Business & Leadership Archives

Fitness Clubs

In a recent post I shared my thoughts on the Uber Effect disrupting Fitness Clubs: Fitness Clubs Digital Disruption.

A past colleague and friend, Tom Colleary, read that post and asked, “What’s Next?”

What’s Next? I suspect many of the old school fitness clubs will see their membership rates fall, hurting profits, negatively impacting customer experience and subsequently continue the cycle of lost revenue and market share.

I thought about AND took an experiential approach to answering the “What’s Next?” question.

I asked myself, “If I were a fitness club, what would I want?” I’d want to:

Retain members Attract new members Grow revenue and profit

I workout at one of those fitness clubs I refer to as “old school,” XSport Fitness. During one of the many snow storms that swept the greater Washington DC area this winter, I made a visit to the club.

During this visit I watched with acute attention to everything happening in the club. From how people came in the front door to the check-in process to where members went first, second, third. I also watched how they engaged with XSport Fitness employees and each other — or not. On that snowy afternoon, the area schools and colleges were closed, so there were a lot of young people mixed in with the somewhat-old folks, like me.

As I got my workout in, I observed everything going on around me. I also took a few extra long trips to the water fountain to see what was happening in the pool, gym and studio rooms. Admittedly, I don’t frequent the spa and tanning beds, so I have no experience on that side of the club. As I worked out and meandered around, I thought about how the “old school” fitness clubs could leverage digital innovation to better compete with the disruption that ClassPass and all the workout studios are driving across the fitness industry.

Disrupt or be Disrupted.

On check-in everyone hands their keys across the front desk so that an employee can scan a tag with a barcode on it that is the member account number. Interesting concept, but flawed. If the member doesn’t have their keys with them for any of many logical reasons, they have to show a drivers license and wait as membership is validated in XSport’s system. And, the poor people behind the gal that forgot her keys have to wait! At peak times, the checkin line can get frustratingly long. But hey, the library still uses barcodes too!

Everyone coming through the door has their keys in one hand and their mobile phone in another. Literally, everyone has their phone with them. The one thing everyone has with them is a mobile phone! hmmmm

I did some light research.

Looking at XSport by the numbers:

350,000 members 200,000 website visits a month 2,909 Twitter Followers 309 YouTube Subscribers 47 Facebook page Likes this week 0 mobile phone apps

I expect many of the other fitness clubs in my “old school” list would have similar numbers, but I honestly didn’t check them all.

Now XSport tries to be a bit unique (and digital) in that it advertises something called ActivTrax as “our revolutionary web-based technology creates customized workouts designed around an individual’s fitness goals, experience, and strength, and unlike any other program, uses the equipment available at your health club.” Funny thing about ActivTrax and XSport’s self published statistics is that at 200,000 website visits a month, if all their visits were members using ActivTrax, only 57% of their members are logging in to ActivTrax once a month through their website link! I may have the math wrong, but I can’t get the dots to connect here.

ActivTrax isn’t tailored to drive a unique XSport member experience. It’s actually a 3rd party solution that isn’t integrated into XSport’s website and doesn’t appear to have a mobile application either.

I digress! Back to the experience itself — After all the manual set up of “modules” and some data entry, I am ready to manually log everything I eat and do — IN A WEBSITE PORTAL that isn’t even XSport’s and doesn’t come close to a similar experience as XSport’s website.

I’m not an ActivTrax user and won’t be. I don’t carry a laptop and browser with me to go work out and I don’t suspect many members do. Based on my experiment and the data, I’m guessing ActivTrax doesn’t get a lot of use.

I WANT my fitness club DIGITAL EXPERIENCE to be effortless, elegant and MOBILE.

I am not a highly demanding consumer, but there is indeed more that I want and that I think the Millennial’s might want too out of their XSport membership. (I know because I’ve asked my 18 and 16 year olds who are also members and their 14 year old sister is the next member of some lucky fitness club)

I think XSport Fitness, Lifetime Fitness, 24 Hour Fitness, Planet Fitness and even Equinox are missing a huge mobile opportunity. If they are working on it, they surely aren’t delivering it fast enough.

Minimum give me an application for my iPhone that:

Shows me the club locations available to me and uses the GPS capability of my phone Serves as my membership card Provides me the studio class schedule Lets me check my membership

To even enter the digital age have that iPhone application let me:

Reserve a spot in a studio class Get a friend a guest pass (referrals are generally good for growth) Update my membership information Review my account and visit history

To provide an outstanding customer experience that will drive retention, attract new members and grow revenues, have that iPhone application create an experience for me that lets me:

Set an appointment and pay for a massage, tanning and other spa servies Be part of a social community at my club (location) See who in my social group is at the club before I go and when I am there (location services again) Share with my friends that I’m going to play basketball from 7-9 if anyone wants to join-in Provide motivational workouts and even virtual trainers for those days I work out alone Find me a workout buddy on those days, I want to be social and not work out alone Connect me with members with like interests, new to the club or even new to the area Book my personal training sessions and communicate with my trainer Easily let me log my workouts and transfer workout information from at least the treadmills, stairclimbers and bikes

And lets get a little crazy here:

Advertising: That Advertising that is delivered to the HD TVs across the gym that is temporal during my visit, deliver it to my mobile device and make the advertising specific to my habits and interests. Drop me a coupon to the sports bar next door and tell me the Washington Capitals are playing!! Yes, even the fitness clubs can take advantage of data analytics to drive more revenue and the revenue of their affiliated advertisers. Beacons: With beacon technology, the clubs could sense where I am in the gym and suggest workouts to me or even make me aware of new equipment, trainers or classes getting ready to start with room in them.

Okay lets go nuts:

Checkin: How about using the simple technology in my phone to check me in, without having to physically check in. The phone knows I am there, you can too via an enabled application. Networking: Humans are innately social. Sure I go to the gym to workout and don’t like a lot of interruptions, but what if I needed a new dentist and I work out next to a good one every Tuesday night and I don’t even know it. That’s lost business for the dentist and a lost opportunity for me to upgrade my dentist. I know I know, I’m out of control now.

Net-net. I’m here and the Millenials are coming in force with their mobile phones. If I’m 46 and expect many of these capabilities via my phone integrated with my fitness club experience. What in the heck will the bar be for the digital millenials?

I do know this for sure. If someone puts a comparable fitness club in around the corner with a half decent mobile digital experience where the old Kmart used to be in Fairfax, my XSport stands to lose many a member and thus a lot of revenue.

I’d even likely pay a few bucks more a month for a digital customer experience, and that implies higher revenues for XSport.

DevOps: Is There One Definition?

Is there one definition of DevOps?

In short the answer is NO!

DevOps may be the hot buzzword of 2015. However, as I shared in my previous post, DevOps is as much a cultural and mindset shift as it is anything else. It simply cannot be bought of the shelf and implemented.

Wikipedia currently defines DevOps as the following:

DevOps is a software development method that stresses communication, collaboration (information sharing and web service usage), integration, automation and measurement cooperation between software developers and other information-technology (IT) professionals. DevOps acknowledges the interdependence of software development and IT operations. It aims to help an organization rapidly produce software products and services and to improve operations performance – quality assurance.

DevOps has been utilized over the years to support many areas of technology operation. More recently, the uses include:

Automated Infrastructure Provisioning Continuous Integration Development Environments Automated Delivery Continuous Delivery

Over the last few years, I’ve come to know DevOps as a set of practices, tools and policies that support Automated Delivery (AD). AD is closely related to where many advanced DevOps cultures are pushing the envelope on Continuous Delivery (CD). No only does a CD environment want every iteration to deliver production-ready code, but ideally that code is automatically deployed to the production environment without human intervention. (And that sound you just heard was CIO’s and their IT teams screaming- “Noooooo!”)

Obviously, and for all the right reasons, Continuous Delivery is not for everyone. However, I would submit that if any iteration’s output can be deployed to production, it should be. You see, by automating the process for deployment, you get to repeatability and consistency for software releases (sprints) and by nature of the automation actually reduce or lower risk.

In fact, in many ways rapid and frequent deployment to production reduces risk:

Releases contain fewer changes Fixes are easier to address You don’t have to perform major rollbacks

So, back to a definition of DevOps! DevOps is sort of everything required to make AD and CD possible. However, one definition will not fit all. You still can’t define your needs and buy the DevOps solution off the shelf. You have to define DevOps for you and your business and from there, integrate it into your processes at all levels. DevOps is in part about creating the ability to move faster in the Digital Age, but doing so by ensuring quality at all stages of the software development and operations lifecycle.

What is your definition of DevOps?

6 Indicators of Software Product Development Success

6 indicators of product development success

What Drives Successful Product Development and Innovation in the Software Development Process?

Many companies face the challenge of successfully developing software products that drive their core business, leverage “big data,” and capture new revenue streams. The functions of an organization that lead the development process for these products may measure success according to a wide range of non-standard criteria, including:

Ability to meet the needs of internal and external customers Revenue creation Market share Timing Leverage of radical new technologies Competitiveness of new products in the marketplace

There are many other measures of success depending on the business model and the experience of the people involved in the effort. However, there is no consistent measure of product development success. Better yet, there are currently no consistent indicators of what drives product development success. It involves a lot of money, guess work and blind trust.

In collaboration with the Robert H. Smith School of Business, Center for Excellence in Services, at the University of Maryland and Rockbridge Associates, 3Pillar Global commissioned a comprehensive study of product development success drivers to benchmark product development and innovation success. The study was intended to explore what drives success, failure and challenge for businesses doing software product development. The exploration resulted in not just powerful insights, but the creation of a diagnostic index that benchmarks product development and innovation success.

The analysis identified six critical indices of product development success:

Culture Feedback Communication Collaboration Staffing Time/Budget

The research gathered information on a range of correlates and outcomes related to software product development and innovation success, including:

Industry trends Corporate demographics Product development function traits Adherence to methodologies And, macro factors such as competition

We will soon be releasing an executive summary of the relevant insights, as well as an online self-assessment that business leaders will be able to utilize to benchmark their own company’s product development success index. I’ll additionally be sharing many of the insights on each of the indices, as well as the overall research results, in future posts. If you’d like to learn more prior to that time, please contact me directly at Tony.Orlando@3PillarGlobal.com.

About the study:

The study was a collaborative effort commissioned by 3Pillar Global, a product development lifecycle management company that focuses on building innovative, revenue generating software products, and the Center for Excellence in Service, at the Robert H. School of Business, University of Maryland. Rockbridge Associates, Inc. a research firm specializing in technology and services issues, participated as a primary research provider.

The target population for the study consisted of software product development professionals in mid-sized and large corporations across a wide set of industries including: business services, education, financial services, healthcare, hospitality, information services, media and entertainment, technology and telecommunications.

DevOps: The Latest IT Threat (and Opportunity)

Development: Writing software

Operations: Maintaining software and managing the technical environment needed to run the software

Development + Operations = DevOps

Since the dawn of computing, we have built our data centers and IT organizations to deliver highly available compute power and services. The top priority was to avoid any and all actions that introduced risk to these systems and their associated business services — simply Never Ever Bring The Systems Down!

This risk averse mantra has made traditional IT departments not just methodical and controlling, but also notoriously SLOW and seemingly unresponsive. In the most stable IT organizations, it can take years and tens of millions of dollars to deliver new software to market. You see, traditional IT dictates that everything be planned to the finite level of detail and then redone every time there is an adjustment to strategy throughout the process – some projects never leave the planning stage. But, assuming IT can get through the months of planning, you now have the development and implementation time, followed by the testing — and I mean the testing of everything, ultra carefully, in a highly systematic manner. Today with the speed of the market and innovation, this model simply isn’t sustainable or competitive. By the time IT gets a new business service to market, it is already antiquated and outdated.

DevOps can eliminate the slow and unresponsive IT department established by this zero defect, no down-time mantra, and spring board IT back to again being a valued and enabling partner to the business.

I’ve had many conversations over the past few months with CIOs and CTOs about this new trend and buzz around DevOps. The common theme across all these conversations is that IT and Technology executives are under pressure to “Mature the IT Department.” Consistently across these stakeholders, mature in in this reference implies the following:

Ability to address the software development lifecycle Not just software, but additionally the infrastructure that supports the software and the business at large Support for both commercial and internal software Automated and continuous deployment Control and governance across the production environment, to include security A shift from traditional data centers to hybrid cloud computing models An ability to move at the speed of the market — Continuous Innovation

At the core of the need for DevOps is indeed an ability to move and do things faster. Conventional IT thinking views this request as a request to go fast, abandon planning, testing and introduce risk into the business of technology. Simply, moving so fast that a bunch of stuff breaks, while systems and services fail.

Now IT has to respond and answer the DevOps challenge, because if they don’t, company employees will continue to bypass the IT department and source their own technology and cloud services needed to do their jobs. And with it, the budget shift will continue out of IT and not just to Marketing, but now to the lines of business at a greater rate.

IT Departments and specifically CIOs remain in a fight for their lives.

Achieving the Mature IT Department is not a destination. There is no silver bullet. There is no multi-million dollar tool to buy and implement. DevOps is as much a cultural shift as it is a mindset and operational shift. What is important to know is that organizations just have to get started to enter into the trend that is DevOps. Think big, but execute small.

Drop long term, exhaustive and waterfall planning for all but the most strategic business strategies Embrace small and iterative change Break traditional large technology-centric initiatives into small, even tiny components Get comfortable introducing and implementing tiny changes into your environment daily (and then when comfortable, you can mature to many times a day at the scale of an Amazon or Facebook) Release “new” software into your environment early and often Embrace that software by definition will have bugs and defects Realize that small incremental failures are easier to rectify and be ready to undo small incremental changes verses huge enterprise changes As you go, continuously try new little things — do more of what works and less of what doesn’t

If this sounds a bit like the principles of Agile software development, that is, because it does. DevOps is all about modifying how the work is planned and executed. Iteratively: 1) Break the work into small pieces. 2) Do the work. 3) Put the work into production. 4) Learn from the last iteration and inform step 1 and repeat. Small incremental progress, verses big bang wholesale changes.

Yes, there are technologies and methods available to support the shift to DevOps, but don’t overlook the fact that the primary enabler is a cultural and mindset shift. I suggest companies find professional services partners that understand the modern software development lifecycle, already possess the culture and mindset necessary, and employ the partners in the business, to bridge the software development, testing and technology operations units to realize DevOps — and realize timely execution with agility.

Maintaining Physical, Emotional and Spiritual Well Being

Stella got my groove back.

A few months ago, life dealt me a blow and it not only disrupted my mojo, but it took me completely off my game.

Life often deals us unexpected setbacks. Momentum, happiness and a positive spirit can be derailed by bad news, disappointment or unplanned events.

If you’re at all like me – human – you’ve likely had similar experiences. You know the experience – it is characterized by going into stress mode. Psychologically you know you’re better. You want like nothing else to overcome the disruption and show the world what you are made of. You tackle the setback by forgoing your routine and tripling-down on what you feel you must to get (force) things back on track.

In my most recent example, it was work. The unexpected had happened and to make the situation even better, the expected did not. So I tripled-down. I stayed up later, worked longer, got up earlier and pushed those around me harder. If this is familiar, you probably know that what happens isn’t what you need, want or expect. While you may get a few things done and a couple of colleagues may join you in the triple-down, in actuality, you begin to feel worse not better.

What’s up? Why not? Well in my case (and maybe yours), not only was my family and personal life getting negatively affected because I changed my schedule, broke my regular rituals and good habits, but my physical, emotional and spiritual state additionally fell into disrepair. Those close to me at home and work wanted to deal with me less. Even the dog found me intolerable. I became insensitive and to many more than just the dog, intolerable.

Just what in the heck was up? I can’t speak to your personal and professional situations, but I figured out my situation was a result of having driven myself out of whack. Yep – I was completely out of balance!

Instead of looking objectively at the sources that contributed to taking me off my game in the first place, I simply poured on more of the wrong stuff, became frustrated and unhappy with most everyone and everything while forcing myself completely out of balance. Brilliant!!

HOW STELLA GOT MY MOJO BACK

Yes, I was so out of whack that even my dog Stella had begun to look at me like I was nuts. As I looked at her, I realized that she had also slowed down. She too had responded to my changed behavior and surely wasn’t her self either. Now sure, she was getting old, but she wasn’t so old that she should be exhibiting the lack of energy she was. She usually had a springy step and that “dog smile” was always all over her face when she was engaged, happy and fulfilled. I realized Stella, the dog, was out of balance too! Whoa!!

It was what happened next with Stella that changed my perspective, inspired this blog and ultimately restored my mojo.

As I sat there thinking about the dissatisfaction and discontent in my life, I jumped up and said, “let’s go Stella!” Stella got up hesitantly, but got up all the same and loyally followed me outside. In the front yard with no leash, I did something I haven’t done with Stella in years. I again said “let’s go Stella!” and I raced her the 1/4 mile to the neighborhood park. Stella galloped like she was a greyhound chasing a hare. Once in the park, she darted north-south and east-west. She chased squirrels. She chased one squirrel with such vigor that she slid directly into a tree like a baseball player sliding into home plate as the squirrel escaped up the tree. Energy and excitement so high, she bounced up and chased the next squirrel. Luckily she was fine, but what I realized was that the exercise had motivated her and she wasn’t old at all. Rather she was full of life. The exercise had restored her energy.

We got back to the house and she darted in like she hadn’t in weeks and ran all through the house as if to say “I’m back!” When she came back to find me, there she was with that spring in her step and happy “dog smile.”

I kept this routine up with Stella whenever I could. Surprisingly, what I realized was that she was more alert, ultra responsive, joyful to those around her and even seemed to eat and sleep better. And, when I awoke in the morning, so did she — ready to go and full of energy.

I applied what I was witnessing with Stella to myself. I got moving again. I restored my schedule of regular workouts. I got my diet back under control and made sure that I wasn’t too busy to eat right. Instead of staying up late, I went to bed early and got up early. When I went to bed, I listened to a few verses of my Bible, that thanks to the digital age is now on my iPhone and narrated.

My mojo was back and those around me now find the balanced me far more tolerable. And yes, the unexpected setback at work was offset by good news and forward progress. In fact, the whole experience has increased my confidence and happiness. I felt more in control and fulfilled.

It’s crazy to think about what a dog can teach us, but I feel blessed that Stella reminded me of what is important to be high energy, confident and in control so that I can positively impact my physical, mental and spiritual well being.

Stella’s lessons are below for anyone wanting to restore high levels of energy, balance and fulfillment in their life:

1. Exercise – exercise is the source of physical and mental energy. Get on a regular exercise routine as it not only drives our energy level, but also helps us recharge and gain clarity. 2. Sleep – get 7 to 8 hours of sleep a night. Keep a regular sleep schedule. Ideally go to bed early and wake up early. The best at any craft often site subscribing to the adage early to bed, early to rise… 3. Eat – breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Eat 4-5 small meals a day. Don’t overeat late dinners. Eat foods low to medium on a glycemic index – avoid sodas, white breads and junk food. What you put in your body, contributes considerably to your energy throughout the day. 4. Meditate – give your mind an opportunity to recharge. Take a few minutes each day to focus on your breathing and disengage from the rigors of life. (For those that are spiritual, reading the bible, saying prayers or reflecting on your blessings are great ways to recharge and feed yourself spiritually). 5. Breaks – the human body can only remain focused and energized for 60-90 minutes at a time. Be sure to take a break at least every 90 minutes. Get up walk around. Close your door and your eyes for 10 minutes. Talk to colleagues about anything but work topics. Take breaks to recharge, restore focus and be high energy. 6. Calendar management – no one is going to worry about your balance but you. Schedule your exercise. Schedule your family time. Schedule your personal time. Schedule your breaks. Recharge for high energy and high levels of mojo.

Do you have other rituals or habits that get you back on track when you get out of balance?

How much will software development cost?

YES! You can build a software product within your budget

Software development is often undertaken for any number of reasons, the top three are:

Building a new product Evolving an existing product Rebuilding an existing product

Underpinning these initiatives is usually delivering business outcomes of driving revenue growth, growing market share and/or enhancing customer experience (to protect existing revenues).

One of the questions I most often get in my day job leading Market and Client Services at 3Pillar Global is, “How much will it cost to build my software product or platform?” My response is often jokingly, that depends — how much do you have budgeted!?”

No! On a serious note, my response is typically It Depends — It truly depends on what you are trying to accomplish.

The cool thing about the digital era we live in today is that the possibilities of software development combined with near ubiquitous bandwidth, cloud computing principles and mobility — anyone can slap down a credit card, buy a domain and technically launch a .com or .net functioning platform in 30 minutes (if you are technically inclined). You can build or have built for you a standalone app for iOS or Droid in 1 to a few weeks for $10,000-$75,000. If your software development initiatives are aimed at instantiating a business model of enterprise scale across any industry you are now in the ballpark of a couple hundred grand to millions of dollars — again, depending on what you are trying to accomplish. Whatever your need, dreams and budget, I would recommend you spend as little as possible, think big, but build small.

Spending as little as possible, thinking big and building small will typically net you the right product that your customers will love, assures you deliver the business outcomes your business demands and result in the self-funding of continuous product innovation. The alternative, in my experience, is the wrong product, on-time and on-budget (or typically over-budget). The later does happen much more often than you might think. I see it regularly.

Ultimately, Yes! You can build you a software product within your budget. How can I commit to that you might ask? You see it comes down to product depth and width. Every software development endeavor has a breadth and depth. Based on what you are trying to accomplish and the measures of success, you can accomplish software development that will build your product, get you to market rapidly, allow you to win and serve customers early in your product lifecycle and drive the lifeblood of any business – revenues.

Product Depth and Width replaces the old notion of Time, Resource and Budget. Throwing more people and budget at a product development effort doesn’t translate to a better product, faster. It often translates into a product, that cost more, took a lot of time and left both business and customer less than satisfied.

By applying the principles of rapid development, optimizing customer feedback, gaining immediate and continued product adoption, you can build only what you need and nothing you don’t well within your budget and accomplish your business objectives. And — I must reiterate, a Product Development outcome that ultimately leads to self-funding the product development investment itself.

I see failed software development and software products regularly. I’m blessed that my company often gets called in to clean up what I have come to call “Software Development Gone Wrong.” There is commonality in most of the messes and failures I examine. In short, they all are non-functioning products that are a long way from launching and generating revenue or they are the wrong product on-time and on-budget and the business is — well, let’s just say, the business is not happy. At the core of the failures I’ve been able to explore, are:

Mindset Approach Thinking big and going big No customer feedback throughout development End of full development lifecycle release instead of releasing software early and often

Do you agree or disagree with my philosophy and experience? How are you addressing the budget question in software development today in an era where time-to-market is of the essence and budgets are limited?

Disciplines of World Class Organizations

If everything is important, then nothing is.

Over my years in business and leadership in private $4M to public $4.5B companies, I have created, leveraged and evolved many strategies to drive organizational growth, build cohesive (leadership) teams and develop high performing World Class Organizations.

Key to leading teams and organizations to achieve consistent growth, profit and client success objectives is identifying a manageable number of disciplines that when institutionalized and operationalized have sustainable impact on the success of your business. They become the platform for a high performance culture.

While one could generate a list of seemingly infinite strategies, systems, processes and tools to manage and lead any business, what follows are 16 Disciplines that when leveraged consistently underpin highly successful World Class Organizations.

1. Create Clarity. Don’t just communicate annual goals and objectives. Vision, mission and strategies are often only embraced by the senior most leaders and stakeholders of organizations. They are important to have, communicate and publish. But, World Class Organizations are clear about the fundamental concepts that underpin the vision and strategies so that everyone across the organization has clarity on what is and isn’t important.

2. Put Clients First. If you don’t put your clients and customers first, somebody else will. Make a concerted effort to put your clients and customers above all else. Reach out and engage with at least one client each and every day.

3. Set “BHAG” Goals. Set and consistently communicate your dream big, quantum leap goals and put due dates on them. 4. Prospect, Close, Work the Funnel. In that order — prospect everyday. We live in a social and relationship world, so everyone is in client services and sales today – employ the organization in this discipline. 5. Develop Repeatable Processes. These should be honed and support scale. 6. Proactive Recruiting. This is an all the time thing that should never stop. Have a bench of recruits you can hire in 24 hours at all times. 7. Nurture Top Performers. Invest in A Players. 8. Time Management. Be sure your team uses their time wisely. Don’t underestimate the value of daily planning and time management through project, action and priority management vs. calendar management. Inspect what is expected. Human nature is to “respect what is inspected.” 9. Develop and Train. Provide non-stop opportunities for best-in-class training. Create a spirit of always-on learning. “Sharpen the saw.” “Groove the swing.” 10. High Value Networking. Proactive relationship management, own references and drive referrals to your business. “Give to get.” 11. Multi-channel Ecosystem. Continually invest in an influencer, supporter, buyer and partner relationship ecosystem to outflank the competition. 12. Proactive Performance Management. All the time. This never stops. Have robust rewards and recognition systems that your employees value personally and professionally. 13. Healthy Debate. Examination, involvement and respectful debate of strategies, top opportunities and organizational challenges. Welcome a difference of opinion. Craft the best strategies. Beware of team members who want to operate in a command and control, “We’ll do this ourselves,” autonomous silo. 14. Target and focus on Dream Big clients. Invest heavily and disproportionately until you compete for and win the business. Never give up. Stay focused. Less is more. War room your Dream Big progress regularly. 15. Create Top Quality Work Products. Produce top-notch work products and deliverables that are transferrable and reusable. 16. Expense Management. “You have to spend money to make money.” Ensure ROI form every dollar spent. Examine your top and bottom spenders.

I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences. Do you agree or disagree with these disciplines? Have you seen others that should round out this list? What successes and failures have you been part of with and without these disciplines? Please share your comments

Alternatives to Staff Augmentation

Need to be more competitive? Then drop the outsourcing and staff augmentation mentality. In fact, staff augmentation in support of your strategic initiatives and revenue generating business model likely won’t deliver optimum business outcomes.

Not delivering results fast enough? Does the competition seem to be gaining ground on you? Then stop believing no one can influence and co-deliver on your digital strategies and software development efforts better than you.

Face it, software isn’t just the brand today — Software IS your business. Your digital strategies and investments instantiate and directly or indirectly drive your business model. That implies that your customers’ digital experience and revenue generation is directly or indirectly impacted by your software development and digital innovation strategies. Imitation is flattering, but easily achieved in this day and age. Just how can your business sustain software product innovation — that is, how can your business model sustain continuous innovation to remain competitive at the speed of business?

Here is the harsh reality: The companies that attempt to go about their digital strategies and software product development efforts internally with staff augmentation and outsourcing models are ceding competitive advantage to those that embrace product development partnerships. Mathematically, the difference (the business result) looks like 1+1=2 versus 1+1=3.

There is a difference and both the market leaders (winners) and laggards (losers) are experiencing it. In a recent WSJ post, Christopher Mims referenced a recent Frost & Sullivan survey that found that “80% of people working for organizations with more than 1,000 employees go around the IT department and use (or even buy) software that lives primarily in the cloud.” Why? Innovation at the speed of business is better found outside the business than within it today. Our employees are out-innovating our businesses and us as leaders. They know better than we, that going outside the company to find innovative ways to accomplish their jobs drives their own personal competitive advantage.

Staff augmentation and outsourcing originated with the advent of Information Technology in the business. As IT grew to support the business, so did the staff augmentation and outsourcing market – exponentially. The issue today is that many are applying an old model to a new problem.

Staff augmentation and outsourcing are still great ways to cost effectively achieve the people and technology capacity needed to implement and operate the internal systems that power our businesses. However, alluded to above, there is a whole new field of play in business strategy execution and competitive advantage. That field is the digital economy brought on by the maturing of the Internet, ubiquitous bandwidth, mobile and emerging technologies. We are no longer in need of technology to support the business and our employees, we need technology that competitively attracts, engages and retains our customers in a constantly adapting and evolving manner.

We simply can’t do it all ourselves, but staff augmentation and outsourcing won’t deliver the competitive advantage we need. As in all things business, our models of execution must evolve to keep pace with the current day and we must lead our market’s evolution to truly have sustained competitive advantage.

Digital strategies and software product development today require that we embrace a new breed of partnership. One that makes our thinking and strategies better. A partnership that delivers not just insights through experience, but one that is also clearly in command of our required business outcomes. The successful partner will not take over or own anything in your business; that should remain your intellectual property. Rather, the successful partner will leverage their knowledge of your business strategies and desired outcomes to accelerate the innovative development of your intellectual property in a collaborative co-managed fashion, which will put you in a position to achieve sustained digital product innovation to retain leadership of your markets.

Below is a comparison of the qualities and characteristics of a Product Development Partner to your business and a Staff Augmentation or Outsourcing supplier.

Product Development Partner Vs. Staff Aug or Outsourcing * Business outcome orientation * Task orientation * Product mindset * Technology mindset * Product frame * Project frame * Think and do * Do * Product teams * Bodies * Adaptive product lifecycle * Software development lifecycle * Outcome pricing and contracts * Resource at a rate T&M contracts * Business and objectives alignment * IT and technology alignment

Do you agree or disagree? Have an opinion? I would value you commenting and sharing personal thoughts and experiences.

Don’t Get Rid Of Your Relationship Builders!

I recently attended a YPO EMBA event at Georgetown University in Washington D.C. It was a top-notch experience and the company was second to none. Daniel Pink talked about the new A-B-C’s of selling. If you can picture Alec Baldwin in Glenngary Glen Ross, you’ve got the old A-B-C’s in mind. Steve McClatchy shared his thoughts on how the right systems and processes free us to focus our time where senior executives should – in making evolutionary improvements in our businesses and lives to break the status quo. However, it was Matt Dixon of CEB that truly inspired this blog post.

Matt Dixon shared CEB’s research on customer service and sales that is chronicled in his book, The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation. The implications were that customer service and sales professionals fall into 1 of 5 profiles and those that fall into the Relationship Builder profile are always outperformed by the other 4 profiles. Of course, you can safely assume from the book title that the top performing profile was the Challenger.

On the surface the results can be discouraging. Most of us were taught in business that to have the best customer service employees, hire relationship people. What are we to do? Do we get rid of all our relationship people – the Relationship Builders – in favor of Challengers? NO! That could prove catastrophic to our businesses. To further complicate matters, put a position description out or retain a recruiter to hire you a “Challenger” and see what happens. I’ll shorten your learning path here – no one markets themselves as Challengers. In fact, the best Challengers don’t event know they are Challengers.

What to do! What to do?

In my business and market development experiences, I have witnessed that the best Challengers are indeed also outstanding Relationship Builders. That is, they are Relationship Builders that have developed the Challenger capabilities and qualities. With information symmetry between buyer and seller in today’s markets, customers often know more about you and your business than your team’s do. Said another way, thanks to the information available on the internet, almost 60% of the buying cycle is complete before your team even knows there is (or was) an opportunity!

As I sat there recalling the Challenger Sales development we did while I was at CA Technologies, as well as considered what is currently propelling growth at 3Pillar Global, I had a moment of enlightenment. What has happened is that our markets have continued to evolve. The customer has evolved more rapidly than the supplier. Most of us moved our go-to-market machines over the years from transactional selling to solution selling. Solution selling today has become as commodity as transactional selling – teams now show up and throw up with the playbook training and programming they are provided on their business’ “solutions,” which is merely transactional selling with lipstick. Prospects and customers hear the same ‘ol solution pitches from everyone in your noisy sector. They grow bored quickly of yet another story from another vendor about how underneath the lipstick, your product and services are better than the next guy’s. And, of course your products and services are far superior, so the customer obviously needs what you provide and they are fools for not seeing it.

Solution selling is what Matt Dixon refers to as “Leading With” – leading with your end game being your predefined solution. Rather, Challenger selling is about “Leading To” – leading an insights based conversation with the customer that creates constructive tension. Traditional Relationship Builders tend to lead conversations that reduce customer tension. Reducing customer tension takes form by being generous with your time, being genuine and likable, being a customer advocate and getting along with everyone. We just defined a traditional Relationship Builder. A true Challenger will assert control, teach and tailor the conversation – they will drive an insights based conversation to create constructive tension. The customer or prospect doesn’t feel like they are dealing with a sales person, rather they feel like they are having an educational experience that drives them to think about their needs in a reframed way and in dimensions predetermined solution sellers simply can’t match.

Yes! You can indeed develop the Challenger in your Relationship Builders, but it has to be done deliberately. Conditioned Relationship Builders may struggle to get comfortable Challenging their customers and making the shift from reducing tension to driving successful constructive tension. The following are the abilities, skills and traits that Relationship Builders need to develop to become successful Challengers:

Deep domain experience and unique perspectives. There is no substitute for a Challenger actually having been there and done it. Strong two way communications skills. A Challenger does not merely guide a discovery conversation, manage the agenda, nor serve as a concierge. Customizes the relationship. A Challenger recognizes that no two customers are identical. They identify the unique customer value drivers and can readily identify the customer’s economic drivers. Assertive. Challengers are very comfortable professionally pressuring the customer and have no fear discussing money and contract terms.

To short cut and speed the development of the Challenger in your Relationship Builders, you may want to team the high potential Relationship Builders with your existing Challengers. Another source for Challenger development is mentorship by the executives in your business. Many senior executives are natural Challengers who are very comfortable leading assertive insight based two way communications.

I’d love to hear from you. Do your Challengers outperform your Relationship Builders? Do you have Relationship Builders who are also Challengers? What experiences and insights have you gleaned as you’ve evolved your client facing organizations?

Finding Success in an Increasingly Digital World – Build, Buy or Partner?

Senior executives and boards are demanding top-line revenue growth. They insist on leveraging innovative and emerging technologies to monetize data and information in new ways to attract and serve their customers more effectively. Software is now becoming not just the brand, but also the product. However, legacy organizational approaches are hindering the ability to tap into and execute in the rapidly evolving digital economy.

Software forever more is changing a company’s brand. Most companies today are facing a rapidly expanding gap between strategic demand for innovative software application development and their ability to execute on that software development internally. The greatest proportion of technical resources in many organizations today is aligned to supporting ongoing operations and maintaining the base of existing applications. Senior executives and boards are searching for new revenue streams found in the digital landscape, while protecting existing revenues. Their requests include the use of emerging technologies to provide scalable, anywhere, anytime, any-device revenue generation with rich user experience.

This demand, coupled with the pace at which web and mobile technologies are evolving, creates the need for innovation with never before seen time-to-market and thus, time-to-revenue pressures. Taking advantage of social, local and mobile application integration, as well as analytics, further complicates the challenge. How are organizations to overcome the digital world innovation and execution challenges they face?

Traditionally, organizations evaluate how to accomplish new software product development against a Build, Buy, or Partner option analysis. With ever increasing need for software, a global market to serve, competitive pressures, and the need for new or enhanced revenues all colliding at the crossroads of “we need it yesterday,” the Build, Buy, or Partner decision can no longer be mutually exclusive.

How do you find success in an increasingly Digital World?

Organizations should no longer tackle the innovation and execution challenge internally or on their own. Business and the Digital World are simply moving too fast. A complex reality is that innovation and execution happens much too slow if attempted organically and solely internally. A simpler reality being faced, is one in which companies aren’t able to locate and hire all the deep technical resources they need to adequately staff internal projects, and just when they think they have – disruption like attrition and technology shifts hinder their ability to execute and thus achieve strategic objectives. In order to meet the time-to-revenue goals while exploiting emerging technologies, organizations are being forced to adopt a Build and Partner product development strategy.

To Build and Partner implies that organizations are simultaneously leveraging the best of both worlds to meet their goals. Build and Partner doesn’t imply that the organization gives up the idea, the intellectual property or the innovation. Rather, it allows them to capitalize on the idea, develop the intellectual property, and speed innovation. Building through Partnership challenges the status quo, brings out of the box insights, experiences and thinking that make even the best organizations better.

Successfully building software products through partnership requires that companies select a partner that brings a few key attributes to the relationship:

Product Mindset. The product development partner must possess a Product Mindset. Insight into what customers want today and in the future must be aligned with the intersection of trends, current technology, delivery gaps and business process to generate desired (revenue) business outcomes. A Product Mindset includes a business outcomes aligned lifecycle approach to product development, working towards long-term sustainability. Thought Leadership. The successful partner will be thought leaders, take a strong position on your product strategy and positively impact your product strategy beyond technology and methodology. They will challenge the status quo and make the best businesses, better. Emerging Technology. Your product development partner must have deep expertise in emerging technologies not for technology sake, rather to apply them to your business. Only those partners that can work at the intersection of business and technology can best serve your needs.