What do you do, Jesse Kliza?

Posted by Jesse Kliza in Business, Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Management, Marketing

Chris Brogan posted a question this morning, looking for feedback regarding what people felt new marketers and new media marketing agencies should be doing. As always, Chris’ post and the related comments are well worth the time to read in their entirety.

So what do you do Jesse?

I’ve thought about what I do, and I think it can be boiled down to this:

I help organizations explode the traps of traditional thinking about business, and realize the value of every individual.

Every individual that has any form of relationship with your organization (employee, customer, partner, prospect, etc) has value beyond what’s on the surface. Anyone can be an evangelist for your organization, anyone can bring you the “next big thing”, anyone can help you fix a business problem. It’s your job to let them, engage them and nurture them.

What is “new marketing” specifically?

As someone who’s been in marketing for almost 5 years now, having had no formal training, my thinking about business and marketing is almost exclusively shaped by my experience and personal character. I love people, and am a firm believer in the value of every individual.  From a marketing perspective, this means I believe that organizations need to be as closely connected and engaged with their customers and market as possible. Marketing is a conversation. It’s not just about what YOU do as a company. It’s about what the INDIVIDUALS IN YOUR MARKET tell you you’ve done/do, what they tell OTHERS you’ve done/do, what they tell you they need and how YOU respond.

What about all the cool new tools?

New marketing isn’t just about the new tools, the new mediums, the messaging… it’s about changing an organization’s mindset and approach to how they operate and interact with their market.

Enough about what I think, what do you think?

Are Titles Hurting Your Company?

Posted by Jesse Kliza in Business, Leadership, Management

Oh wow, you’re the CEO!?  SENIOR Vice President, you must be really important!

…YUCK!

Titles Influence Actions

Think about this. If you automatically attribute certain rights and privileges to a certain “class” of titles, your interactions with those people are artificially influenced right out of the gate. In addition, if you attribute a level of superiority with certain titles and YOU have one of those titles, that can influence the way you interact with other people as well.

I was talking with someone recently about an issue at their company.  They said that they thought that they had a fine solution, but they didn’t feel comfortable sharing it because they’re not “a director”.  Please!!!  That kind of stuff drives me nuts. As I shared with him my feelings about that kind of thinking, it became clear that he had gotten the “who are you to suggest something to me?” treatment from people in his company before, which sadly prevents him now from speaking up.

Knowing that certain kinds of titles influence the way people act, why do we still insist on having those types of titles within our organizations?  Don’t we want every person within our organization to feel like they can disagree with anyone, and that their ideas are as important as anyone else’s? Don’t we want people to gain respect and admiration based solely on their contributions and character, not an artificial label?

So what’s your title? Do you think people would address you differently if your title were something “less important”?

Time For A New Approach

Why not revisit the way you assign titles?  Do you need them at all?  Maybe each person in your company can make up their own title?  Maybe your title is based on the department you work in, and is the same as everyone else in the department?  Maybe a title has clear objective accomplishments that need to be met in order to attain it, yet it’s not tied to any rigid management hierarchy?

In the end, it comes down to the culture and management structure of your organization.  Unfortunately, some companies want titles to keep people in a box.  Other companies have traditional titles, but they have such a strong culture of equality and value for each individual that titles may not have much of an effect on the way people treat one another.  In the end, titles alone will obviously not solve the problem of overly hierarchical and bureaucratic management, but they can play a role in breaking down those barriers.

Only you can judge the effects of titles in your organization.  It’s worth considering.

Working Together to Create a Culture of Innovation

Posted by Jesse Kliza in Business, Collaboration, Leadership, Management

One of the things I love most about working is having the opportunity to sit down next to someone else and work side by side with them on something. I literally go out of my way to work with people this way if at all possible. I learn so much, and it’s an opportunity for me to hopefully impart something worthwhile to the person I’m working with. Sure, there are always things that you simply need to just focus on and get done on your own. But when you need to interact with someone else on your team, why not work side by side with them whenever possible?

Working this way is a powerful tool you can use to help create a culture of innovation within your organization/team. Here’s how:

1) Preface your interaction/work session with something like this:

“My goal every time I work side by side with someone like this, is not just to accomplish the task at hand. I have two other things that I explicitly want to accomplish. I want to learn something from you – I want YOU to teach ME something. At the same time, I hope to share some bit of knowledge, or teach you something as well. So please, try and teach me something, I will try my best to do the same.”

It’s important to set expectations this way, especially if you are working with someone that reports to you. Some people will feel like you are micromanaging, so just be clear about your intentions and goals.

2) Recap – When your work session is over, tell your co-worker what you’ve learned and ask them what they learned. THEN, ask them if what you learned is what they were trying to teach you and vice-versa.

3) Encourage everyone on your team to do the same when working with one another.

4) Periodically talk about the things that you’ve learned over the course of a given week or month, and ask the rest of your team members to do the same. It’s probably good to vary the frequency of these discussions.

This accomplishes a number of great things:

1) It shows that you respect your team members, and that you don’t think you know it all.

2) It shows that you are not just task oriented, but that you have an interest in your team members’ development.

3) Knowledge sharing happens, respect for one another increases, and stronger relationships develop throughout your team.

4) Your team members learn, grow, and become more engaged.

All making your job as a manager/team leader that much easier, and helping to create a culture of innovation within your team.

Leadership Quote of the Day

Posted by Jesse Kliza in Leadership, Management

“Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.” – Jack Welch

Management Innovation: Yes, your employees have brains!

Posted by Jesse Kliza in Business, Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Management, SANE Innovation

Henry Ford was once quoted to have asked the question: “Why is it that whenever I ask for a pair of hands, a brain comes attached?”

Too many companies ask this same question everyday. They may not verbalize it, but they ask it day in and day out by NOT asking the people that comprise their organizations questions like: “What do you think? Do you agree? How could we do this better?”

Ask is the second step in the SANE approach to innovation. Once you’ve set expectations that you want everyone to be involved in innovation, you have to start asking. Ask your team members to think outside the box. Ask them for their opinions. Ask them if they argee with you, rather than just telling them what YOU think.

Ask, Ask, Ask. “You have not, because you ask not.”

There are far to many mediocre “me too” companies out there playing catch up, with nothing innovative to show for themselves.

If you want innovation to become part of your organization’s culture, it has to start with YOU (the CEO, manager, team leader, etc). It starts with management innovation. It starts with humbleness, and waking up to the fact that you aren’t better than anyone else. By hiring other people, you’ve already admitted you can’t do everything by yourself, so why shoot yourself in the foot by insisting that you always know best?

Ford was an innovative man in his time, but the kind of thinking reflected in his quote above will only get you where Ford Motor Company is today – struggling and chasing a competitor that “gets it” (Toyota), because their competitor believes in the value of every individual employee.

Yes, your employees have brains! Why not encourage them to use them, rather than stifle innovation by reducing them to a role or a cog? Treat your team members/employees with the respect they deserve, ask them for their opinions and ideas, and start creating a culture of innovation today.