Henna and What ?

When I was in B-School years ago, we used Philip Kotler's classic tome, Marketing Management as our primary textbook.  I vividly recall the lessons related to what we all know as the "marketing mix".  The four components to the marketing mix were 1) Product; 2) Price; 3) Promotion; and 4) Packaging.

Product was the actual item itself that would be used, consumed, eaten, assembled - whatever.  Price is obviously what the buyer would need to pay to acquire the item (typically we were discussing end-users in this context).  Promotion comprised advertising, PR, in-store displays, coupons, discounts in newspaper or magazines etc. Nowadays that would include promotion on SoMe platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.  Finally the fourth "P" of the marketing mix was Packaging.  How it was wrapped, boxed, labeled, presented,  in order to be picked up by the consumer and brought home.

Now depending on one's point of view, there may be some discussion or disagreement between the overlap between Product and Packaging.  Is the product name itself a component of the "Product" or the "Packaging"?  If a given product was prepared in two different packages with different names, which one would sell 'better', but these are discussions and topics for market researchers and perhaps another blog post.

The example here, "Henna "N" Placenta" just seems to me to be a horrible example of a complete packaging fail but from what I've read, it seems to be an excellent product with good reviews by end users.  Yet the product name seems so off-putting to me that I fail to see how it passed the Marketing Review committee on Hask's Brand Management team.  Maybe this is an example of a product that is so good it will sell well regardless of its name but it certainly doesn't seem like a product I would not want to go anywhere near.

Can Twitter Make You a Better Writer ?

All experienced writers know the phrase “less is more” as it relates to the written word.  The first rule of self-editing is to review one’s early drafts and gradually reduce the word count to eliminate unnecessary verbiage that still leaves enough to get the point across.  Whenever I write something, whether an email, technical document, or a blog post, there follows an iterative process of culling and excising unneeded words and phrases and perhaps supplementing what remains with the occasional added emphasis or other revisions. Finally,  I’m left with is something that’s usually 1/3 shorter than the original document and hopefully a clearer, more persuasive argument.

 As I’ve become moderately active on Twitter, I find that the same principle applies.  How many times have any of us tried to send a Tweet that at first extends far beyond 140 characters?  There’s no way to escape the 140 character limit, so the choice is either abandon the Tweet entirely, or edit it to make every word matter.  Reduce or eliminate unneeded adjectives; find one word to replace two; move phrases around and still find away to get your point across.  It’s fine to use intentional misspellings and abbreviations on occasion, e.g., ‘ur’, ‘btw’ - but if more people applied the same amount of criticism and editing to their email messages and work-related documents, we might find a higher degree of quality writing both in and out of the work place.

Six Sigma, Elon Musk, Process, and the Need for Creativity in the Workplace

I want to thank Mark Babbit (@YouTernMark on Twitter) for bringing this interesting post by Andrew Smart to my attention.  (http://switchandshift.com/six-sigma-is-draining-employees-creativity)

Smart quotes from Elon Musk on an occasion in which Musk say, "I don't believe in process" because it stifles creativity and critical, out of the box thinking.  I could only shake head and think, "Huh ?"

The 'villain' in this post is Six Sigma.  Now, I am not a huge fan of Six Sigma  (and don't get me started on ITIL),  but Six Sigma is simply a way to define, and then refine a given work process using statistical analysis of each step and input.  Going through a Six Sigma project is a painful exercise for anyone, but once the project is over, there is a new, improved business process in place for whatever the exercise was about.

Smart quotes Musk saying, "The problem is that at a lot of big companies, process becomes a substitute for thinking...." .  Now I'll concede that perhaps at a macro level Musk doesn't believe in process, but at a micro level, process and defined methodologies are critical to gaining consistent results, improved efficiency, and ultimatly lower process costs.

When I say 'at a macro level', I mean that Musk is a disrupter, an outlier, who wouldn't be where he is now by coloring inside the lines all the time and sticking to process, the status quo.  We need these big thinking types to look at things in new ways - absent from process - in order to create this brave new world we're in now.  He also needs recruit others like him to help build these companies.

However, at a micro level - in the day to day running of a business and creating this new world, process is critical - as long as it's not sacrosanct.  A well defined methodology is to a business process as JIT inventory management is to a taut supply chain.  The leaner the process, the more efficient the steps, and the fewer wasted motions are involved.

However, processes - even good processes - can usually be improved and that's where creativity and critical thinking will always have a place in a good company.  With the precise engineering requirements and (literally) mission-critical tolerances needed by Tesla and Space-X , there is no way he could run either one of these two amazing ventures without well defined, specific, rigorous processes in place.

However, once any process becomes an end to itself, and process managers refuse to entertain critical thinking by team members in a position to provide input to potential improvements to that process, that's when everyone suffers and this is what I believe Musk means when he says he doesn't believe in process.

Six Sigma isn't draining anyone's creativity.  Only narrow minded managers can do that.