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Consulting

Field of Dreams – Great Movie, Dumb Strategy

by peterwinick

I loved the movie Field of Dreams. It was well written and told an inspiring story. But let’s face facts – it was a movie in the classic Hollywood style that was designed to make you feel good and deliver the message that “if you build it they will come” which tugged at your heart strings. That message, tied to “The Great American Past Time” was an amazing formula that worked well…for a movie, that is.

I’m really amazed at how many authors and thought leaders that I speak with have actually subscribed to a “Field of Dreams” strategy for their respective businesses.  Basically the assumption is if they write a great book “they will come.” There are a few problems with that.

Let’s start with the basics. Who are “they”? You need to have a very clear understanding of who your target market is. If the thinking is “everyone” it won’t apply to anyone. Not only do you need to clearly understand the needs of your target market and why your content is uniquely qualified to meet those needs, but you also need to understand how they prefer to consume content. If those two issues aren’t addressed you may have built yourself a beautiful baseball field but I guarantee you the stands will remain vacant.

The second problem is the “will come” problem. I’ve witnessed amazing books with break-through content that has the potential to alter both the business landscape and the personal development arena die on the vine because “they” didn’t come. I’ve also seen plenty of absolute crap gain traction and momentum and do incredibly well financially.

You need to design a strategy that attracts the target market in the right way and you need to immediately have the right mix of products and solutions developed so that they can engage you immediately. Don’t wait for the book to launch to figure out what you should be offering. For some reason many authors and thought leaders put all their focus and effort and resources into the writing and the launch of the book and a minimal amount of effort into what happens to their business after the book is launched.

The goal of a book is pretty simple. It’s a combination of enhancing your brand, building up your credibility and cache and lead generation. There are several other goals that may be important as well (such as the sense of accomplishment). I’d strongly suggest that you don’t let the more intangible goals get in the way of the tangible ones. You can do both – it just takes planning, discipline and focus.

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Uncertainty Is Now Permanent

by peterwinick

 

 

The last time I saw Jim Collins speak at Radio City Music Hall at the World Business Forum one  of the many points that he brought up was that we are now operating in a period of great uncertainty and that uncertainty is now the rule, not the exception. While I don’t know that we’ve ever actually lived in a period of certainty (at least I haven’t experienced it), I do know that things are changing at break-neck speed and that in order to succeed as a leader, a manager or a thought leader you need to be able to thrive in uncertain times.

I don’t believe that this means that everything we know is no longer valid, but we need to be smart enough to evaluate not just our own mindsets and skill sets, but the environment and markets that we respectively operate in. Uncertainty is either scary or exciting. It creates opportunity and renders organizations irrelevant.

While many leaders and organizations logically resist uncertainty as they have much to lose, others embrace it. In fact, many that do embrace it have just as much to lose but realize they also have much to gain. There are also many apparent contradictions that exists in uncertain times – we have more information at our disposal to make decisions yet significantly less time to analyze the data and develop a strategy. We need to move fast and yet we need to think about the long term. We need to realize that what appears to be a barrier to entry today may be a hindrance in the future.

To succeed during uncertain times, or better yet to be great as opposed to good during uncertain times, we need to accept and acknowledge its existence and its impact on all that we do. We need to create, plan and execute while being open minded, nimble and resilient. We need to be able to understand the limits of our mindsets and our skill sets on an individual and organizational level and proactively work to make sure that they are dynamic and not static. We need to proactively develop our skills and challenge our logic and we need to create organizations that value this way of thinking and practice it at every level of the organization.

Certainly telling your boss or board of directors that their thinking is wrong given the changes that are occurring in your market place is not a pleasant conversation. Letting your coworkers know that they are lacking in skills that are critical is not one most of us enjoy but they need to happen. They need to happen frequently and need to happen at all levels of an organization.

We tend to like things the way they are, incremental change isn’t too hard to manage but seismic change is. We don’t have the ability to know exactly what we need to change and exactly when we need to change it, but we do have the ability as well as a responsibility to make sure that we are ahead of the curve and changing the way we think and do to thrive in uncertain times.

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A Millimeter of Progress or a Mile?

August 6, 2010

Tweet It seems like many of the thought leaders and authors I speak with are pulled in a million directions and have made a millimeter of progress in each. There’s also a group of them that have made a mile of progress in just a few. I’ve spent some time thinking about the differences in these [...]

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Do you have the clarity you need to set your priorities?

July 15, 2010

Tweet In speaking with a wide range of authors and thought leaders lately one of the key things that struck me was the connection between clarity, the ability to prioritize activities effectively and success.  I believe that clarity is not exactly a binary state but it isn’t  something that exists on a continuum either. I [...]

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Are you being reactive or proactive?

June 7, 2010

Tweet You’ve developed great content and things seem to be moving along.  Your satisfied with the momentum you have and your work is being well received.  Sounds pretty good.  The question to ask is are you being reactive or are you being proactive?  Do you have a plan in place with goals and milestones you [...]

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Do you have the right strategy and the right people?

March 25, 2010

having great content is not an easy accomplishment by any stretch of the imagination but frankly it’s only table stakes when it comes to leveraging effectively.

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