Social media to define future company bonuses?

Along with the rest of the planet I received hundreds of news stories about Friday's controversial memo from Google CEO Larry Page, the general gist being 25% of every employee's bonus is reliant on successful performance in the social media space this year.

Doing the job that I do, this prompted me to have a think about whether this was a) savvy and b) fair.

I don't feel comfortable offering firm conclusions as I wasn't privy to the exact wording, backdrop and context of the memo but the following thoughts seemed to resonate as I considered the concept:

• Involving the whole business in social media, whether it is technically their job or not is smart. All too often I hear "oh marketing deal with social media", which is true but the strongest teams have allies, advocates and participants across many business functions
• Putting a solid number on the amount of bonus at stake is sensible enough, but nowhere did it get reported exactly what form "success" was going to take or what it looked like. Likely this is confidential information in this case but worth remembering if you are thinking of following in Google's footsteps
• Making the whole company financially invested in the success of a single project is a great way to get everyone pulling in the same direction and encourage cross functional collaboration
• The whole initiative feels quite broad brushed and making people accountable could be tricky. If Joe Bloggs doesn't pull his weight whilst Jane Doe works hard, is it fair to Jane if they miss out on the bonus or good to reward Joe's lack of input if they are awarded the money?

So is Larry loony or a legend? I don't know - I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Vision - the religion of business leadership?

I just got back from a trip to Vietnam and having returned from a country where religion plays a far greater part in everyday life than it does here, it prompted me to think about what we use instead.

One of the thoughts I had about this in a business context was that leaders in a largely secular environment tend to use vision to serve a lot of the same purposes as religion does in wider society.

1) Both vision and religion unite people in a common view
2) Both encourage people to see the bigger picture
3) Both provide a source of strength and direction in the tough times

I'm sure there are more but just taking those three points provides enough of a reason why you'd want to make sure that you have a clear vision for your team or organisation that everyone is bought into.

Marketing has got to be remarkable

Now that in and of itself isn't news. However, I was struck by just how entrenched this idea has become when I read a recent interview about web phenomenon Groupon's rejection of the Google billions.

Groupon works by getting local businesses to offer remarkable deals for a very limited time span; when enough people sign up, the seller and Groupon split the cash. For enough people to sign up, the offer has to be jaw droppingly exciting and Groupon uses this principle to select which offers it promotes (it is approached by an average of 8 sellers for every 1 promotional spot).

The contrast between this model and the conventional advertising set up could not be more extreme. For Groupon to make money, they have to be sure your product and offer make your proposition virtually impossible to refuse for your target market.

They have structured their whole business model around this principle and have refused a mammoth $6 billion from Google, confident that they can take what is currently the fastest growing company in history (they are 2 years old) and make Google's offer look like small change.

The message for marketers? Being remarkable, not just in your content but in your value proposition, your service and your offers is no longer just a way to get ahead, it is essential for your survival. The world has rebuilt itself around new rules, evolve or die.

3 ways to decide if a good idea isn't good enough

I came across a great post on HBR the other day focusing on killing off good ideas in order to concentrate your resources on a few that then come to fruition. I really liked this as an approach, perhaps because marketers are so often in a position of being idea rich and time poor, often inadvertently positioning themselves as ineffective as a result. (You've all worked with people like that - super creative types who never complete a project because they've got all wrapped up and excited by their next big idea).

So how do we decide which ideas to keep and throw our weight behind and those to let fall by the wayside?

Before I throw in my 2 pence worth, I want to make it clear that I know there are hundreds of possible ways of doing this and these are just my own, another opinion on the pile!

1) Does the idea align with your strategic objectives? Ideally all major projects should support the pillars of your annual strategy and move those lofty strategic aims forward towards a reality.
2) Can we put a dollar value on the benefit of executing the idea? I'm not saying that if we can't we shouldn't pursue it but I'd rather we could, as no idea that fits into this mould can really be a nice to have if the bottom line impact is significant.
3) Who would your team be? Again, you don't always want to avoid pursuing ideas that involve working with people who are likely to let you down and make your life more difficult. Sometimes it is unavoidable; yet I'd allow it to rule things out if confronted with a list of things with similar possible levels of benefit to the business.

It's all about the people

My initial management training was conducted by a wise man who told me, "It's all about the people; you get the right people and there's very little you can't do, you get the wrong people and you can't do anything".

Time and time again this has been proved correct, both in my own team and in the wider business. Selecting the right people to join your team is an art, but one that can be learned and perfected over time; but what do you do about other people's people?

What can we do when our colleagues make poor hires that impact us and our teams?

1) Understand what a good hire is - This isn't just about who you like to work with or what is right for your function. Make sure you really understand what makes a successful team member for other functions before you start judging other people's decisions. Ask team leaders what they look for in a candidate and why; it may not be your ideal but that doesn't make it wrong for the organisation.

2) Say something - Too often we don't mention our fears to our colleagues about their questionable hiring decisions because we are scared of upsetting them or giving them the impression that we think they are bad at their jobs. Often when I've had a brave moment and said something, the person I am talking to has just looked relieved and been glad that someone else observed the same thing and therefore had the confidence to deal with the issue.

3) Restrict their involvement - Reach out to these poor hires only for the things no one else in the organisation is capable of doing. Leverage your own support network to cover the gaps and minimise the risks posed by that individual to the business as a whole.

It's ok to be grey

This morning we received the tragic news of a colleague's sudden passing away, so I wanted to post the most valuable lesson he taught me as a memorial and tribute to someone for whom I had great respect.

The gist of the lesson: data doesn't have to yield concrete conclusions to be useful

I used to live in a world where data proved things one way or the other. If the results were inconclusive there was inaction.

Since then I have been able to observe how the grey areas often reveal more subtle nuances of an issue, suggest contributions to situations or issues, may present opportunities or challenges that a person just looking for black and white might ignore.

So next time you are analysing something and there are no immediately obvious conclusions, don't get frustrated - look a little closer, you never know what you might see.

How much is enough?

Ever asked yourself "Am I spending enough time on this?" Or too much?

An easy way to find out is to work out:

1) What do I expect to achieve? The simple act of goal setting will give you an accurate picture of the relative scale and importance of the task or project compared to others in your remit.

2) Time evaluation: We are looking to assess value out vs effort in; the simplest way to do this quickly is to work out how many hours you have in total. Then assess what percentage of your time will have to be expended to achieve the result.

Ideally the time % should be lower than the result % but equal is fine too. Pursuing more than the occasional effort where the % goes the other way is a quick route to late nights and under productivity.

Ringing the changes

Driving significant change within your organisation is one of the toughest things anyone can do, however as is often the case it can also be essential to the future profitability of your business.

You may often feel frustrated, isolated and like you are making no headway at all. I've listed a few things below that are helping me keep my chin up at the moment:

- Mark out your milestones or key achievements, put them somewhere in clear view and cross them off as you get through them. This will help you feel like you are making progress.
- Find a mentor (or several) to bounce ideas off or get advice from when you get to a sticky patch. This will not only increase your effectiveness as a change initiator but it makes you feel less like you are going it alone.
- Make time for your change and make time for you. It is easy in a busy job to get caught up in your day to day and not devote meaningful chunks of time to your project. It is even easier to forget to go home! We are fresher, brighter and better at making changes when we haven't been working 14 hour days for 3 months.

If anyone has any others I would love you to share them, like I said it's a tough job!

KPIdiocy?

I spent this morning struggling to piece together conclusions by analysing data from 40 different spreadsheets, all containing different data sets, from which I wrote an entire essay of commentary and strategy. It took me 8 hours of straight slog, as well it should.

I then sat down to write the annual KPIs into a table; a task that should have taken 20 minutes tops given all the work I have just completed. 1.5 hours later, I'm still here with a blank table, writing my blog and not getting any closer to completing the task at hand.

Why? Because setting KPIs feels counter intuitive in modern marketing. Sure we have to have something to measure against, it helps us be effective and fair managers right? It gives us a nice neat little yardstick by which to measure our progress.

But it also feel prescriptive, formulaic and just plain wrong in a world where marketers have a million options, a thousand possible permutations of each of those options and there isn't just one right answer any more.

8 blog posts per plan anyone? One Tweet a day or 5? 3 emails to your engaged leads or 33? We can't take a one size fits all approach to event marketing any more and so KPIs have become nigh on impossible to set.

My current plan is to have a set of evaluations, rather than concrete metrics; a set of things that the marketer must show they have considered and decided to use or not.

Any bright ideas, please shout! :-)