7 Work Survival Tips for 2013

"I'm terrible at todo lists. I write things down in a notebook but nothing ever happens with my notes..."
"When I'm juggling lots of things at work I  sleep badly..."
"I have hundreds of emails in my inbox. I've no real idea of what lies in there, but if it's important they'll come back..."
"I have my best ideas in the most inconvenient places, at the most inconvenient times..."
"I spend too much energy thinking about today's challenge and have little energy left to think about the things that really matter to me..."
"When work is really busy I forget to pick up the milk..."

Any of these sound familiar? If so, please read on. I was in the same place a while ago. I'd struggled for years with writing todo lists on scraps of paper, in special books, or even capturing the lists digitally. Then I stumbled across an approach called Getting Things Done (often called simply GTD) developed by David Allen and examined in his book. This approach has helped become more productive in my work, but has also had several unexpected consequences - it has reduced my stress levels, helped me sleep better, and perhaps even helped me become a slightly better husband/father. Perhaps it can help you too..

I'm constantly surprised at how few people are aware of GTD as there is nothing else I've come across that helps me deal with the multitude of things that occupy one's phsyche. Personally I think this is something that should be taught at school as it is a life skill that most of us could do with learning and practicing from an early age. Perhaps everyone else is simply more organised than I am...

GTD Workflow. Taken from http://www.toodledo.com/info/gtd.php

The core workflow  of GTD is very straightforward, and is summarised well  in this page from Toodledo. It starts with collecting all the things that occupy your attention (aka "Stuff") into a single collection point.
Then there is a step to decide what to do with each piece of stuff - is it a task that needs to be actioned, or can it be binned, filed away for later reference, or stored for consideration at some point in the future? The tasks themselves will then need to separated into tasks that will take only a couple of minutes to complete (in which  case, just get on and do them rather than have them clog up your system) and tasks that you choose to do next, or at a specific time in the future, or tasks that need something else to happen first before you can execute (eg waiting for a colleague to provide some information).
Of course, sooner or later you have to get on and perform some work - GTD doesn't magic any of this away for you! There is one final aspect that is the glue that holds the GTD approach together. This is termed the weekly review - a review of all your various lists to ensure it is fresh and that nothing is falling through the cracks, and to identify any changing priorities.

I've been a student of GTD for 4 or 5 years now at different levels of depth. One of the good things is that you can apply the methodology in as straightforward or sophisticated way as you want/need, and it is totally independent of the technology that you choose to use - indeed it can be implemented in paper if that is your preferred tool (it isn't mine!).

I'll cover my specific GTD setup in a future post, but as with so many things, the technology is not the most important thing - and is very much a personal choice. It's the method that's important - and even that needs to be able to be tuned to the way that works best for you.

Through may study and practice of GTD there are a number of things I've learned that I'd like to pass on to you - if it encourages you to explore just a little more, then please let me know.

1. You've got to have a system

You've got to have a system - as Harry Hill used to say. When you have a single system that you trust that can be used to manage the workflow of all you stuff (both home and work related) then it becomes a close friend that you can depend upon. Note that I say it can be used for home-related activities as well as work. I had never considered "Fix the bedroom blind" as a todo list item or "Grow Vegetables" as a project, but they are. And through the concept of contexts, GTD allows me to keep all of my activities in one workflow, while having the ability to only present to me the activities that are relevant to the context or mode that I am in - be that in the office, at home, out shopping etc. Curiously some of the greatest benefits have been at home where it has allowed me to increase the odds of completing the necessary chores and maintenance tasks around the home.

One challenge with ideas is that they don't all occur when you have a pad and pencil in front of you. One of the core principles of GTD is to collect all your stuff into a single collection point. So part of the answer here is to always have a piece of paper at hand wherever you are. Thus I have small notepads in my suits, by my bed, in my car etc. Increasingly these are being replaced by technology (usually my iPhone/iPad so that I can input directly into my system. But the approach of capturing the idea into your system so that you can forget about it is immensely powerful and a major stressbuster.

2. Processing and Doing are Not the Same

For many of us, the major source of potential tasks is our email. Many of us our email inbox as a todo list. I believe this is a mistake for 3 reasons:

1. Not ALL your tasks come via email
2. You spend too much time being distracted by the latest incoming mail, rather than taking control of what YOU wish to accomplish
3. You are missing the joyful feeling that comes from having an empty email inbox

I have now learned to separate Processing from Doing. When I am processing email I simply ask myself whether there is an action required this mail, or whether it should be filed/binned. Only if the item can be completed in a minute or two will I actually do it. That way I can process my email very quickly and get out of my inbox quickly. Again - it helps me feel in control.

3. Adieu to Due Dates

Most convention action list methodologies assign a due date to every action. The trouble with this is that you spend an inordinate amount of time resetting due dates. As Douglas Adams said "I love deadlines. I like like wooshing sound they make as they fly by!" 

In reality most things in your todo list that are "overdue" really aren't. They are merely a result of you imposing unreaslistic expectations on yourself regarding what you might achieve in a day - and of not taking account of your energy levels, how long tasks will actually take, unscheduled interruptions etc. Of course some things have a clear deadline (Christmas is always December 25th) but otherwise don't bother. It frees you up to celebrate what you've achieved rather than beat yourself up about what you havent't. 

4. Keep things Moving with Projects

The GTD definition of a project is simple - anything that requires more than one step to be completed. I have always struggled with use of projects as opposed to actions, but finally think I am making progress. For me I've slightly revised my definition to be anything that I can usefully ask myself the question "What's the next action?". A useful tip I've learned is to define the project title in terms of the end state or goal. Therefore projects become "Secure a contract with client X", "Achieve 100 visitors a day to my website", "Provide vegetables for every month of the year". Projects can be as tight or lofty as you wish :- New Year Resolutions, Ambitions, Habits you wish to kick/develop - all these can be viable project candidates.

5. Get Yourself an Elephant

An Elephant never forgets -it turns out there is a lot of truth in the old saying. But if you find that carrying an elephant around with you is a little inconvenient, then perhaps opt for a computer. Whatever you do, don't rely on your brain. Don't get me wrong, the human brain is a fantastic thing that we understand next to nothing about (BTW - read David Eagleman's Incognito if you want a cracking read on how little we know about brain function). But if we task it with trying to remember multiple different things it struggles. Studies show that it has difficulty beyond two tasks, so why give yourself that stress.

There's no getting away from it - computers are great at remembering things. And as we increasingly adopt Cloud-based applications, it becomes easy to access the things we need from a smartphone in your pocket. Thats's why I increasingly rely on computers to store stuff I need to remember and to do - so another worry is dealt with. At the very least - it's a good backup strategy for your brain!

6. Get Out of Your Inbox

Have you noticed that declaring how many unread emails you have seems to have become a chestbeating macho exercise these days? If it somehow empowers you to display how out of control you are, then I'm pleased for you. For me it has always been a potential cause of stress. And when I look at my inbox and see nothing there I feel lighter and more carefree!

The secret is simple. Be clear about what your inbox is and isn't. It is not a workstack - it's simply a collection of potential attention-grabbers. Email is not work - although it may include work. It may also include junk, information to be stored, etc. It needs to be processed - not lived in. I find if I stay stuck in my email inbox for extended periods it's like asking to have your focus distracted from the work that you want to be doing. So turn off your new email alerts, and process your email no more than a couple of times a day - then get back to work.

While on the subject of email, let me tell you what I've learned about mail folders. I've learned not to bother. Rather than file things in multiple email folders, I now tend to store anything I might want to refer to in the future within a single folder/archive. Most email clients (I happen to use GMail these days) have good search capabilities that are quicker at finding stuff than I am by rooting through individual folders.

7. Get Ready for the weekend with a Weekly Review

Any machine needs regular maintenance. In GTD this is the function of the weekly review. It's a simple, structured meeting with myself where I clean up my system - glance over what I've achieved, what I want to accomplish in the next few days, reclassify items that have become more/less important for me, identify a few new things to get done, etc. Personally I like to do this at the end of the week on a Friday afternoon so that I can clear my head for the weekend and know that I'll be ready to pick things up again on Monday.

I have also discovered that when I'm feeling out of control it's often because I have skipped a weekly review. It's always an hour well spent that leaves me feeling more relaxed.

I hope this article has stimulated you to explore the Getting Things Done approach and to experiment with it. It's not for everyone - it assumes that you want to get a llittle more control back into your life, and it seems to me that not everybody puts a priority on that.

But what will you do with the time and energy that you wrestle back? More work or something else? Now there is an interesting question...

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Lessons from the (Marketing) Garden: Make a Plan!

Over the Christmas break, in between the sprouts and mince pies, I started to think about my vegetable plot at the bottom of my garden. Those who know me well will know that I'm a keen gardener - I say keen rather than good, since I garden with more enthusiasm than competence!

This time of year that's not much that you can do outside and the ridiculously soggy weather has made it very challenging. However I did manage to turn the compost heap and clear a couple of raised beds before being pulled back indoors by the magnetic attraction of cold turkey and chrain sandwiches.  

However it's useful to a have a period of relative inactivity between seasons as it provides an opportunity to pause and reflect on last year's efforts and plan forward for the year ahead. So rather than dive straight into planting seeds to early (they'd only rot at the moment in any case) I spent a happy day thinking about what to plant in each of my raised beds and ordering seeds from a couple of websites for delivery over the weeks ahead. Being a technologist at heart - I snapped my plot with my iPhone, labelled the beds using Skitch and clipped the web pages of what I'd ordered into Evernote. That way I'll be able to keep a record of how the year progresses, along with links the the information found on the back of seed packets regarding care after sowing (usually I find the packets become illegible after a few weeks in the greenhouse).

But now I have a garden plan for 2013. But it's only a plan. One of the most memorable quotes I heard last year (via  +Bob Apollo) came from 19th century Prussian Field Marshal von Moltke - "No plan survives first contact with the enemy". So we'll shortly deploy cloches, nematodes and compost and revise the plan as the year progresses - or discard it altogether. But for a brief moment I feel prepared.

When I first started in B2B marketing, the marketers year seemed a little more seasonal (and the summers were warmer!). December and January were relatively quiet and we used the time to write plans and spend time swapping ideas with our colleagues. But these days the pace appears to be unrelenting - this "always on" world seems to demand that we're constantly doing something. As a result we do far to little thinking, reflecting and planning and I'm convinced our the quality of our marketing (not to mention our energy levels) suffer.

So instead of wasting too much time reading everyone's technology and marketing predictions for 2013, step away from the laptop/tablet for a little while and do some thinking about what you want to achieve. I guarantee you'll feel better - and if you are already too out-of-control to plan, then perhaps I can do a little thinking for you...

BTW - in case your interested here's the Garden plan:

Bed1: Peas, Lettuce

Bed2: Parsnip, Rocket, Broad Bean

Bed3: Alpine Strawberries, Chard

Bed4: Broccoli (purple) and Calabrese

Bed5 & 6: Cut Flowers

Bed7: Cabbage, Cauliflower, Pak Choi

Bed8: Asparagus, Strawberry

Bed9: Raspberry, Gooseberry, Currants

Bed10: Courgette, Sweetcorn, Spinach

Greenhouse: Tomato

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5 Steps towards Customer Intimacy through Marketing Data

All of a sudden it's very trendy to talk about data and analytics. Of course there's very good reasons for this - the data that you capture potentialy provide an enormous amount of insight about a client's actual and likely behaviour. However most of us are failing to capitalise on this potential.

Whilst it's very easy to get excited by the latest software technologies that promise to revolutionise our marketing worlds, a simple truth remains: Unless you focus on the basics of your marketing data, no end of automation or predictive analysis is going to deliver the improved results you have promised.

The bad news is that your data is probably in something of a mess. The good news is that most of your competitors data is in a similarly poor state. It simply hasn't been a focus area for marketers until relatively recently - but now, as our industry re-learns that marketing is all about serving customers, we are starting to revisit what we can learn from the signals that our clients and prospects are already providing. And they do this every time they engage with us, talk about us, buy from us, ignore us or even complain about us.

Last week I participated in Marketing's B2B Marketing Transformation conference in Hatton Garden, London, along with some excellent speakers from Google, Dell and SimplyBusiness to name three.
I outlined a 5 step approach to getting your arms around your marketing data:

1. Capture the Right Stuff

It starts with capturing the data that will help you serve your clients better. Are you gathering insight about their interests, the people who influence them, the places they look for insight?

And if you are currently looking to identify new strategic investment areas for next year, you had better ensure that the data that you are capturing will help support that strategy. It is also important to have a good dialogue with the sales function so that you can minimise the amount of useful data that is being recorded on individual laptops rather than being shared for the common good. The same applies to external list purchases - you should never buy in a new list without figuring out how you are going to integrate it with the rest of the data that you have.

2. Organise it to be Useful

In order to be usable for analyis or outbound marketing activity, you will need to structure the data so that you minimise the amount of unnecessary variation. Creating a data dictionary is a good place to start to see the scale of the problem. This is simply a table of all the available fields along with all the potential values for each field. Then you can start to introduce standardised fields for key areas such as job roles, territory assignments, country etc. For example, you may want to group Marketing director, VP Marketing, CMO, and Head of Marketing all under a single job role of "Marketing Leader".

Remember - it's an order of magnitude less expensive to capture data correctly at the entry point than to resolve and correct later. Examine your forms and other capture points - ensure that you use dropdown menus to minimise data capture errors/variance and use mandatory fields if there are specific fields that you will need later on for targeting and analysis. All this would be second nature to a systems person - but most marketers today do not have any background in systems.

Increasingly people are starting to look at Social Signon systems as way to ensure that (normally correct) information from LinkedIn etc is shared, without the need to present further forms. After all, 88% of us admit to having deliberately submitted false information into a contact form - I guess the other 12% just don't admit it!

3. Fill in the Gaps

The client is not the only source of information - and we all have a loathing of long contact forms. We can supplement the data we've gathered with information from 3rd party sources such as D&B, Experian or Jigsaw.

Furthermore, integrating with data from social streams is an emerging area of marketing data enrichment. And don't ignore any opportunities to augment your data with useful insights from your customer service systems or from your channel partners.

4. Get Creative

In my corporate career, I was frustrated that the dialogue between the marketing program teams and the data analysts was only ever along the lines of "Give me a list of all the IT Directors in the Finance Industry". Too late and too dull.

Instead of basing our outbound campaigns purely on demographic and firmographic data, you will get much greater ROI if you combine that with behavioural insight - have they declared specific interests via some form of  a preference centre; or have they already displayed an interest in the particular topic by their engagement in a previous activity? The big learning I took away from those experiences was that it's never to early to involve the data analysts in the campaign planning process - you will almost certainly make your campaigns more effective and less wasteful.

5. Keep it Clean!

In an ideal world you would be able to go to a dashboard that gives you the key metrics around the health of your marketing data whenever you choose to view it. However in my experience most people don't have this luxury yet (although it is a feature of several marketing automation platforms). Therefore some element of a database audit is required. Sound scary? It really isn't. It starts with looking at the completeness of key data fields (ie is there data in them or not?) and then looking at the validity of that data (ie is the data any good or are the name fields full of "Micky Mouse"?)

For many, an audit might be the first place to start on your marketing database journey of discovery - at least it will inform where you have the greatest challenges.

And how often should you be auditing your data? Ideally it should be a constant part of your management system, but at the very least it should be done whenever there is a significant change in the business - eg a change in strategy, an acquisition of another company, a change in the pattern of marketing results, or a significant spike in opt-outs.

Love your Data in 2013

The bottom line is that we are all trying to get closer to our customers. This means that we need to looking more closely at the data that we have about them, and developing our skills to turn that into analysis and insight and ultimately revenue.

The full presentation from the conference is below. What's your data resolution for 2013?

Leveraging your marketing data from Pete Jakob

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Top Tip: Don't Deploy Marketing Automation (yet)!

I had a great day at the eConsultancy Funnel yesterday at the Emirates stadium. There were some really good presentations (Michael Volpe from Hubspot and Bob Apollo from Inflexion Point were my personal favourites), a few rather repetitious and dull ones (I know having organised events myself that getting speakers to stick to a brief is always a significant challenge). But it was also a great forum to catch up with a whole bunch of colleagues from across the industry. The eConsultancy folks are to be congratulated on attracting a really strong audience and delivering a good day.

However as I talked to more and more people a few things seemed to become increasingly apparent:

1. There are not as many companies in the UK that have actually deployed Marketing Automation as the software vendors would have us believe
2. The vast majority who have deployed are typically using it for outbound email and perhaps a little nurturing. Consequently I would wager that the ROI is not yet what was committed to the board

But why is this? I think a typical Marketing Automation deployment seems to goes through a buyer's journey  something like this:

• A leader in the client recognises that marketing results are not what they could be. He/she visits a few events and hears lots of buzz around automation, nurturing, progressive profiling, content marketing etc
• He gets excited and starts researching Automation vendors - the website says that you can deploy more effective campaigns within 90 days. So far so good.
• He takes a case to the board for investment and gets approval
• He begins training and deployment
• With a lot of energy and effort the team gets the first "automated" campaigns out of the door. Perhaps even within 90 days - Success!!

Then the questions and challenges start:

• The CFO asks for figures on ROI improvement
• The first email campaigns do not get the anticipated results
• There isn't sufficient content to support more than a couple of nurture streams
• The sales team still complain about the poor leads from marketing

Sound familiar? It's a story I heard countless times yesterday...
I would argue that there is far better approach than this. In fact it's the approach that I took when I was leading IBM's UK marketing transformation. It's not rocket science:

• If your current marketing approach isn't working, why on earth would you choose to automate it?
• On its own, marketing automation software will not fix your marketing deficiencies - it will only expose them further
• Prioritise and fix your biggest marketing shortcomings before going to the board to ask for new SW investments. In my experience there will be plenty to improve around data, content, process, skills  or alignment - or maybe all of these if you're really lucky!
• Dedicate some resource in the team to focus on identifying and closing these gaps. However, one of the greatest challenges in most marketing teams is that everyone is working so hard executing activity that nobody has the time to invest in proper thinking. So perhaps seek help from an external party (of course I'd be happy to explore this with you!)
• If you can build an improvement plan around some of these fundamental areas BEFORE adding automation into the mix, your deployment will be much more successful and less stressful.

Do you agree?

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Pete Jakob: Career 2.0

Today is my last day at IBM after 28 very happy years. I've decided to take an opportunity to explore some new avenues in my career - but more of that at another time. Today is a day for reflection and for being grateful to the many friends I have made, both inside and outside of the company. I've pulled together a few highlights into the attached "infographic" below.

If I've worked with you at any stage during the first phase of my career - then thank you for the time we have spent together.

If I should be working with you in the second phase of my career - please get in touch.

Otherwise, I'll be sitting in the garden for a few weeks.

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The Analytics Gap

Last week I came across an interesting study from the IBM Institute for Business Value in conjunction with the MIT Sloan Management Review entitled Analytics: The New Path To Value. Based on a survey of nearly 3000 executive managers and analysts, there are some great insights in the report.

Top performing organisations use analytics five times more than lower performers. While the adoption seems to be most widespread in finance functions, in the marketing functions of top performing organisations the usage seems to be around three times higher than in lower performing peers. Perhaps as a consequence of this over half of those surveyed indicated that enhancements in analytics capabilities was a top priority for their organisations.

The greatest inhibitors that prevent people from adopting analytics more widely are not actually the availability of technology, nor even the integrity or accessibility of data. The barriers are actually much more to do with management and culture than data and technology. "The leading obstacle to widespread analytics adoption is lack of understanding of how to use analytics to improve the business, according to almost four of ten respondents." 

I'm sure this is true. Deploying new systems to make your marketing processes more efficient is one thing; but that alone does not equate to transformation. The real change happens when we start asking ourselves questions about the effectiveness of our activities, look for insights in our data, apply those insights to other activities and measure the impact. That has only a little to do with our tools, and much much more to do with our own curiosity.

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Aretha Franklin on Marketing: R.E.S.P.E.C.T.

How do you feel about the marketing profession? Are we the good guys or the baddies? 

Of course we all come into work every day intending to do the best possible job that we can, but are we actually in a profession that we can be proud of? Are we helping people or simply trying to flog stuff?

There are good marketing practices and there are terrible marketing practices. Unfortunately the bad practices tend to live in the memory longest. Few of us wish to be associated with the practices of the double-glazing salesman or the caller who interrupts you when your preparing dinner to ask "This is not a sales call, I wonder could you spare just 2 minutes to answer a few questions for our survey". (Two lies in one sentence - it IS a sales call, and it will take more than 2 minutes!)

I often speak about the requirement to align marketing better with sales. If our marketing activities are not aligned with what the sales organisation perceives they need then we are doomed. I still believe that, however we also need to be better aligned with the client, or more importantly with the individual human being that we are engaging with through our marketing activity. I think we need to build RESPECT

To this end I offer a first pass at a  Respectful Marketing Manifesto - a brainstorm of some of the attributes of marketing activity that we need to adhere to better. I'm sure the wise owls across the blogosphere have got plenty of suggestions to add to the list - I'd love to hear them:

1. Humanise your responses. Responses are from people - they are not just digits on a spreadsheet. They responded for a reason - why was that?
2. Every response counts. As Seth Godin once said, when someone engages with your campaign that is a privilege not a right. While its very tempting to skim off the responders from the largest companies or with the best job titles, you do so at your peril. You could easily miss key influencers, and more significantly not meet the expectations of the person who was taking the trouble to engage with your campaign.
3. Deepen your client insight with every interaction. Even if your engagement is as naked as a telephone call asking "would you like to buy my product" (let's hope it's more sophisticated than that) - if the response is "No" (which shouldn't surprise you in this example!) you could ask what their key interest areas are.
4. When a client honours you with insights - record it and act upon it. You'll be much more successful engaging in a dialogue that is aligned against their personal agenda. So capture it and use the insight.
5. Invest in capturing interest areas. Interests can be explicit (ie the client tells me verbally or via web form) or implicit (he's responded to my activity on topic x, so the chances are it is of some interest to him). Knowing and acting upon these insights will not only increase your returns on marketing expense, but will also enhance your value in the perception of the client
6. Revisit how you use Newsletters. Do you use newsletters to push the latest things that are important to you (who cares?), or to provide the latest news and insight that you know is relevant (because he told you or implied it through previous behaviour). A Newsletter strategy linked to a contact self-profiling tool so that dynamic newsletters can be created feels like the core of a respectful marketing system.
7. Stop sending so much stuff! If someone has taken the trouble to provide you all this insight into their agenda, why on earth would you want to drown them in other stuff in the how that they might be interested? Most of it is a waste of your time and a waste of your recipient's time. Better to refocus your efforts on understanding your intended clients' own agendas and figuring out how you can best serve that.

At the core of all of this is a change in the way we capture and leverage client/prospect data in our activities. 

Traditional Marketing

• Craft a message
• Select a target audience
• Blast off

Respectful Marketing

• Determine your client/prospect's own agenda
• Assess where they are on their journey
• Develop offerings/activities to help them progress on their journey

Isn't that how you'd like to be marketed to? "All I'm asking for is a little respect"

Thanks Aretha - Sock it to me, Sock it to me, Sock it to me, Sock it to me!

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