Business Game Time

Finally, it’s September. Seven long months without NFL football come to an end next week with the start of the regular season. However, with the recent discussions on the Collective Bargaining Agreement, some fans got the impression that behind the scenes it’s more about greed and making more money than having fun and enjoying the game.

Ironically, one of the most entertaining NFL news was triggered by a sponsor earlier this week. I actually have no idea why a professional football league needs an “Official Shampoo”, however consumer goods giant Procter & Gamble bought that spot for their “Head and Shoulders” brand.

In my article on Five Rules for successful Sponsorship, I mentioned “Product Relationship” as a key element. While you might begin to wonder what the relationship between pro football and shampoo is, Procter & Gamble selected the player with the most flamboyant hair style in the league and started a great campaign with him.

Troy Polamalu, five time pro-bowler and strong safety at the Pittsburgh Steelers, didn’t have his hair cut for the last ten years. It’s now nearly three foot long and became his trademark. Procter & Gamble did not only sponsor him, which would not have been a story fascinating enough to make the news or appear interesting to potential customers. Instead they decided to buy an insurance for Polamalu’s hair for the entire season. So #43 now has his hair insured for one million dollars at Lloyd’s of London.

In addition, they created a website called “troyshair.com”, with a lot of small fun apps like uploading your or your friends face under Polamalu’s hair, a poll with the chance to win Superbowl tickets and, yes, some information on their products and how happy Troy is to use them.

The approach is unique and unexpected, the media attention they get is very good and with every blog relating to their site (like this one does), the smiles at the Procter & Gamble headquarters will grow bigger.

I have no clue how they really came up with the idea to insure Polamalu’s hair, but it is a great case to explain an interesting, yet quite simple creativity technique: The linking of attributes of a product or service to a potential stage, canvas or framework.

The idea is that you take a step back from the process of using your product or service and try to describe the value proposition by gathering value attributes. In this case, this means not just think about washing hair with a good shampoo. That would have resulted in just another one of those commercials in which a celebrity washes his hair and they tell you how great the results are. That’s pretty unemotional and research by consumer goods companies has also shown that in many cases it is even counterproductive: The viewers of these kinds of ads tend to remember the celebrity, but not the brand.

Instead, think about the value your product creates. In the case of Head & Shoulders, the key value selected by the product managers was obviously “protection”: On the website, they offer the following three “protective” major advantages of their product: “defending you against a thin look”, “hair endurance” and prevent from “damage”. I have no idea if any of this is true and I’m not trying to sell the shampoo to you, but taking the main theme of “protection” and bringing it out of its current context – in this case hair and football – may have lead to the idea of “insurance”. An insurance is a symbol for protection, by using that analogy in the given context, Procter & Gamble manages to create a product relationship which is creative, unexpected and emotional.

So let’s summarize: Find key product values, find analogies that stand for those values and then bring these analogies back to the context of your product.

No, that’s no rocket science. Still I see tons of celebrities washing their hair on TV instead of creative approaches like insuring Polamalu’s head of curls. What a waste of resources!

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Filed under: (american) football by Johannes Musseleck
on September 2, 2010 at 8:00 am CET
Tagged with: (american) football • advertising • celebrities • collective bargaining agreement • commercials • consumer goods • creativity technique • fmcg • gillette stadium • hair • head & shoulders • head and shoulders • insurance • linking of attributes • nfl • official shampoo • pittsburgh steelers • pro-bowler • procter & gamble • procter and gamble • product attributes • product relationship • season • sponsor • sponsorship • strong safety • trademark • troy polamalu • troyshair.com • unemotional • unexpectedness • uniqueness

Finally the summer break in all of the major European soccer leagues is over and the new seasons have started. While we saw a crazy game day in Germany with 39 goals and seven away wins in nine matches (and one of the two home wins was newcomers  – or better “returners” – Kaiserslautern winning over Bayern Munich), England, Spain and Italy took it a bit slower.

Speaking of “taking it slow”: Do you know the feeling that when you’re watching a match you get the impression that watching the first half was a waste of time while the second half is when it gets hot? Take last weekend for example: 14 of the 22 goals in the English Premier League came in the second half (64%) while in Spain it were 18 of 28 (69%) in the eight matches on Saturday and Sunday.

I wondered what the reasons for this could be. Maybe in the early phases of a match both teams try to understand how their opponents play and try get used to the match. They don’t feel a great urgency as there’s still a long time to go and try to play tactically well instead of taking risks. They aren’t tired and therefore not eager to get to a decision quickly. Then in the second half of the match, players feel that the end is coming closer. The sense of urgency goes up, they are ready to take some risk to come to the result they were looking for and got a higher confidence in playing together than in the initial phase of the match.

It’s the dynamics of groups working together with time constraints.

You probably also know the situation of being in a group and having to fulfill a task in a certain time. Maybe in a meeting, at a seminar or in a project. Is it any different from soccer?

I was once talking to a very experienced facilitator who told me that he can always feels how teams pick up speed after half the time they have to come to a solution is up. And the reasons are probably the same that I mentioned for soccer matches above: Sense of urgency, better understanding, confidence and risk taking.

The problem: While it’s your choice to not put your TV set on until halftime, walking into meetings just after half the scheduled time is over may not be so easy to put in practice.

However there’s one advantage you have in meetings: While a soccer match normally lasts 90 minutes, it’s up to you to set the duration of your meetings. So why not play around with it a little bit?

Nicole Steinbok presented her idea of a 22 minute meeting. That’s just a quarter of a soccer match. She explains it in a five minute presentation here which is really worth watching. Her concept includes sending required reading beforehand, starting on time, standing up and disallowing all distractions like laptops or mobile phones. Sense of urgency!

But there’s also another way of playing around with timing. It seems like it does not matter too much when exactly the half time comes, but after half of the time the quality goes up. So why not move the half time forward? Yes, I know, “half time” got it’s name from being, right, at the half of the time.

But what if you schedule a meeting for an hour and tell the people that you only had 40 minutes when they come in. By doing so you move the half time up 10 minutes. Now two things can happen: Either Nicole is right and the overall duration of meetings matters less than we think. Then you get the results after 40 minutes and saved 20 minutes of meeting times (multiply it by the number of participants and you can see the value).

Or it’s not so easy and you don’t come to a solution after 40 minutes. However in that case the group started to work efficiently after 20 minutes, so if you chose to extend the meeting back to one hour, the group most likely won’t fall back to the old behavior. That gives you 40 minutes of quality meeting instead of just 30, which also means value.

And let’s be honest: The second half may be fun, but extra time and penalty shoot outs are even better…

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Filed under: soccer (football) by Johannes Musseleck
on August 30, 2010 at 8:00 am CET
Tagged with: 1. fc kaiserslautern • 22 minute meeting • bayern münchen • bayern munich • better understanding • bundesliga • confidence • distractions • england • english premier league • extra time • facilitator • germany • groups dynamics • half time • italy • nicole steinbok • penalty shoot out • risk-taking • schedule • scheduling • second half • sense of urgency • soccer • spain • starting on time • summer break • time constraints • value

For 17 years now, the Pittsburgh Pirates have lost more games per season than they won. That’s currently the worst record in the MLB.

As the MLB is organized in franchises, so the teams are in theory primarily a business, not a sports team. So their prime objective should be earning money, not winning games. It’s a common assumption that the teams that are very successful in winning games earn a lot of money while those that are losing a lot are not earning a lot of money. However, earlier this week, The Associates Press leaked a document that showed that the Pirates earned around $15 million in 2007 and 2008, which represents approximately 10% of their total income.

Nearly half of that income is revenue sharing coming in from the MLB. The other half is revenue generated by the Pirates. The Pirates have an extremely cheap player roster, their payroll is the lowest in the game. As a result, many complain that they were robbing money from the league as they would not even try to win more.

The Pirates organization denied that assumption and it’s not my job to judge on whether it’s true or not. However, it is not the Pirates fault that the rules of MLB allow teams to act as the Pirates do. And even as the sports fan in me strongly dislikes what he sees, I like the creative approach the Pirates take towards the league rules.

There are two major takeaways for me:

1) Rules are not there for allowing things, but for disallowing.

As long as something is not disallowed, it is allowed. I’ve seen a lot of people that were reading rules and assuming that other things that went into the same direction as those listed in the rules as not allowed would be forbidden as well. This kind of over-obedience may take away great opportunities from you.

2) Selling less is not always bad.

We all learned about the experience curve and economies of scale which say that unit cost are lowered when the output volume is augmented, leading to higher profit. The result of this concept is that everybody tries to sell more all the time. What is often ignored is the fact that this theory was based on the traditional model of industrial production. Most of us are not facing this classical setup anymore, but a lot more complex markets and revenue structures. In integrated markets with a high transparency of information, lowering revenue may well be overcompensated by lower cost.

We tend to think in linear models, but we are not in linear markets anymore. Trying things that are unexpected and non-linear may give you a leap in the market place, as it differentiates you from your competition. And guess what: The word “Pirate” is based on the Greek word for trying things in an aggressive way. Seems like they just went back to their roots in Pittsburgh…

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Filed under: Uncategorized by Johannes Musseleck
on August 26, 2010 at 8:00 am CET
Tagged with: allow • associates press • complex markets • creativity • disallow • earning • economies of scale • experience curve • franchise • integrated markets • linear models • losing • major league baseball • mlb • output volume • payroll • pittsburgh pirates • player roster • profit • revenue • revenue sharing • revenue structures • rules • transparency of information • unit cost • winning

Not that I would be motivated in any way to go for, but I just wondered what would be the best way to make it to the Olympics – as a participant. Probably practicing for the 100m dash is not a good idea. There are billions of people that are good at running, and probably a lot of them will be more talented or better than most of us will ever be. And running is quite simple: Anybody can do it. The same applies for swimming, playing soccer, boxing, etc.

These sports have a relatively low “entry barrier”. You can just start doing it without buying tons of equipment or travelling hundreds of miles to make it to the next club where you can train. Also, they are very popular: A lot of people like to watch it, these sports are well developed commercially and everybody loves to be part of that popularity.

That’s a bit different for sports like Modern Pentathlon, Skeleton or Curling. Completely unpopular and with high entry barriers: Probably most of you don’t have a curling club in their neighborhood. Finding a skeleton coach and track in a country which is not one of the ten or so that have a national Skeleton organization may be hard. Getting up to speed in pistol shooting, fencing and show jumping that go along with running and swimming in Modern Pentathlon is also something that not a lot of people try. But if you commit yourself to one of those it is significantly more realistic to make it to the big event.

The point is: No matter if you win the 100m dash or the Modern Pentathlon, you get the same gold medal at the same Olympic Games.

In business, the same approach works. You can compete where everybody else does, too. You can try to sell the 37th brand of detergent or open the fifteenth coffee shop on the main street, or you can try to find a market that may not sound very popular but allows you to specialize and use that specialization for building market entry barriers for others. The good thing is: You can also win a gold medal there. It’s probably no coincidence that the business term used for companies that follow this strategy successfully comes from the world of sport: Hidden Champions.

Companies that specialize in niche application do in turn not only focus on a small regional market like the coffee shop on main street does, but try to become world market leader instead. There are countless examples, and economies with e.g. a strong engineering tradition like Germany or Japan strongly build on the economical power of those Hidden Champions.

It may not help your personal popularity when you’re doing small talk at a cocktail party and talk about your business if you’re specialized in producing measuring instruments, metal cutting tools, wine harvesting machines or fish dissection devices. You might not even get invited to the cocktail party at all, but it pays your bills better than anything else.

And no matter if you are a hidden champion or one in a popular discipline: The gold medal is the same.

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Filed under: misc by Johannes Musseleck
on August 23, 2010 at 8:00 am CET
Tagged with: 100m dash • boxing • coffee shop • curling • detergent • entry barrier • germany • global market leader • gold medal • hidden champions • japan • modern pentathlon • niche • niches • olympic gold medal • olympics • participants • popularity • running • skeleton • soccer (football) • swimming • track and field

All football players are dream of winning the Super Bowl. All baseball players dream of winning the World Series. All soccer players dream of winning the World Cup. All (ice) hockey players dream of winning the Stanley Cup. And all track & field athletes or swimmers dream of winning an Olympic gold medal.

Do they?

Does everybody who’s doing sports have the ultimate goal of competing? And competing for what?

Maybe we should move the focus away from the big stages. If you are playing in the NFL it is obvious that you like to compete as otherwise you wouldn’t have made it there. So from there aiming at winning the Super Bowl is a logical target. But how about lower leagues or other sports?

I think that basically there are two kinds of competition: Competing with others and competing with yourself. Those competing with others have the goal to perform better than the others do, those competing with themselves have the goal to perform better than they did ever before (or at least better than they did last time).

I just read a remarkable interview with former swimmer and triple Olympic gold medalist Michael Groß. In the interview Groß argued that he was always going for the perfect race, not just for winning. Competing with himself.

At the Summer Olympics in 1984 at Los Angeles, Groß, nicknamed “The Albatross” because of his size (6ft6 – 2,01m) and arms span (7ft, 2,13m), accomplished that goal. In the 4×200m men’s relay race, he was the final starter for the favorites from Germany. He finished his 200 meters in 1:46:89 minutes – the fastest 200m relay split ever. His opponent in fourth spot of the US team, Bruce Hayes, was expected to be around 2.5 seconds slower on the 200m that Groß. After the third of his team mates finished his part, Hayes jumped into the water with an advantage of 1.48 seconds but after 150 meters, Groß was, as expected, already on level with him. Something remarkable happened then: Hayes pulled off an incredible performance on the final 50 meters and held off the Albatross, winning by 4 hundreds of a second.

Groß finally swum the perfect race, but it ended in a loss. In the interview he said he realized that performance and success are not necessarily linked. However, his approach of competing with himself and of aiming at perfection helped him a lot in his life after sports. He now owns a successful consulting company specialized in communications and teaches at a business school.

That sets him apart from many former athletes that used to compete with others, not with themselves. Their motivation came from winning or losing, not from going for perfection. As soon as their career was over, it was harder for them to establish themselves in their “second life”.

I believe many companies make a mistake. As they are in an competitive environment and as the people working there have goals and targets based on the competitive environment they are in, many of them feel like they compete with their colleagues every day. That’s why these companies tend to – consciously or unconsciously – recruit and reward more people that are of the “compete with others” type. These deliver great results when the emotional level is high, when they are “in competition”. But they will have a hard time when trying to deliver in situations in which aiming at improving what you do, aiming at perfection without looking at an immediate threat is necessary, just like some “compete with others” athletes fail in establishing a successful life after sports.

But there’s also a third group: Those not competing at all.

You’ll find some of them in a park on Sunday mornings, jogging, walking, doing their yoga exercises, etc. There will be some that do it for a certain purpose, like losing weight, improving their stamina, etc., which is more like “competing with themselves”, but some just do it because they enjoy doing it, with no other thoughts behind. They run because it’s fun to run, they walk because they like it and they do yoga because it gives them a good feeling.

You might also find them in your company – if you’re lucky enough that some of them made the cut. Those people are not blinded by competitive tactics or by trying to improve tasks and processes all the time, they enjoy what they do, connect people and come up with ideas that others wouldn’t have.

You’re probably familiar with the notion of incremental vs. radical innovation (if not, you might want to check one of my older blog entries on this topic) – if you’re targeting radical innovation, having some “non competers” on the team may be very helpful.

The problem is: You won’t find them at competitions, you’ll find them in the park on a Sunday morning. Is your company – in the figurative sense – recruiting at competitions only or are you also going to the Park on Sunday mornings? And do you allow them to work in an enjoyable, non (or little) competitive environment? Are you prepared to grant them the degree of freedom they need to enjoy what they’re doing?

Competition is good – and I mentioned this a couple of times here on this blog (just follow the tag “competition“). But if you really want to create a competitive advantage, it pays to bring in some of those that compete with themselves or that don’t want to compete at all, even if this may sound like a contradiction.

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Filed under: Uncategorized by Johannes Musseleck
on August 19, 2010 at 8:00 am CET
Tagged with: (american) football • (ice) hockey • 4x200m men's relay • aiming at perfection • baseball • bias • bruce hayes • communications • competing • competing with others • competing with yourself • competition • competitive advantage • competitive environment • consulting • contradiction • degree of freedom • emotional level • end of career • enjoyment • favorite • germany • incremental innovation • life after sports • los angeles • michael groß • michael gross • non competers • non-competitive environment • olympic gold medal • perfect race • performance • radical innovation • recruiting • running • second life • soccer (football) • stanley cup • success • super bowl • superbowl • swimming • the albatross • track & field • track and field • types of competition • usa • walking • world cup final • world series • yoga • yoga exercises

I just met a guy whose favorite soccer team had quite a bad time recently. Within a few years, they were relegated from the first division to the third division. It’s still very early into their new season and when I met him, he started joking: “Did you see the recent series of wins they put up?” Note: He referred to the fact that they won the first two matches of the season. In a row!

I answered: “Wow, great. If they keep it up they can come in fifth or sixth this season” – a result that would be heavily disappointing in the third division for a team that’s used to playing in the top league. We both laughed and moved on into opposite direction. As I continued walking I thought about how meaningless it is if you finish fifth or sixth in the third division, were only the first one or two teams will move up to the second league at the end of the season. However, if you are playing in one of the top leagues in Europe, fifth or sixth place would mean that you are battling for a spot in the European Cup.

In the top leagues, everybody is fighting for something: The title, qualification for Champions League or Europa League, the right to play in the first division again next year, etc. In the top leagues, for most teams the results matter as they will have an impact on something. In the lower leagues, only very few teams get a shot at moving one league up or are endangered to be relegated one down. For the rest, most of the season is pretty unfancy in the sense that it does not really have an impact on the team’s future if they win or lose one more game or not.

Thinking about this, an idea came up in me: Why not create something like a European Cup of third divisions? A tournament in which maybe the third to sixth placed team of the English League One, the French National D3, German Dritte Liga, Spanish Segunda División B, Italian Lega Pro Prima Divisione, etc. determine their champion.

Yes this idea is completely nuts. It’s too expensive, too time intense, can’t be coordinated, doesn’t make sense, etc. But thinking like this is not the right way to deal with creativity, so let’s ask ourselves instead: Okay, all that may be true, but not considering these negative points, what is positive about the idea?

It would for sure create a motivational incentive for all teams in the third divisions. Also, the third divisions are in many cases where the very young and talented players grow up before taking the step one or two levels up. For them it would be very helpful to be exposed to other influences and to gain international experiences already at a very young age. Then, it might boost the image of the third divisions as fans would link the league to an international competition. And most importantly: It would make the league more interesting, as most of the matches would have a meaning.

The next step should be to take these positive effects of the idea and adapt and transfer the idea to an environment where the negative effects do not matter, or at least not matter as much as in the original setting. As you know by now, the target of choice for all transfers in this blog is the world of business.

And isn’t it the same situation there: The guys on top of the stairs qualify for the big international encounters, while those on the lower level are also working all the time, but their work is less recognized, less incentivized and often has less meaning than what the big kahunas discuss in global executive meetings.

One way to translate my idea would be to identify challenges your company has not solved yet, create global teams of people from lower management levels – not the usual upper levels that have not been able to solve the issue yet and are too busy anyway – set up a global meeting structure and give them decision power for their respective challenge. And hey, that sounds a whole lot more feasible than in soccer. Why not incentivize those great performers on the lower management levels, maybe those that you can’t immediately promote to a higher level at his point in time for whatever reason, maybe young and talented women and men, by putting them into an “international competition”: Working and deciding on global challenges that your organization is facing.

Make them learn the style of play in other countries, challenge them in new ways, motivate them for their everyday job and profit from their commitment, effort and great results.

All of a sudden this idea does not seem like it’s too expensive, too time intense, can’t be coordinated and doesn’t make sense:

Yes, it costs money, but organizations can profit from the results, as the participants bring in a fresh view and perspective and avoid getting stuck in silo thinking. And by the way: Working global does not always mean travelling around the world. In some cases it is necessary, in some it’s not. Trust me, they will show you how to use technology for working together remotely (note another benefit: Top management can learn other, new, modern approaches to work and work organization).

The participants also have to allocate their time to it, but hey, they are no amateurs, it’s their job, it’s work that produces results, it’s what they are paid for. Yes, they will have to reduce the amount of time spent for other topics, but it’s worth it if the global topic is not just exhibition work, but real stuff with real decisions to be taken and the real confidential data shared with the participants.

It can be coordinated. International companies have the organizational means and the power to make this stuff happen. It’s not like soccer leagues that didn’t even know about the existence of the others that you would have to bring together, it’s the same group with an existing overhead that can support.

And yes, it makes sense. You just have to give it a shot.

I can see a couple of you scratching their head in front of their monitor at this very moment. How about agreeing on the following: You think about it a little longer, and no matter if you buy into the idea or not, you can anyway enjoy and try the approach towards creativity I offered (wow, one blog entry offering two different benefits!): Take a “creative” idea and don’t look at the obstacles, but at the benefits only. Then try to transform or transfer the idea to a shape, situation or environment where the benefits are still valid, but the obstacles are less severe.

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Filed under: soccer (football) by Johannes Musseleck
on August 16, 2010 at 8:00 am CET
Tagged with: big kahuna • coordination • creativity • decision power • dritte liga • england • environment • european cup • experience • france • germany • global executive meeting • global team • idea • incentive • innovation • international competition • italy • league one • lega pro prima divisione • motivation • national d3 • segunda división b • soccer (football) • spain • style of play • technology • third division • transfer • travelling • uefa champions league • uefa europa league • young talent

The basic theory of pricing is quite simple: If you expect that you will sell less units of your product or service when the price goes up and more units when the price goes down and combine it with the cost of each of these units, you can optimize the equation and find an optimum. This optimum is where you place the price. The bad news is: It’s not so simple in real life. That’s why there are tons of books on pricing strategy and millions of people working on pricing in companies all around the world.

On the one hand you lack information: You don’t know how much more or less your customers would buy at a lower or higher price, you don’t know how your competition would react, etc.

On the other hand the model is too simplistic to lead to a real optimization. If you fix a price at a certain level, you miss out on the potential of those ready to pay just a little less than your price and at the same time you won’t capture all you could get from those customers that would be willing to pay even more. That’s where the idea of price differentiation was born. The problem is that you can’t ask all of your customers what they would be willing to pay and expect them to answer correctly.

Though, wait a minute! Why not?

The NHL’s Florida Panthers are actually doing exactly that this week. In their “Name Your Price Campaign”, they ask customers to propose a price for a season ticket (there’s also half seasons and quarter seasons available). They will get back to the customer within 24 hours and either accept the offer or reject it. The idea is not perfectly new, it’s been used in the travel industry (basically Priceline.com is built on that model) and even in sports, where the St. Louis Blues offered a comparable promotion two years ago. Over in the music industry, British rock band Radiohead shocked the record labels in 2007, offering their album for download and only asking users for a donation of whatever amount they thought was appropriate.

I believe it is no coincidence this model can be found in the sports, travel and music industries, as they have a lot in common. They are all about entertainment, they are all about creating experiences (in the case of the travel industry I think it’s fair to expect that Priceline.com and comparable offers are used relatively more by leisure travelers than business travelers).

I was talking about the perception of value of a product before and yes, it’s a fuzzy thing. However if a product or service has a clear objective utility (yes, I know it will never be fully objective…), it is easier to estimate how much value most customers perceive. But in the entertainment industry, we’re not talking about selling a bottle of cold water in the desert, so how do you want to quantify the utility?

If you go to a match you will feel entertained, but you would have learned the result by reading the newspaper the day after as well, so there’s got to be more, there’s got to be an emotional value. And it’s obvious that this emotional value strongly differs from one customer to the other, which is why so many marketers are completely lost when asked to set the right price for an entertainment product.

The challenge is how to make people pay in relation to the emotions they feel, to the emotional value they capture.

At the same time for most entertainment products, selling additional units in many cases only adds very small or no cost. However most pricing models, even in entertainment, are still related to the number of units sold. There’s a disconnect that the customers have identified. The music industry can tell, because that’s the reason behind the problems it has experienced during the last few years.

To find the key, let’s look at the etymology of “entertainment”. In it’s original form in the 16th century, “entertainment” referred to a “social behavior”, the “provision of support for a retainer”, which was later transferred into “the amusement of someone” (source). The interesting part about it is the social factor. Entertainment always has a social component. Watching a game alone is not too much fun, the same applies for going on vacation or to a concert.

I will not be able to solve the problem of pricing entertainment products in its entirety in a short blog post, but I believe the notion of the social factor of entertainment can help to answer it. I’m convinced successful approaches will be based on an entirely different model that price per unit produced, and pricing cannot be divided from the design of the product.

Here are some rough ideas which might not all be applicable in this form, but that can surely help you to try thinking into new directions and of new designs of your offering:

To get started, what if a music company wouldn’t charge for downloading a song, but for sharing it? Doesn’t work? Well, just think about Youtube and advertising in music videos. See: It’s not as impossible as you might have thought. But let’s think about more “exotic” ideas:

What if you offered special, exciting hotel rooms that can only be booked if the invoice will be split in four parts that have to be paid with four different people’s credit cards? What do you think how those people would behave at the bar at night and how many drinks you would sell more?

And what if you were a pro sports team, let’s say the Florida Panthers, and started to put up a list of the “Superfans” on your web page. To qualify, fans could earn points for visiting games, buying merchandise, sharing their experiences with other on social networks, buying hot dogs, etc. Those fans for which it has a great social value to show others how much they support their team would be able to display more of that support if they paid more money to the franchise. What sounds like a pretty straight forward plan actually offers a solution to one of the key pricing problems mentioned at the beginning of this post: You could capture more value from those customers that would be willing to pay more. In exchange you offer them social value, or, in the basic sense of the word, more “entertainment”. Sounds like a deal to me.

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Filed under: (ice) hockey by Johannes Musseleck
on August 12, 2010 at 8:00 am CET
Tagged with: (ice) hockey • accept • advertising • basic theory of pricing • british • capture value • competition • credit cards • customers • design • disconnect • donation • download • emotional value • entertainment • etymology • florida panthers • ideas • incremental cost • information • music business • music industry • music videos • name your price campaign • nhl • optimization • optimum • potential • price differentiation • price setting • priceline.com • pricing • radiohead • record labels • reject • rock band • season ticket • sharing • simplistic • social factor • splits • st. louis blues • superfans • the perfect plan • travel industry • utility • vacation • value perceived • youtube

No matter what kind of football you prefer, the one called “football” in the US or the one people there call “soccer”, they both have something in common right now: Training camp season has started.

NFL teams in the US and soccer teams all over Europe are getting ready for the new season. Training plans include stamina, agility, tactics, etc. – all the stuff that you will not be able to work on with sufficient time and dedication once the stressful season has started. In training camps, the teams build the basis for being successful, they can study new plays and moves, practice how to play together and get to know the new team mates. Meanwhile the coaches can develop a feeling what to expect from each of their players and whom to best put into which position.

Without a sound period of preparation, a team will not play a good season.

I wondered why we have no training camps in business. Okay, there are no seasons, but we have projects instead. And yes, projects usually have something like a kickoff meeting, but that’s not quite the same thing (the equivalent in sports would rather be the coach’s speech a couple of minutes prior to the first game).

If you would ask people this question, the most common answer you would probably get is that there are neither time nor resources available for that. The business world spins fast, one project follows the other and sometimes multiple projects run at the same time. In addition to that people don’t earn any money for the company while they are in a training camp. All that sounds correct, but then why doesn’t the NFL just extend the season by 6 weeks and skip the training camps?

The magic word is: performance.

If you go on and on and on, always trying to perform at the maximum of your abilities, because this project, this day, this meeting is extremely important, you can be sure that you will not deliver. When there are peaks, there will also be lows. That’s natural, a physical fact yet one that many ignore because they are controlled by their ego. “The others can’t do this, but I am able to always perform great”. Yeah, right.

The continuous chase for meeting project timelines and milestones will also not allow people to learn new things. Okay, every project is different and you’re always encountering new things while working on a new project, but you will never have the time and leisure to think into new directions, to learn completely new approaches, to broaden your horizon instead of narrowing it towards an optimum of efficiency that enables you to reach the project goals. If an organization just goes on from topic to topic and from project to project all the time, who is going to develop the organization further?

I know that my idea of training camps or whatever you would call the equivalent in business may sound utopian, but think about this: If people are able to recharge in such a camp, don’t you think they will be able to perform better, to focus better, to deliver better in the project afterwards? Why can’t we see a training period as an investment into the performance in upcoming projects instead of as a pure cost factor? And if one company offers those regular training camps to you and another company doesn’t, which one would you rather work for? The one that makes you a hamster running in a wheel or the one that helps you to broaden your horizon and develop your skills and capabilities? I believe training camps may become an important factor in recruiting in the future, and those organizations that typically work a lot in project settings, like the ones in the consulting or IT industry, are typically those that are/will be hit extremely hard by the currently developing “War for Talent”.

It can be done. Most projects don’t fall from heaven, there’s a certain rationale how projects are created. The issue is that we don’t care for that rationale, that we don’t try to plan projects well ahead. There is no reason why a project always has to come as a surprise. There are some exceptions, but if an organization would try to better schedule projects, everybody would know well in advance when the new season will start.

And what would the content of a business training camp be? Well, basically the same as in sports, which is why I will allow myself to quote what I wrote about sports training camps at the beginning of this post. The transfer to business is added in brackets:

In training camps, the (project) teams build the basis for being successful, they can study new plays and moves (strategies, methods, ideas, theories), practice how to play together (sic!) and get to know the new team mates. Meanwhile the coaches (project managers) can develop a feeling what to expect from each of their players (project team members) and whom to best put into which position (work stream).

Without a sound period of preparation, a team will not play a good season (perform well in the project).

It’s a long way to go towards implementing this idea in today’s companies and settings, but better performance of the individuals, better performance of the team and better options for recruiting capable personnel are a good reason to go for it. In business and in sports.

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Filed under: (american) football, soccer (football) by Johannes Musseleck
on August 9, 2010 at 8:00 am CET
Tagged with: (american) football • agility • basis • broaden perspective • business training camps • coach • consulting • ego • europe • ideas • it industry • kickoff meeting • methods • moves • new approaches • nfl • organizational development • peak • performance • play together • plays • preparation • project management • project manager • projects • recruiting • resources • season • soccer (football) • stamina • strategies • tactics • team mates • theories • time • training camp • us • war for talent

When watching TV a couple of days ago, I zapped into a match of the Chicago White Sox vs. Detroit during the bottom half of the 7th inning. The White Sox were leading by 11 runs to 1, so obviously the winner of that match was decided already. I started to wonder what it must be like to step into the batter’s box late in the game when you’re down like this. How do you feel? How do you approach you duty?

Yes, you could hope for a miracle to happen (it didn’t this time, Detroit lost the game by 10 runs), but most professionals are realistic enough to see that the probability is pretty low. So do you just swing your bat at any random pitch to get out of the situation as quick as possible? Do you take the extremely big swings, trying to hit the longest homer ever or look like a fool in case you don’t hit the ball? Do you start complaining about everything just to make the victory less enjoyable for your opponents?

Or what about other sports? Do you cease running when you’re down 0-4 in soccer? Do you stop playing aggressive defense in (American) football when trailing by five touchdowns?

What to do when you’re down?

American author Gretchen Rubin spent a year finding out what happiness really is and how to reach it. The book her research resulted in, “The Happiness Project“, was a #1 New York Times bestseller, so obviously not only professional baseball players trailing in the final innings of a game are looking for an answer to that question.

Just a few hours after watching that White Sox vs. Tigers game, I coincidentally read one of Rubin’s recent blog entry called “5 Common Happiness Mistakes: ‘Boosters’ That Do More Harm Than Good“. The summary in brief: All of the options of how to tackle a large deficit at the end of a game I gave above – unsurprisingly – most probably won’t make you happy.

In a little more detail, Rubin recommends not to comfort yourself with a “treat” when you’re down, as that will only work for a very short time and make you feel guilty afterwards. Neither should you express your negative emotions as studies show that it would only enhance your anger. She also recommends not to retreat to your sofa or stay in your pajamas all day, she basically sums it up when recommending not to let yourself off the hook. The example Rubin uses is that you should not skip going to the gym on a bad day, as after going there you can comfort yourself saying “at least I went there”.

Translated to our example: When you step up to the plate in a practically lost game, get yourself together, concentrate and try to deliver a good at-bat. I like that recommendation a lot and as probably most of us I have to admit I did not live up to it at every occasion so far.

When you have to deliver a paper on a topic that you don’t find interesting at all, you can complain about it, eat chocolate all day long or surf the internet instead of writing the paper – no matter what, you’ll have to write the paper anyway. And if you write it anyway, why not do it the right way from the beginning on?

I’ve seen some people that were only given those topics to work on that nobody else was fighting for. No matter what the history is that brought them into this position (in most cases it probably wasn’t even their fault), it was impressive to see how they delivered anyway, how they worked on that topic with full determination and how they were happier with their respective situation than many of those working on the “good” projects but complaining all day long about the heavy work load.

Another example: What about people that lose their job: Who do you think will be happier on the long run – the one getting up at 6 a.m. the next morning to fight for a new job or the one that takes a ten day time out in bed and loses all his energy and drive?

Carrying on anyway is a question of dignity, a question of self-confidence, a question of not losing momentum. The longer I think about it, the fewer alternatives I see.

Detroit did exactly that. In the remaining two innings after I switched on the match, they had three of the eight hits and scored one of their two runs. Yes, they lost the game anyway, but they didn’t let themselves off the hook. The game was the first of a double header. The second game later that day Detroit won 7 to 1 after scoring five runs in the first two innings.

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Filed under: (american) football, baseball, soccer (football) by Johannes Musseleck
on August 5, 2010 at 8:00 am CET
Tagged with: (american) football • bad mood • baseball • batter's box • chicago white sox • comfort • complain • concentrate • cope • deficit • deliver • determination • detroit tigers • dignity • down • express negative emotions • get yourself together • gretchen rubin • happiness • happiness mistakes • happy • let yourself off the hook • miracle • momentum • motivation • new york times bestseller • pajama • self-confidence • soccer (football) • sofa • the happiness project • treat • work load

Last night I read some of the Tweets management coach and author Marcus Buckingham tweeted on his Twitter account. Buckingham, certainly playing in the top league of coaches and speakers, focuses his work on identifying and using personal strengths. However, it seems as if even the very bright guys and hard workers need a weekend timeout from time to time, as Buckingham was visiting a baseball game on Sunday. Two of his tweets from the stadium read like this:

“@ Sox game. USA sports r designed to create brief moments of maximum tension. The pitch. The 4th down play. The last second 3 pointer.” “No wonder soccer never really caught on.”

That finding instantly caught my attention as it was adding on my post that compared soccer and baseball about a month ago (“Is it a game?”). If we leave basketball out of the equation (from my perspective there’s not too much of a difference between a last second 3 pointer in basketball and a decisive goal in injury time in soccer), the difference between (American) football and baseball on the one hand and soccer on the other hand is striking:

Both baseball and (American) football are non-continuous games. They consist of single downs or pitches after which there is a pause until the next down or pitch. Also, for every team there is either the offensive or the defensive part of the squad on the field (or, in “special” cases the “special team”). In soccer the match continues unless the ball leaves the field or a foul is called and is only interrupted once for the half time break, other than that the action goes on and is performed by practically the same eleven players, no matter if the team is attacking or defending.

Soccer requires players to be generalists. Ever since the “Totaalvoetbal” approach played by Ajax Amsterdam in the 1970s (for more on the evolution of soccer tactics and “Totaalvoetbal”, please refer to my post “Strategy, Tactics and why the World Cup has been boring so far”), soccer players were forced to perform well even when playing outside of their usual position. In modern soccer, strikers also have to defend (and most of them complain about it…), it has become a game for generalists.

Baseball and (American) football are totally different. In the American League for example, a pitcher does not even have to hit, in the National League the pitcher usually hits last in the rotation and nobody expects anything from him. In (American) football, a wide receiver or a running back will most probably never play in defense. These are games for specialists, not generalists.

Getting the link back to Marcus Buckingham: The approach he teaches is not to try to improve in the areas of your weaknesses. On the contrary, his research shows that those that are the most successful in their job are trying to get the maximum out of their strengths instead. Buckingham puts his advice like this: “Build on your strengths and manage around your weaknesses”.

So are baseball or (American) football the better sports than soccer as they allow a better concentration on your strengths? No, they’re not because if your strength is in flexibility to adjust (e.g. from offense to defense) or in stamina, you might probably be better off in soccer than in baseball. Yet if you’re a great thrower but a bad hitter, you better use your strength and become a pitcher and don’t start to work on your hitting to become a first baseman one day. Sounds obvious? Yes it does, which is why I like those comparisons with sports. However, in real life, a lot of people seem not to find this too obvious.

What about you? Are you still working on your hitting, trying to become a first baseman? And do you even know if you’re better at hitting or at pitching?

Buckingham asks two simple questions that might hurt to answer: What was your best day at work during the last three months? And what was your worst day at work during the last three months? Those two may give you hints at what your strengths are. And his definition of a strength is not something that you’re good at, but something that makes you stronger, that “strengthens” you.

Fine, but what now once you discovered your strengths and want to build on them while managing around your weaknesses? To find the answer let’s go back to the Tweets I referred to at the beginning of this post.

It seems like in the US, sports fans prefer brief moments of maximum tension to a continuous tension without interruptions, while e.g. in Europe it’s the other way around. There is no right or wrong, the point is that there are preferences. Finding the right match of your strengths with the preferences of the audience – company, boss, customer, you name it – is where you can be successful. Countries, companies, business units, managers, they all have preferences, they offer recognition for certain strengths, while others recognize other strengths.

If you’re great at negotiating and closing deals, but not so good at doing the due diligence prior to the negotiation or the paperwork afterwards, better don’t work as an analyst. Leave it to those that have their strengths in that area and find a boss or a job that allows you to negotiate more.

“Work can be a great place. It can be a place where you have a chance to be challenged in just the way that you like to be challenged. It can be a place where people recognize you for what you do well and then push you to get better at it. It can be a place where you get to make the kind of difference that only you could make. But (…) only two out of ten people get to play to their strengths at work most of the time.” (Marcus Buckingham)

Find the jobs where people have preferences for your strengths, where they have recognition for what you can deliver. It’s your choice. Soccer or baseball. Pitcher or first baseman. One of the two out of ten or one of the other eight.

—

Note: More on Marcus Buckingham on his homepage or his Twitter Account.

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Filed under: (american) football, baseball, basketball, soccer (football) by Johannes Musseleck
on August 2, 2010 at 8:00 am CET
Tagged with: (american) football • 4th down • american league • baseball • basketball • build on your strengths • coach • continuous • defense • due diligence • first baseman • generalist • identify • marcus buckingham • national league • negotiation • offensive • personal strengths • pitch • pitcher • preference • preferences • soccer • speaker • special team • specialist • tension • totaalvoetbal • twitter • usa • weakness