Tracking the chatter on Twitter, most (myself included) focused on an Accenture manager comment that “strategy was dead”. If you read it yourself though, you can see that he actually says “strategy, as we know it, is dead”. What really caught my eye is that strategy was boiled down to “predicting the future”.

Is Strategy as Simple as Predicting the Future?

The short answer is no. Or at least, it shouldn’t be. Planning is partially pointing the ship in the right direction in response to industry trends and conditions, but its useless if there aren’t concrete steps to implement the strategic plan. I believe this is oftentimes where plans fall short, when upper management communicates (and translates) the messages they receive from executive management down to middle management, who then communicate and translate them further down the line, until the message gets too scrambled to understand (remember the game operator).

Quick, name me a single company that doesn’t use strategic planning and is successful

I don’t think its possible to be successful just by simply being flexible and responding to conditions as they arise. Companies in this cycle are simply playing an elaborate game of whack-a-mole, reacting to things that are happening to them. A person or company that is reactive, instead of proactive, loses out on a ton of opportunity. An easy example is the Apple iPad. Although people have been speculating that Apple would create a tablet computer next, Apple had the plan in the pipeline for a long time. Who else had something even close in terms of a tablet computer? Microsoft had their Windows tablet environment, but had all but abandoned it.

Look how quickly after the announcement Dell, Sony, and HP beat the drum on their rival offerings. Although some of these announcements came before the iPad, in light of Apple’s more clear timeline and specifications, the press will be framing these products as “reactions” or “answers” to Apple’s iPad. Now they get to define the market (blue ocean strategy), and set the rules of the game. Would Windows 7 be appropriate for these tablets, or should the tablet OS be revived?

Apple exists in a crowded and competitive marketplace, but still succeeds not only because they have an excellent strategic plan, but also because they have the ability to execute on these strategic plans. If they had simply reacted to marketplace conditions, HP/Sony/Dell would have taken their time on the tablet at introduced it at their leisure, now they are on their heels.

What Can We Do In Today’s Age?

No question, communications and collaboration technologies and other advancements have made it able to shorten go to market strategies, product development timelines, making it critical for companies to “think on their feet” and be flexible and reactive. However, getting rid of strategic planning is the wrong thing to do.

When I think of strategic planning, I think of my time spent at Kraft Food’s strategy department, helping them put together their strategic plan presentations, a collection of industry trends and predictions, and how they should react. These were annual things. Annual is no longer good enough. The Wall Street Journal article pointed to companies reviewing their budget monthly rather than annually, which is a step in the right direction. My other suggestions to improve strategic planning include:

• shortening the strategic planning “cycle” – reduce the steps needed to develop and implement a strategic plan. consider communicating it further down the line, rather than making management translate it
• allowing smaller circles farther down the ladder to develop their own plans – this is not only good practice, it can help underscore some of the challenges associated with strategic planning. Do all strategic plans have to come down from “on high”?
• go iterative – a strategic plan shouldn’t be a “3-year plan” in my opinion. Why can’t you make an open-ended plan, which you continue to work on an focus on, dropping parts and adding to parts as you go along? Look at print marketing versus web marketing today. In the “old days” of print marketing, everything had to get approved and go through the proper channels, while today’s web marketing aims to say more of “its good enough for now, at least better than it was before, and we can continue to improve upon it”
• trust your employees – what does it say when all ideas or plans or projects have to get approved 2-3 levels up the ladder, to make sure this is priority and fits in with the “plan”? It makes it awfully tough to execute, and sucks a lot of wind out of enthusiastic employees who may have some great ideas. Is your workforce that terrible, that you can’t trust your people to make smart decisions at least most of the time? If you don’t, maybe you need to have a long talk with your HR department about the recruiting and hiring process.
• grant decision-making and purchasing power further down the ladder – it seems like these days, smaller and smaller purchases need to go through lengthy and complicated approval processes. The same goes for other minor decisions. Is this all in the name of “risk management” or “fiscal discipline”? What’s the risk of failure, is it really worth the risk of encouraging employees to continue to do things the old way, and not even try to think about new solutions to problems, and ways to react to unique opportunities?

The scanner was much better than the Babies R’ Us one, with a color display and touchscreen! It seems weird that with the advanced smartphone technology that seems to be available for the cheap out there, some registry scanners can be so ancient. We noticed this as we were registering for our wedding as well. I wonder why more isn’t invested into making the registry process better over time? I know that with technology know, registries can be updated on the fly to reflect what is purchased, and you can check and edit it online, but more could be done to improve the actual process of registering.

The scanner we got was a little confusing, and the touchscreen reminded me of the touchscreens I’d see in a museum in the early 90′s, not accurate to the touch, and you had to touch the screen many times to make it respond.

I’m still in awe of all of the gear we need to get for this baby, and I was a little shocked to find the selection of strollers, swings, and other hardware to be so lacking. Granted, I know that they aren’t a baby store per se, but with the huge retail spaces they have, they can’t devote more space to it? It looked like there wasn’t much care put into the stocking of inventory or the display units, but I guess, why would they? In Minnesota, you have to register at Target for your wedding and baby stuff. Some people are unwilling or unable to get to a Babies ‘R’ Us before a baby shower, or to a Macy’s before the wedding, so Target presents a great convenient option, that is available to everyone.

The selection for wedding stuff (housewares, etc.) was great, but the baby stuff fell short, for the most part. That’s why we love Amazon, and would probably only register there if we could, the selection is unmatched, its open 24×7, and the ambience is always acceptable.

Pica Projectors

I believe mini, or “pica” projectors, will be the next must-have feature for smartphones. The ability to project a presentation on the fly, or share photos and graphs without having to lug around a laptop, would be greatly valuable for many consumers.
Although there are some pica projectors available on the market, Microsoft should devote resources into developing a great pica projector that is embedded into the phone, and doesn’t suck the life out of the battery, which is why I’m guessing more haven’t been integrated into smartphones yet.

A transformative music experience

With growing dissatisfaction with iTunes as a music marketplace, Microsoft could concentrate on providing a great music experience. Although Real Networks provides a music streaming experience, it falls short by not supporting certain devices, and lacking in selection. Pandora, Last.FM, and others provide more selection, but they are really “music discovery engines”, in that you put it the artists you like, and it won’t necessarily let you play those artists, or choose what songs you can play.
Microsoft could really differentiate themselves by providing a subscription-based music service. Services like this exist with Spotify, which isn’t available in the United States, only overseas, and MOG seems promising, but I haven’t tried it out, since it doesn’t have an iPhone application (yeah, personal disclosure, I have an iPhone).

These are just two quick things that could be done to increase interest in the Zune phone, what do you think? With my iPhone, there are so many little things that aren’t possible for one reason or another, do you think they could come up with something interesting?

Registering

So much of the registering and research we’ve done is online, but we have actually gone to Babies R’ Us in Richfield to register. I must say I was sorely disappointed by retail experience there. The cavernous warehouse feel was contrasted by the outrageous prices! There is truly a disconnect there, with the terrible lighting and merchandise presentation, I was expecting rock-bottom prices, but this was not the case.

In addition, all of the things we registered for showed up with a quantity of two in our registry! Not what we wanted, and my wife had a tough time going through all of the things we registered for and fix them on the web registry site. And now, with the clunky web interface coupled with the scanner registering all items with a quantity of two, we really need to go through and make sure all of the items were added. Now, we’ve lost trust in them, and I feel they don’t value our time, since we spent 2-3 hours in their store, which should have been more enjoyable, but it sure wasn’t.

Its amazing that a store like this isn’t laser-focused on the registry experience. Isn’t that where most of the purchases and business comes from? I would think so, especially with the big-ticket (and presumably, high-margin) items, so I’m confused why they aren’t dedicated to having the best possible experience, perhaps their financial issues are to blame? Either way, hopefully our Target baby registry experience will go more smoothly.

The perfect time for marketing, so what’s wrong?

From attending events at the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association, speakers have remarked at how some consumer products companies don’t really have their eye on the ball in terms of targeting users that are having major life events like weddings and first children. I’m on Twitter, and posting things to Twitter and Facebook about the fact that we’re having a baby, and have yet to hear from any baby products manufacturers.

What gives?

Maybe this is just a sign on the new “pull” over the old “push” marketing? I’m not sure, but it seems odd we aren’t being courted more, in spite of all of the product research we are doing.

That’s right, business is really a collection of stories. Think about it. Therefore, its probably the most effective way of marketing your product or service, but many marketing materials are lacking in stories and storytelling. Why is this?

Where I work, I’ve been beating the drum on making more stories out of our successes, mainly doing more case studies on customers who had a problem, and how we fixed that problem with a solution we provided. Its a difficult process, but something I plan on focusing on in the future.

Founding of the company

There is always a story to be told about the founders, the need they saw, and how they developed a product or service to meet that need. If you are in search of capital or funding, what really gets the company funded isn’t your made projections of revenue 5 years out, what really sells the bankers/VCs/friends and family is a compelling story more than anything else.

The prevalence of stories in business literature

Go through your Inc. magazine, Fast Company, Forbes, etc. and what do  you see? Although there are a number of charts, graphs and figures throughout the company, they really are filled with stories. Stories of companies, stories of founders, stories of business challenges, stories of customers, stories of success.

The same goes for where I’m working on my MBA at the University of St. Thomas – Opus School of Business. The Harvard Business Case Studies are stories, and even the textbooks are smattered with a number of stories, how the particular concepts outlined in the text can be related to what happened with a specific business.

Face it marketers, prospects don’t care about your product

I think something all marketers need to realize is that potential customers almost always could care less about your product or service. Are they buying what you’re selling? If they are, they have already identified a need and probably already have a consideration set in mind. In many cases, if you are lucky enough to find a consumer who is actually buying what you are selling, you are already behind, because someone else, through their marketing and sales, have set the rules of the game, and set them to their advantage.

Prospects don’t care about your features or functions

They don’t. I think marketers know this, but we continue to jam our marketing materials full of them, because its easy, and we want to depend on salespeople to turn these features and functions into benefits for the particular prospects they are in discussions with.

Features and functions have a place

They do, but its oftentimes well into the engagement. As marketers, I believe we need to develop more compelling stories for prospects. What do customers read in their free time for the most part? Stories, fiction, novels, things they can relate to. The laundry list of features and functionality that we as marketers put out is so opposite of what they oftentimes consume in their free time, how can we put all this effort into creating these materials and this content, knowing that it will probably never get written?

Writers of textbooks for schools, including college textbooks, have seen the writing on the wall for some time now, and choose to use bolded words and bullet points for important concepts and principles.

Why is it so hard?

Although I’ve been pushing hard to do  many more case studies, its been difficult. Looking at other marketers, it appears that they have some customer case studies, but its far from a focus. Many of the case studies appear to be glorified product brochures. I believe to increase the effectiveness of these case studies, we need to make them stories, with a setup, confrontation, and resolution.

Pushing the story beyond customer case studies

We can apply this concept of storytelling well beyond our standard customer case studies, can’t we? Marketers can work on developing a story piece that outlines how and why the company was founded, more about the founders, what meets did they see were unmet, and what did they do about it? Extend this beyond the founding of the company, and think about new products and services that are developed, think about companies that are acquired, and other major events. Don’t these deserve their own stories?

WordPress automatic update didn’t work because I needed to update my MySQL Database. I tried to follow the directions at http://help.godaddy.com/article/5745? after contacting GoDaddy customer support. I backed up my old MySQL 4.0 database successfully, created a new MySQL 5.0 database, and then tried to recover the 5.0 database with the 4.0 backup, as specified in the instructions. That led to a blank screen when trying to access the admin module, no php error, no nothing. I also tried upgrading via GoDaddy’s Website tonight, but then I got to php errors saying I was missing files.

I finally did it right with the following steps:

1. Backed up old MySQL 4.0 database
2. Created a MySQL 5.0 database
3. Restored the MySQL 5.0 database with the MySQL 4.0 database backup
4. Downloaded all site files to my local drive
5. Went into My Application in the GoDaddy website tonight, and selected to uninstall WordPress (you can do it when you click on install details)
6. After uninstall was complete and I didn’t have any applications in “My Applications”, I installed WordPress again.
7. I tried getting into the WordPress admin site using the credentials I supplied to GoDaddy Website Tonight.
8. Then I had three databases, the one I created when I installed WordPress via GoDaddy Website Tonight, the old MySQL 4.0 database, and the new MySQL 5.0 database that was restored using the MySQL 4.0 database backup.
9. After install was complete, I download the wp-config.php file and edited it with the information on my MySQL 5.0 database that was restored using the old MySQL 4.0 backup file, and then uploaded it again.
10. Then I refreshed the WordPress Admin site, and was prompted to update my database, I just followed the prompts to update the database and get back into the Admin site.
11. Now I can see my old posts, but I’m having issues with my Plugins and Themes. By uploading wp-content/themes, and wp-content/plugins, I was able to see the themes and plugins I wanted to use, so I just had to go through and activate the plugins again.
12. Then I had to go through and update my permalink structure for some reason, this may have been related to the theme I edited, but its worth troubleshooting links and site functionality to make sure everything works okay.

In no way am I advocating using this method to update your WordPress if you have GoDaddy hosting. Try following the directions provided by GoDaddy at correctly  and carefully before you resort to the hackneyed nonsense I had to go through to get my site up and running.

This was a great reminder that when you are doing these big upgrades to your website, always make a local database backup and backup your files. I also noticed something about being able to import a WordPress using a WXP file, I’ll be looking into that ASAP. Now I’m working on the last step, and deleting the two databases that I don’t need anymore. Hopefully this helps out someone that is desperate.

The internet has gone mainstream

The “old days” of searching for information on topics such as the Loch Ness monster have given way to looking for old friends on Facebook most of the time. Obviously, the internet is no longer the sole domain of “techies” or even intellectuals. Although people still go on the web to research products, concepts, and ideas; more and more they are going on to check on what their friends are up to. This is all because, humans are ultimately, social creatures. Although there are obviously exceptions, if most had their choice, they would be finding out how they could relate and communicate with their friends better, rather than researching old episodes of Star Trek.

People are filtering before they reach the search engine

People are using more specialized search engines to find what they want. The major search engines can still be “gamed”, but internet users are getting smarter at taking note of what site they are visiting before they click the link. I know for specialized searches, I’m more likely to use specialized “search engines” like Gamespot if I am looking for video game information, Metacritic if I am looking for reviews, Amazon if I am researching music, or Wikipedia if I need a top-level overview of a topic. For these specific searches, why would I go to a general search engine? I’m used to the interface and results I’ll receive from these search engines, and I’m assuming that many others are doing the same.

There are other ways to find new information

Content discovery and information seeking used to be the sole domain of the search engine. You have a crazy idea or want to find out more about something, you would go to a search engine, type in a search term and click “Go” to find out more about the subject you want to know about. Now that mainstream media sites have committed fully to the internet as a viable media outlet, and other technologies like Twitter and RSS exist, there are many other ways to collect yourself with users, and leverage other ways to discover content that is geared towards your interests.

Is Search Not Relevant Anymore?

Not necessarily, but in my opinion, its not as relevant as it used to be. We need to figure out unique ways for our users to get and stay engaged, and stick around, and pass the word on. SEM and SEO will still be valuable, but as consumers get more internet-saavy, they will probably be more hesitant to visit sites they aren’t familiar with unless they are looking for something extremely specific.

All this comes around to the same basic principle, that interactive marketers need to focus on their users. Think about what your target market needs, and how you can deliver it. The more highly-educated and internet-knowledgeable your audience is, the more you need to focus on them instead of black- (or white-) hat SEO techniques to drive traffic.

1. Use correct grammar and punctuation.

I couldn’t believe how many of the responses had spelling and grammatical errors. I posted an ad stressing how important it was to have the job done right, so the chances I would use a someone who couldn’t even write an email without speling and grammar errors are virtually nil. Like I said, the information I had to choose between respondents was very limited, so why would you screw up the little chance you had to make an impression?

2. Don’t respond if you can’t meet the price.

For all of the Craigslist ads we’ve posted for work, we’ve had numerous people offer to do the job for less. So, if you are quoting a price higher than what was posted, include a comment that you think the price offered was a little high, and you were worried they wouldn’t get any respondents, and what you think would be a fair price.  Otherwise, if you are quoting a price higher than the one posted, include a good reason (you have 35 years of experience, you’ve won awards, you will go above and beyond what the ad requested, etc.).

3. Read the ad before responding.

I had a few people ask details, such as what the size of the holes were, that were already in the ad. I did not respond to those ads. If you are too sloppy to read the ad you are responding to, I don’t want you fixing my house.

4. Be careful when clarifying questions.

I took a decent amount of time writing the ad, to make sure I was on the right page with the respondent from the start. I outlined who would pay for materials (them), and provided as much information as I could. I had plenty of people responding with various questions, which I didn’t feel like answering, because there were plenty of people responding, that weren’t asking questions. To clarify, many of the questions asked details like, “what is the texture of the walls?” I can understand asking these questions if my ad read something like “looking for someone to fix two holes in my walls”, but not if its a detailed post. Sometimes you need to take calculated risks, and avoid asking inconsequential questions.

5. Have a website (or Facebook link, or LinkedIn link, or something).

So, trying to make a decision based on limited information is hard, and worrying, since the person needs to come into my house, I wanted some sort of assurance. I’m not expecting anyone to get their own domain, maybe just setup a blog at blogger.com, or Squidoo, post a few pages and some information about yourself. Show your customers that you have done some work in the past, and remove some of the doubts a potential customer would have in their head about you. I would think even a Facebook or LinkedIn profile would at least show people that you are at least normal enough to have Facebook friends.

So, that’s most of what I was able to learn from my Craigslist encounter. Although I picked someone without a website, I did pick someone with a contractors number that started up. It was difficult and a bit overwhelming to pick one out of the 40+ respondents I had, based on the fact that most of the responses were 2-line emails. Hopefully this helps out some of the others who are trying to get gigs from Craigslist.