Alternate Pathways

One recent evening, I rounded a corner at home to find my 10-year-old sighing and rolling his eyes. A fourth grade mathematics worksheet lay on the table. "Why," he huffed, "do I have to show my work?"

His protest led me to a movie-like flashback (sans the blurred, wavy visual transition). How many times had I heard those same words from teachers while growing up, or found them scrawled on a returned page (even with the right answer in place)? Like father, like son.

Now Kyle is a kid who doesn't need to work through math problems on the paper in front of him. He's blessed with an analytical mind, and grows frustrated when he has to take extra time to document what he feels should be obvious. He proffers that as long as his outcome is correct -- the goal, after all -- why should the pathway be scrutinized?

His experience mirrors what many of us will face in our professional lives -- managers or peers so focused on specific mechanics that they lose sight of the end game. The reasons are many: they can more easily measure the tactics vs. outcomes, they only know one way of accomplishing the goal, or they're scared of innovative (and possibly better) approaches.

So what can you do? As someone facing a "show your work" manager, build up trust gradually, laying out your paths multiple times over various projects until you've proven yourself. Then again, with some superiors who love to micro-manage, you may have to adapt your own style (or seek an alternative role).

More importantly, as leaders, we can build organization and teams where the outcome is more important than a rigidly defined pathway. In these instances, the ideal is not simply showing the work, but discussing and debating techniques (both applied and discarded) in search of more efficient and more effective methodologies.

I was fortunate early in my career to have been taught this lesson. Ever since, the degree to which my teams have consistently amazed me and delighted clients and colleagues with innovative, unconventional approaches has been significant.

So the next time you're ready to be directive, pause for a moment. Instead of "show your work," try "explore your work." What transpires – the outcome and route taken – might surprise you.

The Ethics of Competitive Depositioning

The Burson-Facebook debacle has pointed a spotlight toward a component of the communications industry that few understand, and many don't care to discuss -- competitive depositioning. It can be seen as sully, underhanded and even unethical... the worst type of PR.

But we need to separate competitive depositioning from smear campaigns.

The classic smear, of course, involves running a competitor through the mud, often hiding your own identity and masking the intent (see fig. 1 - Burson). Not only does it violate the industry's ethics guidelines regarding clear identification of a sponsoring organization, but it also often results in backlash.

Depositioning, on the other hand, seeks to openly call into question claims made or actions taken by competitors. In essence, it is part of a check-and-balance process that ultimately keeps the marketplace more honest.

For instance, when I was leading communications strategy development for Kodak's cost-play entry into the home inkjet printer market, one competitor loomed large -- Hewlett-Packard. Now for anyone who has ever bought an inkjet cartridge, you know the pain that surges through your body at checkout. How much did that tiny piece of plastic just cost?

We struck early and often at HP's "value" pricing models, whether by poking fun at the outrageous cost of their inks, developing ink cost calculators, or asking journalists to investigate the issue of their own accord. Our role was not to provide the answers, but to place questions into the marketplace that would lead consumers to discover the truth themselves. And yes, we always identified ourselves as Kodak.

Burson and Facebook fell short by turning to the cloak and dagger routine. Challenging Social Circle's privacy was not at issue (although I personally believe it to be not all that threatening), but in the manner in which it was conducted.

Let's hope this black eye for Burson will be a warning call to shady practices elsewhere. But at the same time, let's not throw away a valuable approach -- competitive depositioning -- that has the power to shape a marketplace for the better.

Twitter: The Great SM Proxy

Studying the room after a few minutes, it was clear that a few people were lost. The speech had been billed as a view into the future of social media, and the speaker had not spent nearly any time discussing Twitter.

Perfect! The audience – a group of communications executives from the cable and broadcasting industry gathered on Manhattan’s Upper East Side -- was exactly where I’d hoped. My unorthodox approach had made them question what they believed to be good and true, that Twitter WAS the future.

It’s easy to become all consumed by the ubiquitous nature of Twitter, believing it is setting the tone for the future of digital communications and conversation. In some ways, it is, but it’s unwise to overlook the myriad start-ups rolling out cutting-edge SM applications, whether GeoIQ for location-intelligence visualization, Klout for influence scoring or Hearsay for corporate SM compliance.

“Wait,” you protest. “Services such as those rely on a few digital media platforms for their content. Without Twitter, they wouldn’t exist.” Not necessarily.

A recent report pegged Twitter usage at just eight percent of the U.S. population, so its ubiquity may be more a mindset of “in the know” communications professionals than reality. That’s dangerous. Not because being Twitter-conversant isn’t important, but because of how many practitioners are treating the service: as the only game in town.

What about Hyves in the Netherlands? Or Renren in China? Wait, is Orkut still going strong in Brazil? As much as we think the world is global, localized services – even in the digital universe – can and often do win out.

Therein lay the secret. Look to Twitter as a proxy, not the be-all-end-all. Applications only pulling in and crunching Twitter content streams will soon be doing the same for other platforms (JitterJam, recently acquired by Meltwater, is a good example).

And when that occurs, where will you be? Will you have built programs and campaigns so specific to Twitter that you’ll be forced to continue down that path, or will you expand your line of sight to an even richer flow of information from additional sources?