only burn bridges that allow poisonous snakes to cross. Today you can only use PR and playing games to polish a rotten apple for a year or two before the rotten core thrusts through for all to see!

d) Scale through other people by helping, teaching and encouraging people. Nothing is as scalable as a unified team or people that believe in an idea. People are networks as much as any technology-based network. And when people you work with or you have helped grow you scale in ways you yourself would never have scaled alone.

In the end scale happens when you think beyond yourself, beyond your existing mindset and beyond the boundaries of your category!

ben damiano 2/21/21 ben damiano 2/21/21

Bossy Traits!

Not all bosses are leaders.

Increasingly people follow people and not titles.

Some bosses have titles but few genuine followers. Their teams genuflect in their presence but rarely respect and often abhor them in private.

On the other hand, many bosses are true leaders, and they wear their titles lightly.

These individuals exhibit the five key traits of leadership:

Competency/Capability: They know and excel at their craft which they hone, sculpt and keep relevant in changing circumstances.
Integrity: They face reality. Are transparent. Face facts and align with reality. They engender trust. They are accountable.
Empathy: They care and are concerned about others.
Vulnerability: They accept mistakes and are aware that they may not know all the answers. They surround themselves with people who have complimentary skills and are not afraid of being challenged.
Inspiration: They recognize that people choose with their hearts but use numbers to justify what they just did. That in dark times one needs to inspire and engender hope.

But even the most admired leaders sometimes are hard to deal with from time to time, because decision making is difficult and stressful especially when there is significant financial risk, competitive threat and tight deadlines.

As a result, they exhibit the traits of bad bosses.

Sometimes all of us do.

Because we are human.

But most of us rarely fall into deplorable boss mode for more than a day or two and usually apologize and correct our behavior.

Others tend to continuously vibrate and hum with odious bossy traits.

It is important to recognize the bossy traits of bad bosses so that if we work with one of these bosses or when under pressure, we begin to exhibit these traits ourselves, we can recognize and address such behavior.

The five bossy traits (bad bosses have a doctorate in one of these and a master’s degree in a couple of others) are 1) narcissism, 2) micro-management, 3) drama, 4) scheming and 5) back-stabbing.

1. THE NARCISSISTIC GOD. These bosses believe that only they know the answer, only they are capable of handling the major meeting, and only they should get the credit for their teams’ success. They often believe they transcend the company. In many instances, they create a godlike cult that worships their every move, using public relations and social media to spread the word.

Their people worship them by following their commandments. Direct reports lose their own individuality when they’re working for Narcissistic Gods; they also lose their ability to draw upon their own experiences and skills to solve problems or capitalize on opportunities. Their story gets lost, and they become mindless followers.

2. THE MICROMANAGING FIDDLER. These folks are terrific operators—they know how to get things done—but as managers, they retain their obsessive detail orientation. They tell their people what to do and insist they check in with them at every stage. They are insecure and can’t let go of anything. They often manage via spreadsheets or the need for slavish following of systematic procedures. Micromanaging Fiddlers fail to understand the outside world since they are constrained by the cell of the spreadsheet or slaves to historical procedures.

3. THE OSCAR ASPIRANT. These types emote, loudly and dramatically. Erratic and unpredictable, they are a roller coaster of emotions. They greet bad news with histrionics and good news with hyperbole. These drama kings and queens are tolerated by management because they can be effective in certain roles—they can present well and even inspire others with their visions and speeches.

At the same time, they make their people crazy. People are expected to praise the boss’s performance or to raise their spirits. More to the point, these managers only want one story told, and it’s theirs. As a result, direct reports aren’t allowed to bring their own ideas, experiences, and views to the group.

The story of the boss overwhelms everything and everyone else.

4. THE SCHEMING SPHINX. This is the person who smiles, blows air-kisses and oozes charisma and friendship, says nor shares anything substantial, while sucking up as much information and probing for vulnerabilities.

A blend of insecurity and bully juice wrapped in a blanket of charm while oozing calm and friendliness.

Often more style than substance. More network than intellect. Retains power through potential threat and ability to harm versus innate talent or true goodwill.

5. THE DOUBLE-CROSSING ASSASSIN. While the previous four types are expressive (or anti-expressive in the case of the Scheming Sphinx) in their terribleness, Assassins are soft-spoken, well-behaved, and self-controlled.

Behind closed doors, however, they take credit for other people’s work, create animosity by speaking ill of people to others, and find ways to trip up others and make them fail. They are like Reese Witherspoon in the movie Election: smiling and ruthless. They win people’s trust and then undermine them.

People working for Assassins become guarded and monitor everything they say and do for fear that it will be used against them. They carry out tasks with little creativity and take little risk, knowing that even a minor slip up will give the Assassin an opportunity to target them. They fear for their work lives—keeping a low profile and cleaving to their tasks is the only way they can escape the Assassin’s bullets.

All five bad boss types know that if they deliver their numbers and meet their objectives, they can continue to exist in most organizations. This is especially true if these organizations have spreadsheet-dominant cultures where measurement is constant and meeting quarterly numbers is the highest priority.

Bad bosses are the enemies of balance; they provoke extreme reactions from their people. If the employees don’t leave the company, they work in fear or expend all their energy on managing their managers. No doubt you’ve witnessed employees go into survival mode to deal with a bad boss. They become obsequious, robotic, and myopically focused on their boss’s every action and reaction. As a result, they may be able to carry out assigned tasks effectively and help their bosses meet their numbers and objectives, but they are loath to take risks or deviate from norms.

At a time when innovation is crucial, they fall short because innovation requires behaviors that bad bosses hate. The balance is tipped heavily in favor of playing it safe.

Bad bosses unbalance companies in another way: they force people to face inward instead of outward. They spend time focusing on what their bosses have done or how to manage their idiosyncrasies, instead listening to the marketplace and customers.

The good news is that as we enter the era of the Unbundled Workplace folks with these bossy traits will find themselves increasingly impotent in their ability to command and control. There is no big office to telegraph power or a campus like facility in which to create cultish followers. No assistants to block access and an increasing dilution in the power of a rolodex when true talent connect with true opportunity in real time!

Our real bosses are the people we wish to develop relationships with and sell to—not someone in our organization or even our clients’ organizations. The best thing we can do for our internal bosses is to make sure our external bosses do not fire us. Which is why looking outside and seeing tomorrow versus looking inside and being nostalgic for yesterday helps provide balance.

Bad bosses keep us staring at our shoes. Good bosses encourage us to lift our heads and look around.

ben damiano 2/14/21 ben damiano 2/14/21

Ruptures in the Mediascape

Photograph by Guy Havell — Photograph by Guy Havell

Every decade or so there are significant shifts in the media landscape.

In the early 80’s we saw the birth of cable, the 90’s the beginning of the World Wide Web, less than a generation ago we witnessed the explosion in social media and the criticality of mobile phones as revolutionary creation, consumption and distribution platforms/instruments.

We are now in the midst of what maybe the most significant rupture in the mediascape whose implications on business and society are only beginning to be sensed. A rupture that is not just driven by advances in technology but a very deep wrinkle in the very fabric of every element of how media, messaging, content, information is created, designed, distributed, consumed, shared and trusted.

Surprisingly the streaming wars are unlikely to be as intense and in many ways will be more of a challenge to marketers as they lose opportunities to reach people as the four dominant global streaming contenders ( Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+ and Apple+) will likely remain advertising free. In individual countries the Big 4 maybe joined by a couple of other country specific players. ( HBO Max and Peacock are likely to be somewhat scaled players in the US assuming that their parent companies of AT&T and Comcast can invest in them and also fund/defend against 5G since connections are their bread and butter business).

1) From the Dynamic Duo to the Seven Marketing Mongrels

While the Google and Facebook family still dominate in a majority of the non Chinese landscape, they have been joined by five very viable options in Amazon and four fast growing and scaled platforms of Twitter, TikTok, Pinterest and Snap whose stock prices have now been on an absolute tear providing them with ammunition to buy a range of companies and continue to attract and retain talent from the big giants. TikTok is the fastest growing platform amongst these and it’s impact is seen in both its massive year to year growth (almost a 10X growth in revenue in 2020) but also in how an entire eco-system of content creators, partnerships, and e-commerce integrations is emerging.

All seven of these platforms are continuing their journey from pure breeds to mongrels. The old designations of search, e-commerce, social and mobile are very yesterday and should be dropped pronto. These are multi-media, multi-able marketing and business platforms. They integrate commerce and lead generation; they can be micro-targeted or scaled up. They can provide a blend of content creators and influencer networks to accelerates marketer’s distribution footprints and storytelling and content possibilities.

In the United States these Seven Marketing Mongrels are being joined by at least two other major players which are Walmart and Target which are investing deeply in becoming media companies. Here too, one will see the blending of messaging, utility, distribution, commerce across the consumer/customer journey.

2) Expanding from Colonization of the Eyes to the Colonization of the Ears

TikTok is the first stream which requires you to turn the sound up. Music is integral to the experience. We are now in a world of sonic explosion from the dramatic rise in usage and value of podcasts, to the aural hardware competition between Apple, Bose, Sony, Sennheiser for headphones to feed your ears to the Harman Kardon, McIntosh, Bose, Burmester and Bowers and Wilkins battle to make your car the best concert hall. Voice with Alexa, Siri and Google is now increasingly the new interface. And let us not forget the current “it” platform of Clubhouse which is a strange new fusion of live and on demand call in talk radio.

Sounds are intimate and they stir memories and in the form of music take you where you want to go. Sounds are fluid, flexible and make for a very agile cost-effective fabric to stitch and make the marks of a Brand. As voice grows as an interface and machine learning progresses to a level where seamless translation between languages as well as other advances become broadly available many new possibilities will arise providing utilities, customer support and much more. For more on the new sonic landscape click here.

3) The Out of Home Media Renaissance

Modern technology hurt every legacy media from newspapers to magazines in particular and radio and television to a lesser degree but enabled OOH, the previously stepchild of media which was usually dealt with by “specialists” in some basement room. But now boards have become screens that are brighter, cheaper and everywhere. The human painters and poster hanger uppers have been replaced by real time programming where messages can be personalized down to weather conditions and locality but can be scaled up to national levels as the screens are increasingly networked. And given when you are walking or driving you usually are not also looking at media on your phone it actually is a media that garners the most valuable commodity which is attention and with screen sizes of epic proportions creates a wide canvas of messaging possibilities that reward this attention with creativity. Finally, as we spend more time in the digital, augmented and virtual worlds it will be one media which will dominate IRL (in real life).

Smart companies will integrate OOH into the mainstream of marketing and media strategy and no longer leave it isolated. It is the ultimate mongrel media in its abilities to chameleon like shape shift from local to national, from static board to moving video. Its ability to channel a selfie into a towering image on Times Square also makes it a key social media enabler and enhancer. Nothing is more Instagrammable. More on the future of OOH here.

**4) The “Cook/Zuckerberg” war is not just about different approaches to privacy and business models of Apple and Facebook, but also about how key messaging is to the future of the two companies**

For those who have been to China and used apps like WeChat it is clear that messaging apps in the US are infants compared to what they can grow up to be. WeChat integrates every aspect of life from banking to ride hailing to social media and more. It is a landscape and an eco-system built around a gushing river called messaging. If Facebook were ever broken up my bet would be that Mark Zuckerberg would end up running WhatsApp which is where most of the potential growth of his company is. This is why he invested $5.7 billion for a 9.9 percent stake in Jio Platforms in India. He probably hopes that WhatsApp, the dominant messaging platform in India will evolve into a WeChat for India ( Many Chinese apps including TikTok are now banned in India). Tim Cook is also major player in messaging with over 1 billion iPhones in the world all with Apple Messaging/Facetime.

With the exception of gaming, people spend more time on messaging apps than any other app or platform. The future of Fintech, identity and mobile commerce are going to be deeply integrated with messaging.

To be competitive in the future focus on messaging strategies, partnerships and opportunities.

5) The Rise of a New Content, Creator and Distribution Eco-system

The acid of modern digital technology and networks is burning apart the muscles that held content and distribution together and that enabled a hierarchy that separated the esteemed publisher/ editor/creative director from the masses and that allowed windowing, fixed programming schedules, unnecessary bundling and “quality control”.

The questions we will all be grappling with are:

Who is a gatekeeper? What is a media company? Who are creators? Who do we trust?

Andreessen Horowitz now A16z, a multi-billion-dollar firm that invests across industries, announced in January that it's building a new and separate media property. "We want to be the go-to place for understanding and building the future, for anyone who is building, making, or curious about tech," it said in a blog post.

Also, Elon Musk interviewed the CEO of Robinhood in Clubhouse (both a16Z comp-anies) which became a newsworthy event and put Clubhouse on the map with a massive spike in sign-ups. These and other recent events upset many journalists including some highly innovative and future forward ones like Jessica Lessin of the Information who in a very passionate piece entitled “ The Nightmare Awaiting the News Industry” questioned the lack of real journalism or transparency among other issues.

Then there is the reality of a new generation of creators on You-Tube and TikTok, the fact that for every journalist there are five public relations experts, that many writers utilize platforms like Substack to go directly to readers and monetize their work. Today the memes of Elon Musk and others scale far greater than any of the major networks. Kylie Jenner with her 140 million followers has greater potential reach than the Superbowl! The line between content creator and influencer and media company has blurred beyond recognition.

Today any investor or trader worth their salt looks beyond Bloomberg, Thompson, the FT and the WSJ by monitoring Stocktwits, Reddit’s Wall Street Bets and Seeking Alpha Pro. There is a wide chasm between the media behaviors of those in power and those who are the big audiences of today.