Jim Seybert - Strategic Planning Retreats - Strategy Audits - Executive Coaching

Microsoft has applied for trademark registration for a new logo that will be used to identify the company’s new retail outlets.

One of the first two stores will be in Mission Viejo, CA in the same shopping center as an established Apple store. (The other planned opening before Christmas is a store in Scottsdale, AZ).

I am an admitted Mac Snob, but I’m also a student of consumer attitudes and my big question is:

Do consumers who use Microsoft products have the same giddy passion for their supplier as do Mac users?

There’s a serious emotional connection between Apple and Mac users. The Microsoft retail store concept might work - but it won’t be for the same reason. I don’t see people lining up for hours and hours before a new Microsoft product is released.

We’ll see.

Review: I am taking  measured and intentional approach to developing my personal strategy for Twitter and Facebook.

I want to take advantage of each platform’s unique strengths, just as I do with my own. My first 1o Observations led to the strategy of Twitter being the place where I network and establish connections that are primarily professional with little or no casual, personal interaction.

Here are my latest Observations:

Observation 11 - Arnold Remtema commented on the first installment asking if I’d considered the “feedback ratio” on Twitter and Facebook. I have not but that’s a good question.

Observation 12 - Tom Pryor, in Texas, wondered why I hadn’t included LinkedIn as an element in my process. Fact is, LinkedIn was my first social network but it’s never really happened for me. If anything, it is ALL business with NO personal connection.

Observation 13 - Many Tweets are decent quotes from famous people, and I feel a sense of loss when the poster doesn’t make some sort of comment about it. There is value in context.

Observation 14 - There’s a certain of discomfort when two (or more) people are engaged in what is clearly a personal conversation on Facebook. Private dialog should happen in the “send a message” tab, not on one’s public Wall. Think about those public cellphone users who let everyone within earshot know their brother has toe fungus.

Observation 15 - It’s easy to get caught up in a numbers game, yet Twitter is a numbers game. Having thousands of followers is certainly valuable — if you’re engaging with them.

So - as my Strategy continues to develop:

1) Focus the majority of my Twitter activity on professional networking and mining for interesting new people.

2) Be intentional about my Twitter content. Post items of value for the audience.

Sounds like Microsoft is going whole hog into the retail store concept. They’ve hired some top talent including the person responsible for choosing real estate locations for Apple stores.

Courtesy - Apple Insider

Reports are that the Microsoft outlets will be more about brand building than actual product sales, although a photo of a beta store shows plenty of product on shelves.

Question - Without getting into a Microsoft Bashing exercise (which would be easy):

What should Microsoft do to make these store different? What strategy should they employ to take advantage of their strengths? What new ideas could they exhibit that would compel people to visit their stores?

I once saw a Mac fan get down on his knees in front of the Apple store in San Francisco. Will people do that when the first Microsoft outlet opens its doors?

Perhaps the toughest challenge facing General Motors is the need to remake its image. How do you convince people to buy from you now, when they weren’t buying from you yesterday? 

What do you think?

If you were designing THE most critical ad campaign in the company’s history, what would you say? What would the spot look like?

Does this spot do what it needs to?

None of my clients have ever faced a scenario of this magnitude, but they do face serious situations on scales comparable to their size and scope.

Questions such as this often come up during Strategy Audits and at Planning Retreats. If nothing else, the GM story is going to be part of retreat planning for some time.

A reader wrote with that question this week and it’s been haunting me since. Like one of those annoyingly sticky songs you hear and keep repeating over-and-over-and-over. 

Please Mrs. Avery, I just want to talk to her,
I’ll only keep her a while.
Please Mrs. Avery, I just want to tell her,
Good-bye.

What makes something a sacred cow?

We can all name something we consider untouchable, bolted to the floor, in the way of progress. But what earns it a place on the menu? 

Personal preference plays a role, of course.

But are there other factors?

Can some empirical measurement standard be applied?

Is there a matrix that clearly proves membership in the Sacred Cow line up?

I need your help with this one.

How do you define Sacred Cow? I’m not interested (really NOT interested) in your examples of them, just in your thought process for deciding what should stay and what should go?




 ”A sacred cow is . . . . . . “

[This is the blog version of my monthly column for June 2009]

Most organizations these days are doing too much stuff.

Activities undertaken in a robust economy have lost their shine. Tossing off marginal products that chew up limited resources has become a common theme.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, winners actually do quit. Seth Godin points out in The Dip that knowing what to quit and what to keep is a key element in success.

And this process of clearing away over-burden isn’t new. At the suggestion of a Facebook friend, I have been reading the Meditations, Objections and Replies of 17th Century philosopher Rene Descartes.

Descartes wrote in 1641:

Several years have now passed since I first realized how numerous were the false opinions that in my youth I had taken to be true, and thus how doubtful were all those that I had subsequently built upon them. And thus I realized that once in my life I had to raze everything to the ground and begin again from the original foundations.”

The philosopher’s “product line” were his opinions and ideas and he had reasoned that he needed to scrap them all and start afresh. He’d reached a point where the old ideas were no longer valid, so he . . .

. . . freed my mind of all cares, secluded myself for a period of leisurely tranquility, and [withdrew] into solitude.”

Descartes went on a strategic planning retreat. During his “period of tranquility” he set about to . . .

. . . attack straightaway those principals which supported everything I once believed.”

No cows were sacred. No assumptions given a Free Pass. He destroyed the past to make room for the future. His objective was to find one thing of which he could be absolutely certain and to use that as a foundation for building a new set of opinions.

Bringing It Home

Lest you determine that I have finally stepped off the curb, here are the lessons I think we can learn from Descartes:

1. Take nothing for granted. Allow no sacred cows, put everything on the table. This doesn’t mean you are going to scrap everything, but unless the review includes everything it isn’t worth doing.
2. Take your time. Reading through the Meditations you get a sense that Descartes was very thorough in his process of thinking through each conclusion and its subsequent result.
3. Seek outside counsel. Before publishing his work, Descartes asked people he respected to challenge his new assumptions. Your first step could be a Strategy Audit.
4. Give this a high priority. He cleared his calendar and his mind before secluding himself in a planning retreat. It is impossible to to question the status quo when you are sitting in the middle of it.

Similar to Descartes, your objective is to find the one thing that you do better than anyone else, your reason for existing. For Rene, the one thing of which he could be certain was that he thought. What’s yours?

Jim Seybert

Thank you so much for spending time with Counter Intelligence each month. You can be absolutely certain that I appreciate the time you invest in reading my stuff.

If you’d like to chat about this or anything else, pop me an email and we’ll set something up.

Short-term gratification is Counter Productive. 

This short video from TED U will make you smile because it features small children captured on hidden camera when they are told to NOT eat a marshmallow that’s been placed in front of them. As you watch it, think about the pressure and long-term damage that’s done to organizations whose leaders and stockholders demand time-based short-term gains. 

There are probably more bad decisions made to “improve quarterly numbers” than any other single reason. Brushing it off with “well, that’s business” doesn’t make it right, nor does it mitigate the almost certain long-range decline resulting from too much focus on the marshmallow.

Wouldn’t you rather eat the whole bag, not the single treat.