Bandwidth & the BCG

As has been mentioned before, I am no longer a n=1 business.  One of my proudest achievements of the last 12-18 months is the emergence of a team of focused, committed, high-performing associates who deliver my stuff at least as well as me.  Not only do my colleagues treat the work as seriously as I ever did, their fresh eyes see innovations and opportunities that have been passing pass me by.

I deliberately hand over interesting projects and not only when I can’t be in two places at once.  In the medium term this should expand our active client base but for the moment I am embracing personal financial pain in order to radically change my working life.

I am freeing up bandwidth to chase opportunities in an entirely new domain; by this time next year I plan to describe myself as the CMO of a tech start-up.  I will still own and operate a pharma consulting company but it will no longer be the first line of my LinkedIn profile.  In BCG matrix terms I am relegating my old business to ‘cash cow’ status in order to make room for a ‘star’.

I’m excited at the prospect of solving brand new problems in an unfamiliar commercial space.  I’m looking forward to being ‘inexperienced’.

I’m reminded of advice given to me by an improviser in 1991, the year I quit working for other people...

Enjoy not knowing

Confidence = space

In business I come across as a confident person. I've been doing what I do for a long time now so when I'm brought in to think about an issue I've got a pretty good idea of what the unspoken issues are likely to be and what solutions might fit.

I do everything I can to ensure that my clients have confidence in me because it lessens my workload. A worried client costs me time on additional phone calls or face-to-face meetings that are quite hard to monetise. I need my contacts to exude confidence in me when they're discussing the project at all those internal meetings that I neither get, nor want, to be invited to. When that goes missing I get the dreaded phone call asking for an early look at a draft and my timeline is shot, which can be disastrous for the overall project.

Generally I am paid to design and deliver training programmes. A large part of what 'design' entails is making intelligent decisions in the right order. My favourite example of this is deciding on the PowerPoint template design before anyone knows how much text needs to be displayed on the screen.  It creates unnecessary conflict and heartache every time. The motivation behind this rookie error is usually as simple as someone senior in the organisation asking to 'see something' as assurance that the project is on track and the slide template looks like an easy and uncontroversial thing to show the bosses.  A better response to the political pressure is to have a meeting and run through the development timeline, explaining what decisions will be made in what sequence and why

I see my clients' confidence in me as a tangible asset that allows me to run projects at the pace that best serves that project. As with any asset it needs to be protected: good communications, dressing well and face-to-face meetings early in the process.

The Marketers' Dilemma

(what follows is an essay written for my consultancy business)

 

There is a tendency for marketers to see their roles as all-seeing strategists who, because they cannot direct the field force to specific action, abdicate responsibility for the nature of sales activity.  There is a direct correlation between the distance between the ‘flipchart and the field’ and the likelihood of such an abdication.  The negative consequences of this attitude range from the relatively trivial (e.g. time wasted on internal politicking) to the profound (e.g. a failed global product launch).  However, this is not all the fault of the marketers.  Many (most) pharma companies have imposed strict intra-company communications codes to govern the quality, quantity and access of marketing to sales.  The marketer who seeks to take more responsibility is often explicitly forbidden from doing so.

 

Marketers aren't respected because they have a not entirely unfair reputation for wasting salespeople’s time.  Organising time in front of a field force is very expensive prospect.  Getting a team off the road and into a room takes actual money from someone’s budget but this is dwarfed by the opportunity cost of time-off-road.

So why don't marketers always get the respect they should?

• It is perceived that they change their minds too often, both at a departmental and individual level
• A one-size-fits-all dictates of strategy do not gel with the quick-fire think-on-your-feet, at-the-coalface world of selling, especially when global strategy is soon to contradict local selling challenges
• From a field force perspective, marketers choose not to see the whole picture (e.g. P1 / P2 detailing) and tend to speak as if they're the only conversation going on in the room, wilfully ignoring the fact that theirs is only one of many voices that salespeople listen to
• They are sometimes accused of being victims of ‘agency capture’; being too enthusiastic about adopting the slick, overly clever marketing tricks that make doctors immediately suspicious

Furthermore, the context of the actual communication with the sales team is often wilfully ignored.  Sales teams are expensive, local resources (financed out of national budgets) that must first of all answer to local management priorities.  And Marketing is a multi-layered beast that rarely speaks with a single voice.  At every level (local, regional, global) it is staffed by clever, but not necessarily wise or smart, ambitious people looking to make a splash.  Such people aren't great at taking direction: who got into marketing to be a messenger for the regional / global office?

 

Marketing-sales communications are thus reduced to a few highly regulated interactions per year: the sales conference.  Even here every brand initiative is competing for ‘share of mind’ with other brands, marketing projects, training needs, team-building exercises, regulatory presentations, award ceremonies and so on.  The project is also competing with the pet project of the local marketer, which may or may not align with the global or regional initiative, and which may not be at all worthwhile anyway.

 

Global and regional marketers will always be accused of ‘not understanding the local situation’.  There is always a level of specificity you're accused of misreading.  If a local marketer based in Reading can be accused of ‘not getting it’ by a representative in Scotland then what chance the global marketer sitting in Japan or Switzerland?  And the challenges don't stop once marketing is in the room with the sales team.  Most of the more common objections given by salespeople for not following a marketing strategy can grouped under headings of ‘credibility’ and ‘practicality.

Objections over Credibility Issues

• Not relevant to my doctors
• Too complicated (I don't understand it and I'll lose credibility if I stumble)
• Obnoxiously simplistic (I will lose credibility if I take this approach)
• Too aggressive to the competitor (offends those doctors happy with the competitor product)

Objections over Practicality Issues

• The team doesn't the strategy as we’re successful enough (i.e. making budget) without it
• Conflicts with the ongoing expectations that the company has of the salesperson (complying with the sales model, call rate, strategies for other brands)
• Unrealistic in my selling environment (we work primarily in group selling / time-sensitive environments)

 

Similarly, there are a parallel set of objections that local marketers raise for not following a regional / global marketing strategy.  These include, but are not limited to the strategy not being 100% relevant in this market, being too complicated for ‘our reps’, clashing with a local initiative, been tried already, clashes with sales model, regulatory issues, translation issues, being unrealistic in our selling environment (groups, time sensitive), the imagery is racially wrong and insufficient time at sales meetings to explain it properly.

 

The Dramatic Change process can assist global, regional and local marketers in a number of ways…

1. At the very beginning of the process we co-opt sales training.  This removes all objections around sales models
2. Before meeting the sales representatives we co-opt sales management down to first-line level.  This allows issues around sales team priorities, time-off-road for meetings to be highlighted and positively resolved
3. Our baseline philosophy overcomes ‘credibility’ issues by fully aligning marketing strategy with doctor needs via Single Patient Focus®
4. We offer solutions for all selling environments including group and time sensitive selling
5. We set up a cogent and workable relationship between overarching strategy and local / individual sales tactics via Pre-Call Planning exercises.  A Dramatic Change programme can meet mulitple needs in a sales meeting context
6. We never focus on the competition
7. We don't require globally consistent sales materials to give the appearance that a recognisable global strategy is being enacted
8. Our programmes are fun.  Team-building is a given

For more information visit the company website: www.dramaticchange.com

Excellent advice

Great article from the HBR blog. 

Adrenaline plays funny tricks on the mind, and you need to establish the muscle memory of a full, physical rehearsal in order to give your body something remembered to do when the adrenaline kicks in. A mental run-through is not enough. You must rehearse. 

I love the phrase 'jumping the couch'.

A price-maker but a date-taker

I've found myself musing on the nature of success.  When you're in the middle of a life how do you know if it's going well?

This is especially acute if you're self-employed and thus denied the external loci of the annual performance review, the promotion achieved or denied and the size of your bonus.  What indicators can you look to to vindicate the choice you made to go out on your own?  I don't think it's enough to get to the end of the tax year and check the bank account, especially as money is rarely the chief reason why people start their own businesses.  Making money is necessary for survival but not sufficient for success.

I need an array of projects at different stages of the development cycle.  These projects should be with a range of clients and preferably spread around the world.

My development cycle runs something like this: -

• Initial inquiry ➙ credentials presentation
• Identified need ➙ costed proposal
• Project sign-off & timeline agreed
• Design ➙ delivery ➙ invoice
• Feedback
• Initial discussion on follow-up

My business model relies on me delivering twenty or so projects a year.  Obviously life is so much easier when they spread out over the calendar rather than the stress of 'feast or famine' but of course that's preferable to no projects at all.

Because my work requires largish numbers of people to be herded into a single room I have very little influence over the delivery date of the project.  I'm a price-maker but a date-taker.

Summer is always quiet in Europe because of holidays.  January is busy because everyone wants kick-off meetings which means that December is a high-stress month of preparation interrupted by the 'silly season'.

So can I achieve this even spread of projects over the year?  Geography helps as America takes shorter summer holidays than Europe and my Asian clients operate with less seasonality still (Chinese New Year notwithstanding).  More important is upping the variety of my offering: if my business is built solely on 'energiser' sessions for sales teams then I'm going to be busy at New Year and a la rentrée and no other time.  That's not going to make me feel successful.

A good starting point is actually documenting the development cycle.  Understanding where each active project is sitting on the continuum helps me to spot upcoming periods of stress.  It also forces me to keep prospecting for new work through the busy patches and it forces me to develop offerings that aren't so seasonal; for example working with smaller, more easily assembled groups of marketing as well as larger sales teams.

If in the course of a week I'm pitching, writing proposals, meeting new clients for the first time and actually delivering a project then I'm pleased.  Whenever I can see months that look like this I sometimes go crazy and start wishing for a vacation.

The self-employed: often pleased, rarely happy.

High priority

Spent the day in Switzerland talking to a couple clients about upcoming product launches.   In both cases I'd been assured that my involvement was 'high priority'. I've been on holidays for ten days and, in one case, nothing has happened in the interim.  Literally nothing.  My carefully crafted proposal hadn't even been read.
Merlin Mann is brutally realistic about this: -

The only way that I will be able to tell if you thought something was 'high priority' was that you finished it. If it's not done it's not really a priority

When a client tells me something's 'high priority' mostly she's just making nice.  I'm not saying that she's lying, but rather there's a misuse of the phrase.  What she actually means is that there's an inclination within the company to get a project up but that inclination hasn't yet been matched with the necessary will.  It does me no good whatsoever to call her on it; she is still the client.  Instead I smile and put a note in the diary to follow up with her in a month or so. If she indicates commitment with action in the mean time then I'm ready to respond immediately.

The other client demonstrated what 'high priority' actually looks like: upcoming meetings diarised, purchase orders generated and a timeline for senior management sign-off. The actual phrase 'high priority' didn't rate a mention.

A Decent Proposal

I've spent much of the last week grinding out a proposal for a large project.  Often I find writing the document to be harder work than actually delivering the project.  There appear to be possible three explanations for this: -

1. Parkinson's Law.  After an extremely busy stretch my time is freer and so a task that would otherwise have been properly completed in hours expanded to take days
2. Big Projects need Big Documents.  The job is unquestionably large and quite complicated (multimarket, potentially requiring multilingual delivery, etc).  Ironically, it's the simplicity of my approach that's got me invited onto the project team yet my instincts are screaming out for a long and complex proposal
3. The Unseen Audience.  One of the advantages in making a face-to-face presentation is that I know exactly who I'm speaking to.  This sounds obvious but consider the alternative: an emailed PDF (or PPT presentation) will almost certainly be circulated amongst stakeholders who I am yet to meet.  I have no idea of their needs, level of involvement or even their level of written English.  Do they need to understand my background before getting into the detail or are they going to go straight for the costings?

A client once described to me a phenomenon known as 'fear-based slide proliferation': -

When addressing an unknown audience (or one that's scary in some other way) the temptation to add in just one more PowerPoint slide can be irresistible

This is apposite because what I'm describing here is the effect of fear.  Freelancers fall prey to Parkinson's Law because we're terrified of not being busy.  Big projects are a high stakes game.  An unseen audience can seem unknowable.  The impulse to work harder and longer in the face of such things is natural.  My business is built entirely on project work.  I do a relatively small number of high-value projects a year so proposals are a vital part of my workstream.  It just frustrates me that I'm not more efficient at writing them.

But as inevitable as death comes the moment when I have to embrace that unsettlingly liberating feeling that comes as I hit 'send'.

Manufactured urgency

My projects fall into two broad categories: -

1. Product launches
2. Institutional / cultural change

Implemented correctly, my IP has value in both scenarios, however, it needs to be positioned  differently in each case to achieve the desired outcome.  Any project that seeks both endpoints (i.e. successfully launch a product + change a sales culture) will almost certainly fail.

I prefer working on launches.  The heady combination of defined timelines and clearly understood success criteria brings out my best.  Who doesn't enjoy the challenge of 'getting it right the first time'?*

Institutional change is different.  These projects are too often plagued by a poorly manufactured sense of urgency driven by soft deadlines and project teams who are easily distracted by higher priority tasks (like product launches).  This is not to say that such projects aren't vital, just that the organisational benefits are often subtle to the point of immeasurability.

This is not solely, or even primarily, an external consultant's perspective; being invited to work on a product launch is an unambiguously gilt-edged opportunity whereas a cultural change project is often perceived as a poisoned chalice.

None of this is especially noteworthy.  Neither is, I suppose, my conclusion: that smaller consultancies are better at finite, high octane projects like product launches.  We don't have the manpower or the willpower for the endless meetings that come with cultural change projects.  We tire of writing 'reminder' emails to follow up on proposals written in good faith and great urgency in response to artificial deadlines.  And unlike the likes of McKinsey, we rarely have the stomach to bill by the hour for work that doesn't seem to be going anywhere.

Perhaps it's my performing background but I do interventions better than processes.  I find it easier to enact change in people than systems.  In fact the first thing I'll do if you offer me process work is convert the project into a series of face-to-face events so that I can focus the system's attention and demonstrate value.  Which is, of course, just another way of manufacturing urgency.

* A long-standing joke of mine is that launch is the only marketing activity that pharma knows how to do well; its instinctive response to any other scenario is 'relaunch'

Betriebsrat

Another interesting aspect of last week's pilot programme in Munich was the intervention of the company's Betriebsrat (Works Council).  Here is the strange contradiction at the heart of the modern German economy; dynamic and innovative yet also so very protective.  In Mitteleuropa not everything is sacrificed on the altar of efficiency.

I am a farmer's son who has been self-employed for most of his life with no more than a passing acquaintance with organised labour so this was all a new experience for me.

As the session was officially designated as 'training', severe and immutable restrictions were imposed on which observers were allowed in the room.  These were announced late on Monday morning ahead of a Tuesday start.   As a designated 'co-facilitator' I was okay but strictly on a 'named basis'.  Not all of the Head Office attendees were so lucky.

Everything I read indicates that the German economic model is functioning better than any of its competitors so who am I to question their methods?

But what I did learn was that you'd better check with the Works Council before you schedule an observable pilot programme in Germany.  Given that no trainee likes being under the microscope as they learn the Betriebsrat knew exactly what it was doing in warding off the Head Office observers.

Subcontractors

Like most Australians I am cheerfully, obnoxiously monolingual.  It's remarkable how infrequently this is an impediment to working in Europe.  Not one of my clients speaks less than 'business English' and most not just fluently but eloquently.  One of the great luxuries of my provenance is that I can travel the world assuming that the other guy has the skills to bridge the language gap.

Only when I'm asked to train a European non-English sales team is my (lack of) language a barrier.  Asian and Middle Eastern sales teams do not insist that suppliers like me are fluent in their language.  Conversely, a salesperson contentedly living and working in Lyon or Nuremberg with no ambition to climb the corporate ladder has no more need for English than her Sydney-based colleague has for French or German.  European delivery is literally the only time when I'm expected to do the heavy lifting in terms of language and on my own I fail miserably.

In consultancy terms, I have a capability problem: I'm forced to subcontract the face-to-face component of such projects to other suppliers.  Readers of this Blog won't be surprised that I find this hard.  The self-reliance, not so say solipsism, of my Headcount: 1 work life means I rarely have to play nicely with others.

Earlier in the month I delivered a programme simultaneously in French, German, Italian and Spanish.  Well, four terrific bilingual trainers did the delivery whilst I shuttled from room to room giving a somewhat adequate impression of being in change.  It all went off as planned and we all left with reputations enhanced.

Drastically short timelines had forced me to recruit the trainers en masse.  Someone I trust at another consultancy gave me a strong recommendation and that trainer brought in three colleagues.  In an instant my capability issue was solved.  However, from the outset the four of them made it abundantly clear that they had a wealth of shared experiences and I was the outsider.  For some reason this bothered me and it took a while for me to pinpoint the reason why.  After all I spend my professional life as an outsider interacting with large groups who share many experiences not the least of which is working for the same company in identical roles.

My disquiet stemmed from the fact that my dealing with them oscillated between that of individual suppliers each requiring my undivided attention and a cartel negotiating en bloc.  And they were a cartel.  There was an awareness, subconscious perhaps, that my ability to replace any or all of them  was practically zero, especially as the project had to be delivered so early in the new year.  The role of shop steward was shared around; at different times each declared that he or she was speaking on behalf of the group.  A picture emerged near constant back-channel communication over my project's shortcomings.

No man likes being talked about behind his back.

Then less than a week before delivery I was forced into an across-the-board financial renegotiation resulting in a fee increase that pushed the project to the verge of unprofitability.  I later discovered that the shop steward in question wasn't actually speaking for the four but the implication that he was improved his bargaining position at the time.  By outsourcing the recruitment of the team I took myself out of the loop.

Perhaps part of the problem was that without an English language component of the project my prominence was lessened.  My main job was running interference for the the trainers in the presence of a less-than-perfect client.  It's not easy to be a coach when you're used to being a player.

One of the major failings of my career has been my inability to develop other trainers to a point where clients see them as interchangeable with me.  My personal brand has always been too strong and I've taken a perverse pleasure in that.  Yet without that facility my company's capacity for growth is limited by my Headcount: 1 diary.  Right now my earnings are entirely tied to what I can charge for my own time.  Learning to work effectively with subcontractors is an obvious first step in moving beyond this limitation.

I'm 43 years old and I cannot do this job in this way forever. 

You might be a bad client if...

Are you a bad client?  Maybe you are but just don't know it yet.   From time to time we all need a little help in recognising our shortcomings.  As the joke goes, everyone thinks they're funny and no one thinks they're bad in bed, so here's a handy spotter's guide.

You might be a bad client if you...

1. Get your advertising agency to write your internal emails for you
2. Insist that the entire project team sit in on four-hour teleconferences that are really just a procession of one-on-one conversations between you and individual suppliers
3. Openly refer to your co-workers as idiots who cannot think for themselves
4. Don't bother printing out materials ahead of teleconferences then complain that you can't open the PDF file on your iPhone and then insist that the tabled multipage documents be read aloud
5. Talk to your legal department before picking up a phone to discuss a problem in person
6. Demand a discounted fee for the privilege of working with you for the first time
7. Refer to internal processes by acronyms and individuals by their first names and get annoyed when asked to explain what you mean
8. Respond to verbal questions via email and emailed questions verbally
9. Schedule daylong meetings  the week before Christmas that start at 9am (and so require people to fly in the night before, thus spending more time away from family) and then fail to produce a daylong agenda
10. Let relationships between suppliers fester to the point where turf wars develop
11. Demand 'world's best practice' proposals where cost, timing and every other conceivable parameter are ignored because you can't be bothered thinking through the inevitable and necessary limitations your company will impose on the project from the outset
12. Insist on having a personal but not necessarily amicable relationship with subcontractors thus disrupting your suppliers' delivery chains
13. Fail to master MS-Outlook and so force everyone around you to second guess whether your hour-long meeting will take fifteen minutes or half a day
14. Identify a non-problem, insist that it be solved and then accuse everyone else of acting like old maids when it doesn't come to pass
15. Can't imagine how salespeople of different nationalities might just get along over drinks and dinner
16. Aren't really sure if you're negotiating in £ or € (seriously)

Glad to have that off my chest.

Blindingly obvious (when you think about it)

Last night I caught up with a few performer types for some year-end pints.  I was introduced to a guy who described himself as a film maker.  He'd recently set up a production company and we had a very interesting discussion about the challenge of getting stuff to screen, in particular the difference between film and television.  He shared an insight that had never occurred to me before: - 

To make a film all you need is money.  After that it all comes down to the quality of the work

To make TV you usually need a programming slot before you begin

Whereas film production companies focus on making films, TV production companies devote all their energy to the pitch before the creative process can even begin.

A bullet dodged

Recently I endured one of the strangest meetings of my consultancy career.

It began with an email from an ex-client who was now an account manager with one of the most successful pharmaceutical advertising agencies in Europe.  She had a client whose product was facing some specific strategic challenges that she felt I could help resolve.  Given our history I was confident she had a realistic idea of what my company does and specific thoughts as to how I might be able to help her help her client.  Could I come in for a pitch meeting?

When an agency this big calls you take the meeting.

It was scheduled for 930am a few Friday's ago at the agency’s lovely Home Counties offices and to run for ‘ninety minutes, two hours at the outside’.  As requested I customised my basic credentials presentation to hone in on the product’s current needs by highlighting some successful work with other products facing similar challenges.

In a pre-meeting she’d stressed that Charlie, the client in question, was sometimes a bit unpredictable and hard to handle.  That she’d insisted on a formal pre-meeting should have been red flag enough.

I arrived my usual fifteen minutes early to be told that Charlie, also travelling out from London, would be about thirty minutes late.  I chatted with my ex-client and her colleague when a few minutes after 10am a secretary announced that Charlie had arrived but was outside having a smoke.  The other account manager was describing a long overdue beach holiday she is taking next month when he appeared,

Holiday?  Who said that you could take a holiday?  I never signed off on that.

 Charlie wore a golf shirt, jeans and ancient trainers.  Without shaking hands or acknowledging me he threw himself in a chair and announced that he was late because he’d been up all night watching the General Election.  We got a short yet impassioned lecture about the inequities of the first-past-the-post electoral system and then turned on me, 

What’s he doing in a suit?

Before I could respond he waved his own comment away.  I handed over a business card which he tossed unread on the table next to his BlackBerry and cigarettes.  My contact said a few words and handed the meeting over to me.  I began to begin when he interrupted, 

Is he going to stand the whole time?

I was. 

I’d really prefer it if you’d sit down.

I declined.

I’d be using flipcharts and so on and he’d get a far better idea about what my company offered far more easily if he just let me do what I normally do.  He snorted but let me get on with the presentation.

I made it as far as Slide 2 before he interrupted again.  This time he wasn’t objecting per se but rather commenting on the way I was constructing my argument, 

I can see what you’re trying to do here.  It’s not going to work.

He lasted two more slides before declaring that he ‘got’ what I was trying to do but what was I going to do for him?  I negotiated my way through another six or so slides to the point where I move from what my company offers to hone in specifically on the client’s challenges.  And I really do mean ‘negotiate’; after each slide Charlie had to be told to hold his question as the issue raised was addressed always on the next slide.  Finally I picked up a marker pen, turned to the flipchart and asked my usual question, 

So, who is the correct patient for your product?

Charlie immediately left the room for a cigarette.  When he returned ten minutes later I repeated my question,

So, who is the correct patient for your product?

There isn't one.

All I'm trying to understand is where the product should be positioned and define that in terms of the patient that the product will help.”

My next slide outlined a few parameters to help the discussion. 

You don’t understand.  No one knows where to position the product.  I've been in pharma for twenty-five years and I’ve never see anything like this.  It’s impossible.

I’d read the research and it didn’t seem impossible to me.  The product was currently getting low-level usage in one major European market but not in the right type of patient to sustain long-term growth.  I told Charlie I wasn’t talking about how to position the product; we’d get to that later, but simply where it should be positioned.  That is, for which sort of patient.

 That’s the problem.  It’s a extremely complicated area of medicine and no one can say where it should be positioned.

What does the clinical data say?

It says we can be used anywhere in the disease area.”

Okay let’s start with this; how many prescriptions do you need a year to make budget?

He named a figure (which I knew already). 

Then as I understand the disease area, that means we have to avoid pigeonholing the product for last line use because the epidemiology shows us that there aren’t enough eligible patients in that ‘last line cohort’?  Coincidentally this is the only place you’re currently getting sales.

I see what you’re trying to do.  You’re trying to say where we should tell the market where the product should be used.

That’s what positioning is, Charlie, that’s exactly what I was trying to do. 

There’s no point.  The sales team isn't smart enough to follow a strategy as complicated as that.

Let’s leave the sales team out of the mix for the moment and start with the customer; where do the doctors want the product used?

I obviously didn’t understand enough about the product.  That was certainly true; at the start of the meeting I’d given myself permission to ask naïve questions.

Charlie responded by likening the challenges he faced in his market to the launch of the blockbuster antidepressant Prozac.  I told him I found analogies to be of limited benefit.  Why didn’t he instead walk me through the actual issues facing his own product in a way that I could understand and we’d take it from there? 

I find it easier to use this analogy when explaining to people about my product as it keeps things simple.  It’s not just you.  I do this all the time with our sales team.

The point of his Prozac analogy was that the drug represented a game-changing technological advance that created a multibillion-dollar market overnight.  He felt strongly that his product should do the same.  Prozac hadn’t been niched, which was why it was so successful.  And wasn’t that what positioning was?  Niching by another name?  He suggested that we dwell on this wisdom whilst he stepped out for another cigarette.

Need I say that his product was no Prozac?

Around we went.  Every time I proposed a positioning Charlie rebutted it with either another ridiculous analogy, by ‘reminding’ me of a piece of data that he’d hitherto neglected to mention or just by leaving to smoke.

At 1230pm I said I was mindful that it was now Friday afternoon and that I had enough information to put together a costed proposal which he’d get by the middle of next week.  I started to pack up my things, as did the account managers. 

Wait a minute.  What's going on here? I didn’t say that anyone could leave.

I said that had a teleconference scheduled with another client. He demanded that I postpone it, which I duly managed to do (thank god for sane clients).

I don’t have anything else on this afternoon so I want us all to stay here and keep going until we work this thing out.

After we went around the analogy/previously unmentioned data/cigarette loop another time I’d had enough, 

Charlie, I think that three hours is more than long enough for a pitch meeting.

Pitch meeting?  Who said anything about this being a pitch meeting?

It said so on my first slide.

(One of only seven you saw you boor.) 

No, you should know that I don’t waste my time with pitch meetings.  If the girls here say that you’re the right guy for the job then that’s good enough to work for me.

Well, we haven't agreed terms yet and I'm not prepared to share any more of my IP until we get that sorted.  Anyway I still have to make that other call.

I said my goodbyes and left.  My ex-client walked me out, apologising the entire way to the car, 

He knew damn well it was only a pitch.  I told him a dozen times.

The following week I fired off a brief proposal that included a ballpark budget that ignored his request for a discount ‘because we’d never worked together before’.

And that, of course, was the end of the matter.

***

Charlie was a walking Petri dish of insecurity.  Everything he said or did amounted to an ironclad guarantee that he would be a nightmare to work with.  Except that in Charlieworld I wouldn’t be working with him, I’d be working for him.

The ways in which Charlie would be a poor client fall into three broad categories: (a) his inability to engage in Marketing 101; (b) his total lack of respect for anyone inside his business, but most of all (c) the aggressive status games presumably played to mask the first two shortcomings.  The specific behaviours that bother me fell under one of those three headings: - 

Deficit in Marketing

• Hypnotised by the complexity of the product and unwilling (unable?) to see that the marketing still needs to be simple


• Overuse of banal analogies to avoid engagement in the actualities of his own market


• Opting to make a show of positioning the product ambitiously if unrealistically but without any real plans to assist the sales team in establishing this in the field 

Lack of Respect

• Seeing the sales team as stupid


• Antagonistic towards the rest of his organisation.  I got a sense that Charlie’s vociferous support for a project would immediately damn it in the eyes of everyone else.  What good would that do my long-term prospects within his organisation?


• Wanting the whole project to be prohibitively difficult as that might excuse the ambiguous positioning and correspondingly poor sales results to follow 

Status Games

• The relationship with the two (female) agency account managers totally ignored their expertise


• Withholding information from a potential supplier (me).  Of course I didn’t know the data as well as he did, but I resented the implication that I was incompetent rather than newer to the project


• Leaving the room to smoke every time the discussion put him under any sort of pressure


• Dressed so casually as to be dismissive of everyone else in the room


• Actually lying about his understanding of the nature of the meeting

***

So like the title says, a bullet dodged.  If there was an upside it was that I got to bond with the account managers over the experience and that just might be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Vision v. expediency

We're chasing print deadlines for the Sydney show. This was the week that we hit the place on the timeline where our hitherto irresistible uncompromising artistic vision crashed into an immovable fact: -

no artwork = no poster = no audience

Losing 'week one' of an eight-week project line is still a week lost. We've been kidding ourselves that we'll make it up somehow but this week's compromise is as inevitable as it was predictable.

Every time a supplier or client or collaborator or whoever tells me to stop quibbling and just be happy with the latest draft I feel a little less like the guy with the artistic vision and a little more like everyone else.

The List

We all love lists apparently. There are few things in life more satisfying than pulling out The List and crossing off a particularly onerous chore recently completed. The busier I am the more childish the satisfaction that this gives me.

Merlin Mann of the fantastic 43 Folders describes the danger that comes with not having 'ubiquitous capture' when you rely on To Do lists. The more you depend on The List, especially an electronic one, the greater the need for all tasks to appear on said List.

If The List is unreliable then sooner or later you will get blindsided. Then you stop trusting The List. Then why have one at all?

Like I said, I'm frantic right now and yet according to my List I'm on schedule with projects in at least six time zones. Do I trust it (ie 'me')? Or do I revert to that old producers' maxim: -

Total paranoia is total awareness

Tunnel vision

Five performing days left in Edinburgh.

For most inmates of this strange and wonderful assylum that means only another five days before rest and normalcy and the struggle to right the bank balance and write next year's show.

I'm faced with a different dilemma. For months I've been psychologically throwing any task associated with my consultancy work (aka 'my grown-up job') over the wall that is August and this time next week I'm delivering a daylong workshop in Toronto.

Buy the ticket. Take the ride

Production timelines

There's a moment when you stop building the boat and concentrate on repairing it in the hope that it at least floats when launch-day comes along

Collaboration + Leverage = Momentum

Two truisms: -

• A project is just a sequence of tasks that have to be done by someone
  

• Projects crave momentum yet collaboration means that real progress occurs at the pace of the slowest contributor
  

When working as a supplier in a purely commercial context (ie consulting) I happily take on as many tasks as I can. By so doing I take implicit responsibility for the momentum of the project thus giving me a greater chance of seeing the thing through to completion.

Theatre is a collaborative process and that's generally agreed to be one of its intrinsic rewards. But if you're an impatient type like me it's also a primary shortcoming. This week I've been reminded of a valuable lesson: -

It is hard to remain responsible for a collaborative project if you offload all contingent tasks to others

A successful project manager allocates at least a few tasks to herself. That way she maintains at least a little leverage when the inevitable 'deadline looming' conversations emerge. It's the difference between emailing or calling a colleague and saying: -

You said you'd have completed Task A by Date C. Where is it?

And: -

We agreed that you'd do Task A and I'd do Task B by Date C. Now, I've completed Task B...

The latter has at least a chance of sounding reasonable whereas the former just sounds like you're ordering the staff about. And that doesn't even work with the staff.

Writing for Edinburgh

Like the burlesque comedian, I am abnormally fond of that precision which creates movement

Philip Larkin

43 Folders

I am a big fan of a website called 43 Folders. It's a great source of ideas about 'personal productivity', especially as it relates to digital nomads like me, but there's plenty on there that's applicable for anyone, anywhere in modern life who needs more hours in the day.

The site is the creation of Merlin Mann, a passionate, smart, funny and often profane blogger and podcaster. I am getting into the habit of downloading some of his short, sharp podcasts to tide me over whilst I'm stuck on London Transport.

A 43 Folders podcast from 2006 might be of interest to anyone who's reading this instead of attacking that Edinburgh writing deadline. Exploiting your natural circadian rhythm is one genuine advantage that comes from working from home.