Author: animeshjmathur

Prioritizing the top 2 or 3 activities

Affirmative action, ideal customer, Marketing, prioritizing, Product Management, segmentation, single target market

A lot of self help books will talk about identifying the top 3 issues to be handled the next day and listing them.

The 80/20 rule is fractal, which simply means there’s an 80/20 within an 80/20. So while 20% of the causes are responsible for 80% of the problems, 64% of the problems are caused by just 4%.

Now prioritizing your day or prioritizing your marketing plan has the same basic fundamental to it. The issue is not whether the number is 3 or the number is 2 or 1. The issue is about being able to identify those key items within your next day plan or your marketing plan which will be responsible for helping you get 80% of the way.

The value is always in the hinges (20%) which help you move large doors (80%) with very little effort.

Its about utilising the 20% creative part – the subject line of your email as an example – which if done right can get the remaining part of your email campaign successful. Its not that the process of getting the emails sent is not important, but once the subject line is well crafted and gets responses, then the process of sending mails can be automated.

Within this 20% however if I look at it, identifying the right list/database/market segment, the 4% will get you more than 60% of the way, because then you can build your message accordingly better, tighter etc. Segmenting or finding a niche is all about finding the most attractive, most responsive set of clients which will help you get your product or service faster.

Not all tasks are built alike. I still get caught up in minutiae and sometimes end up spending a whole day just on them. But to come back to the self help book analogy, if you have prioritized your top tasks in your plan in advance and you STICK to them, you should be able to hit most of your goals.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Reference Guides

books, Frameworks, Questions, Reference Guides

While I write about my opinions on a lot of topics and give my view points on how to solve them, I myself end up in one spot or another every now and then.

As Joe Polish says – and I paraphrase it here – as you climb up the challenges take up more difficult formats – and you need to handle them , learn from them and move higher.

I have found books to be my source of support for the different kinds of challenges that get thrown my way. I have shared the different books I read from time to time. I also end up taking a speed reading course to help me increase the speed of my ability to read.

But sometimes you come across a book which you can keep going back to as a reference guide. It lays out the framework easily and then also puts the tools in your hand to ensure you get to use the stuff. When I was in school we had an English grammar book by Wren & Martin. I used that book from grade 5 to grade 10 for all my exercises. But I kept using that book even later as a reference to ensure I could check out, when I had a query related to English grammar. I even bought that book for my son when he was in school and I still have that copy with me.

In physics we had Resnik and Haliday which had such a well written basis that I took a liking to physics only because of that book. Marketing of course has been Philip Kotler.

Recently I have been mentioning about this book – The Road Less Stupid by Keith Cunnigham. Its one of those books which I have reread multiple times. First it was end – to – end , subsequently it has been specific topics. But the book really helps you THINK.

I have written earlier about focused time and also shared with you the links to Dean Jackson’s videos on how to focus etc. Once you do that and you want to actually move forward, onto figuring out root cause issues and the right questioning frameworks to solving the right problems, then this is a reference guide. I would highly recommend you read this book in case your job is to figure out solutions everyday.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Calling out the elephant in the room – Assumptions -3

arrogance, Assumptions, ego, Leadership, Marketing, Product Management

Last 2 posts I had written on listing out the assumptions about your marketing plan or product management plan. I have gone into quite a bit of detail there.

I had no plans for writing a third post for this topic. I subscribe to the newsletter Knowledge@Wharton. I was surprised when I got the newsletter in the email today. The headline of the first item was…..Want to Become a better leader? Question your assumptions

It’s an article where the Dean at Wharton Erika James spoke with author and professor at Wharton Adam Grant on his new book Think Again; The Power of Knowing What you Don’t Know . As per the article , this book is about why executives should reconsider their approaches to manage people….

You can read the full article here.

Not listing out the assumptions for marketing I mentioned was a sign of either arrogance or ego or you just being too naive. Depending on the stage in my career I have been all the 3.

But after reading this I realized that what I thought was a good practice for marketing is also a good practice for leadership. Like in marketing if you let your arrogance or ego come in the way, so in leadership if you can’t see and accept that some assumptions that you are making can defeat your purpose then you are in a bad spot.

I haven’t read this book yet, but just the fact that this came up was very serendipitous. I am definitely going to be buying the book to look at how he thinks on the assumptions for leadership.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Calling out the elephant in the room – Assumptions – 2

arrogance, Assumptions, B2B, Business, ego, Marketing

For a background to this post, I would suggest you have a look at the fist part of the topic here

Not many know that the digital camera was first created by a team in Kodak. Whether you call it arrogance on the part of the managers at Kodak, who assumed that no one would want to buy such an expensive camera. What was assumed was that the technology would make it unviable for most folks to afford the camera.

No one thought that technology was following Moore’s law, where the power of the chip was roughly doubling every 18 odd months. A similar thing happened at Xerox who actually had designed the “mouse” long before it became a standard accessory. But they never moved forward on it.

It is said , the Swiss already knew about battery powered watches, much before the Japanese, but because they prided themselves on their engineering and movement, they never bothered taking a patent. Suddenly the Japanese were all over the place with watches leaving the Swiss, gasping for breadth. Again technology assumptions can go wrong very badly.

Brainstorming on the assumptions you are making and listing them, gets you grounded to think better. Also its a better idea to ask an outsider to check out your assumptions.

In marketing, because you are dealing with human perceptions, understanding and accounting for the assumptions can help you avoid expensive mistakes. In B2B scenarios where there are multiple people involved in a decision and there’s general inertia, not accounting for these assumptions can be fatal.. Its a good idea to keep asking ‘what else are we assuming”.

Like assuming that the person on the production line will easily adopt the new technology you are bringing in via the CIO and /or the CFO. More IT projects have failed because of these faulty assumptions than the problem with the technology itself.

Especially when you are making the marketing or sales plan at the beginning of the year, if you don’t account for these assumptions, very soon when you hit the road, all your plans will fall flat.

Don’t make the mistakes that I have done. Whenever you make a plan list out all the assumptions and make everyone aware about them so that collective wisdom can find a better solution.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!