Leadership Style

How do you interact with others? 

What is your leadership style? 

How does that affect the team around you?

I try my my hardest to interact with people in the following process.

1) very surface generic conversations, establish introductions, let yourself be know.

2) then interact in a slightly personal way (discuss something other than work)

3) interact collaboratively to accomplish a goal.

These three steps allow me to get to know the personal with which I'm interacting at a comfortable and not obtrusive pace and then can their trust as we collaborate.  I find that step is often skipped by those that think that we are all just machines that can interact the same way and get work done.  Everyone is a bit different and it's important to understand those difference and adjust accordingly.

My closest Myers-Briggs personality type is ENFP.  This indicates that I am someone who senses the hidden potential in people. I enjoy starting discussion or activities that challenge and stimulate others into having new insights about themselves, which they can then take and apply to their own personal growth. I am enthusiastic about new projects or causes that offer the potential for a beneficial impact on people, especially when it involves breaking new ground.  I find this to be fairly accurate.  I do enjoy trying to change the status quo by introducing new ways to think about things.

I tend to lead slightly aggressively   And I tend to get more aggressive as I get older.  This may be due to my increasing confidence in myself and my industry.  There isn't necessarily anything wrong with an aggressive leadership style, however, I have noticed it can be off-putting at times and I have to make sure I've stuck to my three process steps of interacting before I become too aggressive.

My Engaging Story about Cookins

Imagine sitting on your couch on a Friday evening after a long week.  You just put your feet up on the ottoman and suddenly the aroma of delicious chocolate chip cookies is coming from the kitchen.  Are you dreaming?  Could these smells be real?  You rush to the kitchen to find your loving spouse tossing a small box in trash and what looks to be 12 mini muffins baking in the over.  "Why do these muffins smell like cookies", you ask.  Your spouse replies,  "they're not mini muffins, they're COOKINS".  "Cookins are awesome!", you exclaim.  You rush to the refrigerator to check if there is any milk.....to your dismay, there is no milk.  "NNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"  You grab your coat and keys and head straight for the grocery store.  You quickly park and rush inside.  In the milk isle you run into your neighbor that you have always meant to say hello to but never got around to it.  You finally say "Hello"!  And invite him over for milk and Cookins.  Your neighbor exclaims, "Cookins are awesome!"  He agrees to join you and picks up some milk of his own.  During check out the grocery clerk asks you if you'd like to donate a dollar to the local homeless shelter.  You say yes and feel good about yourself.  You head home with your newly befriended neighbor to the smells of freshly baked Cookins.  Your spouse has just plated the Cookins and throws the Cookins cooking tray in the recycle bin.  She feels good about herself.  You poor two glasses of milk for you and your neighbor, your spouse gets mad, and you poor a third.  The three of you each grab a Cookin and bite into the hard exterior to unveil the gooey interior that you desire.  You all take a sip of milk.  You all feel good about yourselves.  There is a knock at the door.  You open the door to find you mother-in-law has paid you a visit.  She smells the Cookins and asks, "Do I smell those all-natural Cookin things?."  You tell her that they are and give her one to eat.  "Cookins are awesome!", she exclaims.  You each eat two more Cookins and feel really good about yourselves.  You all sit on the couch.  Your mother-in-law inquires about your new neighbor friend.  You tell her he's your neighbor.  They talk and find they both love to play scrabble.  All four of you end up playing scrabble.  You spell Cookin, everyone laughs, and you feel good about yourself.

Feel good about yourself.  Eat a Cookin.

Estimating Market Size

Demand
Total cookie/cookie bar revenue was estimated to reach $6.4B in 2011.  This represents sales growth of 2.7% for the year.  Future demand for cookies is strongly tied to household disposable income.  When consumer incomes dropped during the recession in 2009 & 2010 demand for cookies dropped.  As the economy recovers we are seeing an increase in cookie demand.  The future demand for cookies are forecasted to drop for the following reasons...
1) consumer sentiment is still low due to looming recession in US
2) shifting consumer demand to more healthy snack choices
3) decrease in the average number of children per household will cause demand to soften


Addressable Market
Based on 2008 study by Mitel, under-45's are significantly more likely than over-45s to buy fresh-baked cookies or pre-made dough.  Adults aged 18-44 are very interested in trying new cookie types and flavors, but interest fades after 45.  Women are somewhat more likely than men to experiment with types, flavors and brands.  Research also showed that consumers do not view healthfulness as a necessary attribute when choosing cookies.  So although overall demand may be shrinking because some consumers are choosing to skip cookies all together, the remaining cookie eaters overall do not necessarily consider the healthfulness.  There has been success in the 100-calorie cookie packet as of late.  This is the cookies market attempt at addressing the health-conscious consumer but also the every growing time-poor consumer.  CookIns will nicely address the 18-44 year old women and men that like to save some time while freshly baking our all-natural cookies.

Realistic Opportunities vs Competition
Although the cookie market is dominated by single brand names like Oreo, Chips Ahoy, and Pepperidge Farm, private label cookie brands make up 15% of the total demand.  CookIns will not likely be able to compete with the strong brands of Nabisco, Little Debbie, and Pepperidge Farm due to their strong brand recognition and loyalty.  CookIns do stand a good chance in locations where these brands names are not carried like Whole Foods, Trader Joes, and Stew Leonards.

Targeted Selection of "Winnable" Market Opportunities

CookIns are targeted to individuals and families that want freshly baked all-natural cookies but don't necessarily have the time associated with actually mixing cooking dough, baking, and cleaning.

Inny or Outy?

Can a company today survive on inbound marketing? Why or why not? What is the role of outbound marketing?


Absolutely not.  A company could not survive on inbound marketing alone.  Due to the popularity of the internet and social media by individuals and now companies, inbound marketing has become a critical addition to the marketing tool belt, but is not a stand alone strategy.  The sales teams outbound efforts are critical to a companies success.  The inbound efforts may help better target the outbound efforts, however the inbound marketing can not stand alone.

Certainly for a start up, perusing the inbound marketing approach is a reasonable choice since the cost is significantly less. However, as soon as financially possible, a company needs to invest in outbound marketing.  In order to establish a strong brand, there is a consumer expectation that your branding is prominent.  All the brands that advertise at sporting events, highway billboards, and television and typically viewed as being a strong brand; Coke, Chevy, Capital One, Verizon, etc.  Large commercial product companies with out an outbound marketing strategy would leave themselves conspicuously absent from the market landscape.

Inbound marketing can certainly aid in determining demographics and even specific target leads, however, you still need direct marketing to engage with these leads.  The problem is that it limits you to only the confines of the internet.  It's funny to me how many of the social media marketing consultants spout that "business is social" in an effort to illustrate that our historically personal social media profiles can be utilized for business.  I agree that social media is indeed social, however, I would also point out that trade shows are social, and sales calls are social.

I believe a balance can be reached between inbound and outbound marketing.  Inbound marketing limits you to selling to only that are looking to buy.  A good salesman will be able to sell things that people arn't naturally looking  buy.   Inbound should be getting peoples attention, so the the outbound team can follow the leads to the customer.

Why Big "Companies" Can't Innovate

Innovating in a large organization is a topic that hits home (literal) for me.  As a Business Development Manager I spend much of day trying to innovate our sales process by identifying new markets to attack with technological advancement.  I also chose Vijay Govindarajan for my 10-10 innovator presentation.  VG is a Professor of International Business at the Tuck School at Dartmouth. VG is an expert on strategy and innovation.  He shares the opinion of Mr. Wessel that large organization have large hurdles to overcome in order to innovate at all.  However, it is neither my professional experience nor my current studies in ETR500 that made this topic hit home.

I rushed home on Friday night to have dinner with my family after a long drive back from a conference in NYC.  My one year daughter is screeching with happiness as she throws her dinner on the floor for the dogs to feast on.  My seven year old son is loudly insisting on playing with his friends all weekend.  I quick peak at the family calendar uncovers a busy weekend; pumpkin carving with my sister, dinner with friends, CCD for my son, church for the family, hours of yard work, and dinner with the in-laws was the weekend agenda.  Of course I must find some time to fit in school work as well.  I quickly realize what Wessel and Govindaraja are referring to when they say big companies cannot innovate.

As a graduate student in the school of business at WPI I am trying to innovate myself.  As CEO of my family I can relate to the difficulties of innovation of big companies.  There is no doubt that the advice of Wessel and Govindaraja would help me to better innovate.  I need to somehow create an autonomous version of myself in order to properly innovate.  Unfortunately, I have tried this method and I find that my wife does not accept such a solution.  My presence is too valuable at home to focus solely on innovation.  Unfortunately I find that such autonomy is the only solution to properly innovate and earn my MBA.  The rules of everyday life do not properly enable me to innovate myself via the MBA.

However, much like a good corporation, some hard work and creative norm breaking will have to get me through the process.

Persona Pain-Gain Map: Mini Muffin Cookies

Mr. Johnson is a ambitious hotel/motel owner looking for innovative and inexpensive ways to make his guest's stay more enjoyable and memorable.  Mr. Johnson understands the importance his customers having a positive overall experience at his establishment.  His hotel/motel is not just a bed and a shower.  His hotel/motel is a place where business men and women call home when away from home.  His hotel/motel is a place where families call home when away from home on vacation.  Mr. Johnson understands that, much like at home, it's the little things that can matter most.  Fresh flowers in lobby, newspapers delivered to the door in the morning, freshly brewed coffee every morning in the lobby, and a friendly smile on the face of the desk clerk upon every guests arrival are all standard procedure for Mr. Johnson.  But what else can he do for his customers?

What does a bad day look like for him? 
-unhappy guests due to the amenities provided (or not provided)

What is he afraid of? 
-these unhappy guests decide to never stay at his hotel again.

What keeps him awake at night? 
-these unhappy guests spread the word of their unhappiness and more and more people stop staying at his hotel.

What is he responsible for?
-he is responsible for the overall customer experience


What obstacles stand in her way?
-He does not have a huge budget to spend on a full service kitchen

What does this person want and aspire to?
 -he aspires to manage larger more prestigious hotels

What can we offer this person? (Elevator Pitch) 
Our new product Mini Muffin Cookie is exactly what we would like to offer you. For the innovation hotel manager who is looking to easily prepare a quick and easy welcome gift for his guests.  Mini Muffin Cookies are prepackaged, frozen cookie dough that is ready to bake the moment they are taken out of the freezer. Unlike traditional prepackaged frozen desserts, Mini Muffin Cookie dough comes in a disposable, oven-able, plastic mini-muffin tray that fits nicely in a toaster over. The unique shape of the cookies creates a delicious combination of harder exterior with a soft gooey center. In just 20 minutes, 12 Mini Muffin Cookies go from frozen to cooked, and the plastic tray can be recycled or thrown away. You will have aromatic lobby and a delicious dessert for all your guests to enjoy.

The A3 Report: Practical Tool or Common Sense

Leave it to the Japanese to develop a visual/pictorial method of problem solving.  This tool does a wonderful job of organizing and documenting the problem solving process.

The idea is to identify the following items...
1) Identify the issue
2) Describe the current problem
3) Identify the desired outcome
4) Root cause analysis
5) Propose countermeasure
6) Action plan
7) Follow-up

The regular usage of this tool will certainly hone your skills at problem solving and root cause analysis.  Certainly this is more useful for complicated issues, however, for those unfamiliar with the method it is good to utilize the tool on smaller problems first.  After some time, user of this method will likely naturally follow this progression without formally capturing the details on an A3 Report.  This sort of process becomes second nature and documenting the process becomes a tedious product of the process.

The documentation of learned results and the learning process itself is a critical part of any manufacturing environment.  Many times a problem my be resolved on the assembly line in an emergency effort to push product out the door, but the resolution is never formal captured in a formal report.  The analysis was done and successfully implemented, but what if the same problems happens again in two months.  Will we remember how to fix it again, will the same people be working on the line and recognize the problem?  Without a proper report it is likely that when the same problem arises again the analysis (or at least some of it) will need to be done again.  This wastes time and money.

Documenting the problems and issue that arise allows the organization to learn and be able to react faster the next time it happens.  Without documentation and learning the same mistakes will likely happen over and over.

The name "A3" is quite fitting as well.  I worked for a Japanese company for 9 years and they would send reports in A3 format.  Reformatting it to Letter would almost always mess up the report.  Be forewarned....if implementing the A3 Report in the western world your report will likely never print properly.