Intersections -- Justin Steinman's blog

The End of One Journey, and the Start of Another

2011-01-24T17:08:50Z

This Friday will be my last day at Novell.

It feels pretty weird to write those nine words. I've been at Novell nearly seven years – the single longest stint of my professional career. (That doesn't even include my summer internship here during b-school.) Without a doubt, it's been one heck of a ride.

I'll look back on these seven years with a lot of good feelings. I know that I learned a lot during my time at Novell, and I hope that I accomplished a lot as well. But the number one thing that I will remember about my time at Novell is the quality of the people. The people at Novell are simply amazing. In fact, the people here are the one thing that almost prevented me from saying "yes" to an absolutely amazing career opportunity. (More on that opportunity below.) The people at Novell are genuinely good people. They are committed to the company. They are concerned about the welfare of others. They are dedicated to doing what's right. They are by far the most ethical community of which I've ever been a part. I've truly enjoyed coming to work each day to spend time with these people, and I am going to miss a great many of them.

Since the news of my departure was announced internally last week, in many ways it has felt that I've been an attendee at my own funeral – people start talking about you in the past tense and memorializing everything you've accomplished. I've joked that there are two kinds of departures – the kind where everyone is sad to see you go, or the kind where everyone is happy to see you go. There really is no middle ground. People either focus on all your positive qualities and brush away the negative, or vice versa. I'm happy to report that (I think) I fall into the former category, as, all of a sudden all sorts people are saying these amazingly nice things about me (or at least they are to my face).

What's even more amazing is that these people seem to be genuinely happy for me. They are excited for what this move means to my career, even though it means that we will no longer be working together. I've been deeply touched by their response.

Many companies profess to being a meritocracy, but few deliver. Novell delivers. People who work hard and deliver results are rewarded with new career opportunities and new challenges. For me, that translated into three jobs in six years – each one a promotion for which I probably wasn't ready, but Novell management rolled the dice on me. For that trust, I am sincerely grateful. I absolutely made my fair share of mistakes along the way, but I like to think that I paid off their trust with demonstrable results.

If you were to ask me to name my biggest accomplishment at Novell, I would tell you that it was creating and building the Solution & Product Marketing organization. About three years ago, Novell CMO John Dragoon and I started discussing how to standardize Novell's go-to-market approach. We had multiple business segments, each with its own approach to marketing, and very limited product marketing process. After working with John to design the organization, he then made me turn around and interview for the position to lead it. I'm happy to say that John and the rest of the management team thought I would be the right person to lead the new SPM organization, and the rest is, as they say, history. It was an 18-month construction job, as we had to find the right people and build out our processes together. But the team committed itself, put in the necessary work, and delivered the results.

Over the past three years, I've had the privilege to hire nearly 30 people out of a roughly 45 person organization. The best part of my job is that I got to literally choose the people with whom I worked each day, and I've loved every minute of it. It's been such a thrill to watch these people grow as professionals and make true impact on Novell's business, and it's an honor to have been their teammate. I'm going to miss them all.

Although it was truly a difficult decision to leave Novell, I am very excited about my next role. On January 31, I'll be joining GE Healthcare IT, as the General Manager for Marketing in their Clinical Business Solutions group. I'll be responsible for leading the marketing team for GE's Centricity Electronic Medical Records (EMR) product line. EMR is a tremendous market opportunity – according to a recent survey from the Harvard School of Public Health, only about 12% of all hospitals are using EMR software today, but more than 80% of hospitals are planning to do some sort of EMR implementation in the next five years, according to the office of the National Health Coordinator for Health IT. The opportunity to join a market leader like GE to deliver a high-quality, innovative product to customers in a blazing hot market was just too good to pass up.

My decision to take the new role at GE was not so much about leaving Novell, but rather about pursuing the opportunity at GE. Whenever people ask me for career advice, I always tell them to run to something, and not to run from their current job. "Running to something" is exactly what I am doing with GE. I was (and still will be for the next four days) quite happy at Novell. I'm still bullish on the company, including the potential transformation that could come from the proposed merger with Attachmate. But when GE came knocking on my door with this opportunity, I had to consider it. The more I learned, the more excited I became about the potential of GE to lead the EMR market, the high caliber of the team that GE had assembled to pursue this market, and the role itself – both in terms of what I could contribute and what I could learn. GE will provide many growth opportunities, both professionally and personally. I just couldn't say "no."

So this is the proverbial end of the road for me at Novell. It's been a great journey. However, the technology community is very small, and the Boston tech community is even smaller. So while I may not be coming to Waltham every day, I'm not looking at this as a good-bye. Rather, I'm viewing this Friday as a day to say "See you later" to my colleagues and to thank them for everything. I've had a lot of fun, I've learned a lot, and now I can't wait to see where my GE journey takes me. This is my personal blog, so I will continue to post here. I invite you to keep reading and follow along with my new adventure.

Giving Credit Where It’s Due

2010-10-01T16:05:23Z

Much as I hate to admit it, I have to give props to the folks over at Red Hat. I watched Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst on CNBC yesterday, and while it pains to me to compliment a direct competitor, I can't argue with the financial results that Red Hat is turning in. They continue to grow their revenue, operating margin and free cash flow. In his two years as CEO, Whitehurst has done a very impressive job getting that company to fire on all cylinders – and it is reflected in their stock price, which is up nearly 44% year-to-date.

The good news is that while I can appreciate Red Hat's success, there is still plenty of opportunity for SUSE Linux Enterprise to be successful. As Whitehurst noted in his interview with Jim Cramer, while Red Hat may hold the majority share of the Linux market today, Linux as a platform holds less than 20% of the overall server market. So there is still plenty of room for growth for both Red Hat and SUSE.

But how does SUSE grow? By taking a page of Red Hat's playbook, and then adopting it for SUSE's strengths.

Let's start by looking at what Red Hat does well. They focus. (This is a common theme of mine as you can read from previous blog posts like this one.) As Whitehurst so eloquently stated to Jim Cramer, Red Hat knows what business it is in – providing server operating systems to large enterprises with complex IT needs. These organizations are willing to pay a premium over Red Hat's cost of goods sold for these operating systems, but the overall price is still less than competitive operating systems from Microsoft or Oracle Solaris. Red Hat has not pursued the consumer market for either desktops or servers – Whitehurst even directed those folks to the free version of Red Hat, called Fedora. (SUSE has its own community-centric operating system that is also free, called openSUSE.) Nor has Red Hat spent a lot of time on the corporate desktop market. By pursuing this singular strategic goal – a clear target customer (large enterprises) and a clear product vision (robust server operating systems built on Linux) – Red Hat has been able to deliver outstanding results. On the power of those outstanding results, Red Hat has been able to generate the cash they need to buy companies that let them move up the open source IT stack.

There is still a lot of money left to be made in Linux operating systems. SUSE can – and will – grow market share in the broader server market by pursuing the same mission-critical operating system target as Red Hat, but SUSE needs to differentiate itself based on the power and breadth of its ecosystem. SUSE does not need to take share from Red Hat in the Linux market. SUSE needs to get the greenfield opportunities in that 80+% of the market that still isn't using Linux servers. If Red Hat is Hertz, then SUSE needs to be Avis. If Red Hat sells Kleenex, then SUSE needs to be Puffs. In a growing market like Linux – which IDC predicts will grow at 17% next year – there is room for two vendors.

SUSE is already executing on its strategy to leverage the ecosystem. For example, VMware now ships a copy of SUSE Linux Enterprise with every copy of its vSphere hypervisor at no additional cost to the customer. SUSE continues to hold roughly 80% of the market for Linux on the IBM Mainframe. SUSE has the Linux recommended by Microsoft – and Microsoft has sold more than $240M of SUSE since the partnership was announced in 2006. SUSE is the only operating system optimized to be the perfect guest on all the major hypervisors – VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix Xen, and KVM. And we've got tons of mission-critical customers, ranging from Wal-Mart to Burton Snowboards to Southwest Airlines. But there is still room for improvement – better channel integration, more laser-focus on the product features that matter, and the ever-present opportunity to better understand our customers' needs.

So, my sincere congratulations to Red Hat. They outlined a strategy, they executed and now they are being rewarded financially. I respect success. And if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then I hope to see SUSE take a page out of that playbook and mirror that success. After all, there is enough server revenue out there for both of us.

The Great Big Library in the Sky

2010-07-30T20:24:23Z

A couple of weeks ago, I was a guest on Cloud Chasers, an Internet radio show dedicated to exploring the hype around cloud computing. This was my second visit to the show. You can listen to my first visit here, and my most recent visit here.

After my first appearance on Cloud Chasers, I blogged about the evolution of communication and how internet radio was an great way to use an old medium (radio) in a new format, thanks to the advances of technology. My co-panelist this time was Chirag Mehta (@chirag_mehta) from SAP, where is the cloud computing strategist. You should definitely follow him on Twitter if you're interested in anything cloud-related.

One of the ideas that I advocated on the show was the idea that the cloud is going to be a great big library in the sky for applications. In many respects, the cloud is going to be the next evolution of the public library, or the electric company. Let me explain.

The big promise behind cloud computing is that it moves all of the resources for enterprise IT off-site, and the enterprise needs to pay only for what it consumes. You can rent an application by the minute, by the hour, by the day, by the month. However, most CIOs want to limit the number of vendors with whom they relationships. CIOs want fewer throats to choke, because while you are renting the application, you are putting your sensitive data – in many cases, the crown jewels of your enterprise – in the cloud. So you want to make sure that you can trust the cloud vendor with your data and you'll want to set up security protocols, service level agreements, and a tight identity integration.

Which means that you will have three or four cloud vendors with whom you'll do business. When our friendly CIO is selecting cloud vendors, one of his criteria will be who has the largest selection of library books, or applications. If a cloud provider has a lot of applications, then it will be worth it for the CIO to set up the process, security and management integration points with that cloud vendor. And then just like an electric utility, the CIO will only pay for the hours that he uses the application, or reads the proverbial "book."

That's why there is a rush now for ISVs to make their applications ready for the cloud. They need to cloud enable their applications and then get them deployed in as many libraries as possible. And for the cloud vendors, there's a race on to see who will accumulate the most library books. Because if you accumulate the most library books, then you will have the most customers who want to come to your library.

Agree? Disagree? Listen to the Cloud Chasers podcast, and then leave your comments below.

When You’re in Second Place…Change the Rules of the Game

2010-07-27T16:15:57Z

Today marks the one-year anniversary of the SUSE Appliance Program. The SUSE Appliance Program is a comprehensive technology and business program that helps software vendors make their applications ready for cloud computing. In the course of one year, we've had more than 82,000 users build more than 415,000 appliances that have been downloaded collectively almost three million times. By any measure, the appliance program has been a major hit.

But I don't want to write today about the success of the appliance program. If you want to read about, you can go here to read the press release or visit our new appliance marketplace, the SUSE Gallery.

What I'm interested in writing about is the disruptive business model that Novell has put in place. With our SUSE Linux Enterprise distribution, Novell holds the second place position in the Linux operating system market. According to IDC estimates, Novell has slightly more than 30% of the market share, and Red Hat, the market leader, has roughly 60% of the market share. Linux, for all intents and purposes, is essentially a commodity operating system, and Red Hat has the leadership position and the brand name recognition. Which leads to the question: "How do I grow my business when I sell Scotts' Tissue, and my competitor sells Kleenex?"

The answer is easy: Change the rules of the game. If you're in second-place, and you don't like to be there, think about how you change the situation you are in. Redefine the market. Redefine the opportunity. Do something disruptive – even if it puts part of your current business model at risk in the short-term – all so you can create game-changing growth in the long-term.

Again, this concept isn't that revolutionary, either. Professor Clayton Christiansen wrote one the business world bibles on this topic over a decade ago, The Innovators' Dilemma. And my friend Scott Anthony has built an entire consulting business called Innosight around this same model. What excites me is that Novell is actually taking a page from this playbook, and we appear to be executing successfully against it.

Here's how it is working for us. For the longest time, operating systems were distributed primarily through independent hardware vendors (IHVs) like HP, IBM, Dell and various "whitebox vendors" running Intel chips. This made sense, because if you were going to buy a big expensive server, then you needed an operating system to run it. As the market leader, Red Hat dominates the hardware channel. It's very difficult to displace an incumbent in a commodity market. Novell can offer additional margin in the channel, but on a basic server subscription sale, a couple points of margin are not always enough incentive for an IHV to tell a customer, "No, you don't want Kleenex. You want to buy facial tissue, and Scotts Tissue is the best."

However, the rise of virtualization and companies like VMware, mean that you can now run multiple operating systems on the same one server, thanks to a technology called a hypervisor. Using a hypervisor also means that the operating system no longer needs to be distributed with the hardware server. A new technology – virtualization – has disrupted the business model of operating system distribution.

That's where the appliance program comes in. Assume for a second that customers buy an operating system (OS) not for the OS itself, but rather for the applications it can run. After all, no one ever wakes up in the morning and says, "Gee, I would like to buy a new operating system today." Rather, they wake up and say, "I need to solve a business intelligence problem. I need to solve a payroll problem." And then they buy an application to address their business problem. Then they buy the operating system to support that application.

Novell's disruptive bet is that the route to market for an operating system in the future will change from the IHV to the ISV (independent software vendor). In a shift that changes twenty years of business practice, people will no longer buy an operating system when they buy their hardware; rather, they will buy the OS when they buy their software. The SUSE Appliance Program is designed to leverage that market shift, by making it easier than ever for ISVs to package an operating system and middleware with their application. Novell not only supplies the appliance assembly tools, but also the tools to maintain and update the appliance once it has been shipped.

Do we have all the answers yet? No we don't. But what we do have is a promising technology – a patent-pending process to build and support customized open source operating systems, and then build integrated software appliances on top of that customized OS. And we have a rapidly growing ecosystem that has been endorsed by folks like VMware, SAP, Adobe, and IBM.

The early returns are in, and there is a lot of momentum – both from application vendors and, more importantly, from paying customers. The challenge for Novell is to continue to execute, and to continue to take chances – even if those chances mean we are putting our traditional channels of distribution at risk. After all, when you're in second place, the only way to move into the lead is to take a calculated risk at the right time with the right tool. With the SUSE Appliance Program, I believe we have the right tool and that now is the right time. We'll see what happens.

Inception at Work

2010-07-22T22:34:51Z

I saw the new Leonardo Dicaprio movie, Inception, the other night. While I only understood about 75% of the movie, I did find it very entertaining. And over the past few days, I've found myself pondering how the idea from the movie can and should be applied to the business world.

Without giving away any spoilers, the movie at its core is about the idea of planting an idea in someone's head – what Leo calls "Inception." A key requirement for inception to be successful is that the inception target needs to believe that the idea is his or her own idea, otherwise, the target will reject the idea, and the inception will fail.

I'd submit that any good business leader practices inception on a daily basis. Now, we don't literally invade other people's minds like Leo does in the movie, and neither do we hire architects to create false realities. But as leaders, our job is to declare a destination and then help our teams get there. The challenge is that no one wants to be told what to do or how to do it. If you have a boss telling you exactly what to do and how to do it, well, that's called micromanagement. And a micromanaged employee is not an engaged or a successful employee.

A good leader suggests the kernel of an idea to his teammates, but gives them the room to make the idea their own. As a leader, even if you know the answer, it's always more effective – and rewarding – for other people to arrive at the same conclusion on their own. Sometimes that means giving people a portion of the story, or some of the facts, instead of the whole answer. The trick is to give enough information that people arrive at the conclusion you want, but to leave them enough room that they can figure it out themselves, or even better, come up with a better solution that you hadn't thought of.

Inception isn't only something that you can practice on people who report to you. Inception is equally important when it comes to upward management. When speaking to a general manager, or even the CEO, it's often enough to give that person one or two key facts, and then let them draw their own conclusions. It's frequently a very effective way of letting management know there is an issue inside the organization without running to them and stating, "Person XYZ isn't doing their job." Nobody likes a tattletale. But if you report on a missing business result, then management can quickly determine on their own who is not doing their job and take action.

Now, I realize this all sounds very nefarious, and that it could come across as if I am recommending that you manipulate people all day at work – or that I spend my days at Novell manipulating people. I'm not advocating (nor am I doing) that at all. Rather, I'm stating that ideas are powerful, but they are far more powerful when an individual owns an idea. A good leader plants the seed of an idea in the mind of his teammates, and then enables everyone else to own that idea so that it can grow in unexpected and wonderful ways.

Are you an Attacker or a Defender?

2010-07-13T18:31:51Z

Back when I was in business school at the MIT Sloan School of Management, one of my favorite professors was Howard Anderson. Howard, a very successful serial entrepreneur, founded both Battery Ventures and The Yankee Group, and in his "retirement" teaches a full course load to MBA students at Sloan. Howard's classes are a must-take for any MBA who aspires to start a business or run a business.

One of Howard's favorite things to do is ask students if they are an attacker or a defender, because if you know what kind of person you are, then that will determine the type of company you join when graduating.

The way that Howard defined attackers and defenders is simple. If you are a company at the top of your industry, then you are a defender. You have everything to lose, and very little left to gain. Sure, you need to grow your revenues and you need to remain profitable, but really, the only place for you to go is down. The prototypical defender is a company like IBM. Many people in the tech industry joke that you can never get fired for buying from IBM, nor can you get fired working at IBM. While that's probably untrue, there is probably also a little bit of truth said in jest. IBM is a profit-machine; it just keeps rolling along, and is proof of the old adage, "You need money to make money."

Conversely, if you are working at an attacker, then you have nothing to lose and everything to gain. The obvious example of an attacker is a start-up, where you have an idea, some talented people, and very limited resources that force you to be scrappy and think creatively. But don't assume that every attacker has to be a start-up. I'd submit a company like Novell, where I work, is an attacker. Novell at one point was a defender with its NetWare franchise, and there was this little company called Microsoft that was the attacker with its Windows NT platform. Fast-forward a decade or so, and now Microsoft is the defender and Novell is the attacker, as we try to fashion a turn-around here at Novell and return the company to glory.

It's this very reason that I turned Microsoft down when I graduated business school in 2004 to join Novell. I wanted to join an attacker. It seemed more interesting to go after the opportunity and ride the growth than it seemed to go work at a company already established on top. Besides, at Microsoft, I would have been one of 500 MBAs hired that year, and at Novell, I was the MBA hired that year. Granted, Novell had more risk in it, but with that risk came opportunity.

Being an attacker should be a liberating feeling. If you work at an attacker, that attitude should permeate everything you do. An attacker should be thinking about how do I get that edge, what chance can I take, what angel can I play that will accelerate my path to the top? An attacker can afford to take risks because they have to do so. Conversely, defenders have no incentive to take risks because if you take a risk and get it wrong, then you risk coming down from your pedestal.

I try to be an attacker in all aspects of my professional life, because I find it to be more fun. It influences the positioning work that I do … making a claim and forcing my competition to knock me from that perch. It influences my hiring philosophy, because I want my team to be driven people who will take a chance to win. It influences my attitude towards meetings, where I have a bias toward action as opposed to delaying decisions to the next meeting.

As you think about your own career, and as you ponder your next career move – whether it's today or next year or in five years – I'd submit it's important to know what kind of person you are, and what kind of role you want. An attacker in a defender company will quickly become frustrated with the slow pace of things. Similarly, a defender in an attacker company will be forced to make decisions outside his or her comfort zone at a speed he or she doesn't like.

The bottom-line is that the world needs both attackers and defenders. Neither one is better than the other… it all depends on the type of person you are. After all, neither one could exist without the other.

Why Customer Service Matters

2010-07-07T20:53:00Z

On Monday night, my wife’s iPhone broke. The screen went blank, and there was nothing I could do to bring it back. A quick Google search talked me through how to get it backed up using iTunes, and even after a updated to IOS4 and then a subsequent Restore, the phone screen was still blank. I was frustrated, especially given the fact we bought the phone in December 2009 and had done everything in our power to keep it out of harm’s way (translation: out of the hands of my kids.)

Tuesday morning, I went to work, went to Apple.com over my morning coffee, and signed up for a Genius Bar appointment that evening at the Apple Store in the Natick Collection . It took me less than two minutes to make the appointment. A simple, easy process with a nice user interface on their website.

When I met my assigned Genius, she took one look at the phone and said “there appears to be some water damage here. But since it wasn’t your fault, I’ll honor your warranty, and I’ll give you a new phone.” With that, she took my phone, disappeared into the back and within five minutes, she returned with a gleaming new iPhone 3G. No questions asked. I signed a paper and then made my way through the throngs of people in the store out the door.

Aside from the fact that there were 60 people in an Apple Store at 9pm on a Tuesday night (which is amazing in and of itself), I was very impressed with the quality and speed of Apple’s customer service. People everywhere discuss why Apple is so successful and why its stock price is so high. I’d submit it’s because Apple has taken three core values and spread them across everything that they do – from product development to pricing to marketing to customer service. While you can debate – and many people do – what these core values are, I believe that Apple tries to make everything they do innovative, easy-to-use, and friendly. Let’s look quickly at each factor in terms of my particular customer service experience:

Innovative. Apple innovated around the entire customer support experience. Instead of forcing me to spend hours on the phone with a technician in India trying to solve my problem, Apple created a network of stores that double as service centers – so I can shop while my repair is completed. Even though Apple didn’t sell me the iPhone – AT&T did that – and even though there was no guarantee that I would buy anything else from them, and even though the damage appeared to be something that I did, Apple still gave me a new phone … Banking on the fact that if I have good experience, I would be a return customer. While this may not seem particularly innovative, too many companies treat customer service as a requirement rather than a relationship.
Easy-to-use. Everyone knows the iPhone is easy to use. That’s one of its biggest selling points. It’s so intuitive that a three-year-old can figure it out. Apple took that easy-to-use philosophy and extended it to their stores. From the online appointment scheduler to the fact that the technician didn’t put me through a barrage of questions just to get a repair, everything about the experience was easy. In fact, the most difficult thing was getting out of the store!
Friendly. Apple correctly recognizes the personal relationship that people have with their phones. When you go to the Genius Bar, odds are that you’re upset because your phone isn’t working. When I walked in last night, there was someone there to greet me and then help manage the queue process. The technician actually seemed to enjoy helping people fix their phones, even though she had been working eight hours and there were still at least people with broken phones waiting for her help. I can only imagine how many replacement phones she gave out last night.

Extending what are traditionally product values to the customer service experience is what truly makes Apple different. How many companies try to innovate when it comes to customer service? And while many companies try really hard to be friendly, too often, it feels like a forced façade.

Bottom-line: I was impressed. I went into the Apple Store last night with a healthy dose of skepticism about what they would do for me with a blank iPhone screen. But after 30 minutes in the store, I left feeling appreciated as a customer, and I’m far more likely to experiment with the ever-increasing amount of functionality that Apple keeps putting into the iPhone and the App Store – even if the iPhone technically belongs to my wife.

Show, Don't Tell About

2010-06-28T20:34:00Z

In my last blog , I talked about my sixth grade English teacher, and her comment on the relationship between writing and women's clothing. That's one of the two writing lessons that have stuck with me from my days in middle school at McDonogh School. Here's the other one.

There are certain moments in life that you never forget, and for me, it's seventh grade English class, when Mrs. Kathy Corcoran – who at that point must have been in her late forties – was talking with the class about effective writing. In order to make her point that one needed to be descriptive in one's use of language, Mrs. Corcoran jumped up on her desk, and started jumping up and down, screaming “Show, don't tell about! Show, don't tell about!”

Obviously, the point of the story is that Mrs. Corcoran was showing us her passion, instead of just saying, “I am passionate about this topic.” And she did make her point – the image of her jumping on her desk, with her glasses falling off her nose, and her blond hair flying all directions has been burned indelibly into my memory.... much more so than if Mrs. Corcoran simply said “I am passionate that you be descriptive in your writing.”

At the risk of being pedantic, the lessons here are twofold. First, a good writer is descriptive. He or she brings the reader on a journey and shares the details that complete the picture. How does this apply to business writing? Easy. Instead of saying, “This new security software reduces cost and eliminates risk,” try writing, “This new security software reduces administration cost by 25% and makes you 30% less likely to be hacked.” Those details make the story, and the reader will keep those numbers in his or her mind. Business writing is full gobblety-gook – hence I am always telling everyone to Degeek the Speak (another of my pet phrases) – and the writer who can replace the bland corporate language with compelling details will stand out in the mind of the reader.

The second lesson from Mrs. Corcoran is that passion matters. If you are not passionate about a topic, it will come through in your writing. I'll be the first to admit that I didn't grow up dreaming of selling enterprise infrastructure software. When I was in high school, I didn't even know what enterprise infrastructure was! But I think if you ask anyone at Novell , I am absolutely passionate about my job, and it comes through everyday. I am passionate about the problems that we solve for our customer to help them improve their data center operations or their security infrastructure. I am passionate about the quality of our products and Novell's 26-year record of helping customers. And I am passionate about the practice of marketing – communicating our value to customers and prospects in clear, easy-to-understand langauge. Most of all, I am passionate about the people inside Novell – both my peers in our other organizations, and my teammates inside Solution & Product Marketing. I am passionate about helping all Novell employees succeed and reach high levels of achievement. I wear my passion on my sleeve and on my face.... and I'd submit to you that it's the primary driver of my success.

And to think I got all of that from a middle school English class.

“If I Had More Time, I Would Have Written You a Shorter Letter”

2010-06-23T03:02:00Z

The above quote from Mark Twain is one of my favorite quotes of all time. That, and “Brevity is the soul of wit.”

Both quotes get to a similar point… the goal of any communication is to be as brief as possible while still delivering the necessary information. Too often as writers, we get lost in the lovely flow of words, or the sound of our voice, or we try to cram as much information as possible in whatever piece we are writing because we’re not sure what is actually important in what we are trying communicate.

Today, I was reviewing a draft of a positioning document from someone on my team. The first page of the doc was two paragraphs. You could say that there should be more than two paragraphs on any given page; else it is too dense for anyone to process. More importantly. there was a lot of valuable information crammed into these two paragraphs, but I would submit that there was too much information in those paragraphs. With all that information, how is the reader supposed to figure out what truly matters?

Eliminating words is tough. But what you don’t say is frequently more important than what you do say. If you focus on what truly matters, then your message will pop off the page. Every product or solution needs to stand for something. And every communiqué has a primary purpose.

One of my favorite exercises is to write something, and then see how I can write it shorter. Evaluate every idea. Does it truly need to be there? Does it add incremental value? Does it subtract from other concepts? What happens it you eliminate a concept? A sentence? A word?

Effective communication requires focus. You have to know what you want to say, to whom you want to say it, and how you want to say it. You have to know what matters. If you don’t know, or can’t figure it out, then you wind up writing yourself to a conclusion, and most readers don't want to go on the journey with you. They just want to show up at the destination.

In the words of my sixth-grade English teacher, Mrs. Diane Young at McDonogh School , MD, “A good piece of writing is like a woman’s skirt. Long enough to cover the point, but short enough to be interesting.” While that statement may be a bit sexist, I will comment that 1) it came from my female middle-school teacher, and 2) she did have a point.

I'm Back

2010-06-23T02:59:00Z

Apologies for disappearing on this blog for about six weeks. I got a bit side-tracked. Not only were things crazy busy at the office, but my wife and I moved houses. Since we decided to take our kids with us, the move pretty much consumed all of my spare time. All of our possessions are now in the new house, so I figure I can start up this blog yet again. (Note that I said our possessions are in the house, not that we are unpacked. That might take a little while.)

We only moved about quarter-mile from our previous house, but the funny thing about moving is that regardless of whether you move a quarter-mile or a 100-miles, there is still a certain amount of overhead associated with moving. If you think about it, in order to move, you have to touch every single item that you own. To help with this process, at the very end of the packing, my wife and I implemented the “one-touch rule.” Every item got touched once, at which point we either packed it or threw it away. A great purging and organization exercise, and a reminder of how much stuff one family can accumulate living in a house for just five years.

Anyway, I’m back now and will try to be a more diligent blogger. By the way, if you are looking for a mover, I would highly recommend our moving company, Big Foot Moving and Storage . Very professional, reasonable prices, and they took great care of our stuff.

The Courage of Your Convictions

2010-05-11T23:00:00Z

I spent today sitting in a product portfolio rationalization meeting. For each of about seven different product lines, a team of product managers, product marketing managers, and financial analysts presented a series of options about where to take the product line. Suggestions ranged from “significant expansion” to “cash cow” to “kill it with a vengeance.”

The behavior in the room was quite interesting. By and large, every time that we would approach taking a final decision on a product line, people would step up to the point of decision, and then …. Stop. We’d agree that the issue needs further discussion, more analysis or another meeting for the team to report back on what it found.

As a result, we wound up pretty much with a plan to stay the course… which is what lead us to the point where we needed a portfolio rationalization meeting in the first place.

Now, I’m sure that we will eventually get to the right decision for each of these product lines, and that a portion of this blog is fueled by my personal frustration at our inability to take a decision today. But the macropoint still stands… more often than not, in business, people prefer not to take a definitive stand. Why is that? Because taking a stand means that you take a risk – and most people do not want to take a risk with their career.

When you make a definitive statement, you are by definition putting yourself out there. If you declare a product line will realize $200M in revenues in 2011, and then the product line hits only $160M, well, the numbers don’t lie, and you’ll likely be “reassigned” or fired. Conversely, if you choose to exit a market, and then your competitor reaps huge profit in that market, then everyone will turn to you, and say, “See, I told you we should have stayed in that market!”

So what happens is that people frequently place a bet on every spot on the proverbial roulette wheel. But in my book, there are two ways to lose your job (or go out of business). The first is to make a bet on a specific market opportunity, and decline the rest. If you bet right, you win big. If you bet wrong, you lose big. The second way to lose to your job is to not make a bet, or to make a small bet on every opportunity. This way, you definitely won’t lose big, but you also will never win. And if you never win, then you’ll eventually lose your job. It just takes a little bit longer.

As for me, I’d much prefer option one … to make a bet and have an opportunity to win big. Sure, I might lose, but at least I went down swinging. Successful leaders take a stand, make a bet, and have the courage of their convictions to stand behind their bet.

I believe that “don’t make a bet” behavior in a large, public company where there is an existing run-rate business and there is no danger of the lights going off. Why take a risk when you don’t have to? Start-ups don’t suffer from this. Limited resources mean you have to make bets, because if you don’t bet, then you won’t ever win. In a larger company, you have a long time for your lack of bets to catch up with you.

The most successful large companies act like a well-funded start-up. They use their run-rate businesses to keep the lights on, while they make selected, well-thought-out bets on a few market opportunities that have the potential to become the next run-rate business. But the only way that a company gets to make these bets is for its leaders to have the courage of their convictions to take a calculated risk.

The Top Five Things Yoda Can Teach Us About Marketing

2010-04-30T15:58:00Z

The other day I posted on Twitter that one of my favorite movies of all-time, The Empire Strikes Back , is now 30 years old. I remarked that this news made me feel old.... a feeling that was re-inforced by the fact that my two-year-old son wears a Yoda t-shirt that I found in the “retro” section at the Gap.

Upon seeing this tweet, my good buddy Zonker (also known as Joe Brockmeier ) challenged me over Twitter to come up with the top five things that Yoda or Darth Vader could teach us about solution marketing. Never one to back down from a challenge, I accepted Zonker's request.

With all due respect to the Star Wars canon and a big ol' apology to George Lucas, below you will find thetop five things that Yoda can teach us about marketing. In my next blog post, I will cover what Darth Vader can teach us.

The quotes below are actual Star Wars quotes that I found using the QuoteMaster. Click on the link to see other good quotes.

1) Grave danger you are in. Impatient you are.
As marketers, one of the biggest sins we can commit is to be impatient.We need to find the right message and stick with it. What frequently happens is that we repeat our message over and over and over until we are sick of it. It's tempting to assume that the market is just as tired of our message as we are. But the reality is that by the time we are sick of the message, the marketplace is just beginning to hear the faintest of whispers about what we are saying. It probably hasn't even fully registered in your users' mind. The challenge for a marketer is to stay on message and not get impatient. Because if you let your impatience get the better of you, then you'll constantly be changing and the marketplace will never know what you or your company stand for. And that's the gravest danger of all for a marketer.

2) Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will.
Ultimately, this is a question about how you want to be perceived. Do you want to be positive and define yourself in terms of clear business benefits to your users? Or do you want to go down the dark side and focus on tearing down your competitors and defining yourself in relation to them? It's always easy to define yourself through comparison, just like it's easy for Luke Skywalker to give into his hatred. But defining yourself through negative comparison will never let you rise above the noise in the market. You need to clearly know who you are,what problem you solve and why that solution matters to the customer.

3) Always in motion is the future.
One of the core functions of marketing is to understand the marketplace,what customers want, and to have the ability to peer around corners.Of course, you can never fully predict where the market is going togo, but if you talk to enough customers and partners, you will certainly start to get an idea. A core job of solution and productmarketing is to not only select in which markets you will compete,but in which markets you will not. And then have the courage tostick with your convictions long enough to actually test your hypothesis in the market.

4) Help you I can, yes.
This one is easy. A marketer's job is to explain to your customers in clear, easy-to-understand language how we can help solve a problem that matters. In my industry, too often, we descend into techno babble around speeds and feeds, and we need to degeek the speak. It's all about the business value, and how we can a customer solve their most pressing business challenge.

5) Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
OK, I admit... I couldn't pass this one up. Do you ever wonder how many times a day this line is quoted? To me, this is all about the power of voice.Are you going to be wishy-washy in your approach to the market. When a salesperson questions your market choice, are you going to wilt under pressure. When a customer attacks your value proposition, are you going to capitulate on the spot? When you build a presentation,are you going to use strong, impactful language and drive the point home? Marketing is all about confidence. Confidence comes from preparation. Although I wish it were different, marketing is not rocket science. If you learn about your market, if you learn about your customer, if you learn about the ecosystem, if you do the proper introspection and analysis, and if you write with passion and conviction, then you will be successful.

3-D TV & Thought Leadership

2010-04-28T20:39:00Z

I'm a big sports fan. Recently, it seems like in the middle of every single event, I am bombarded with ads promoting 3-D TV. Sony , Samsung , Vizio , Panasonic ... they are all advertising their 3-D TV technology and how they are the most innovative company to bring this new technology to you, and they're bringing it to the market before anyone else. For marketers, there is absolutely a lesson that we can draw from this spate of 3-D TV advertising.

The cold reality is that less 0.1% of all televisions sold globally in 2010 will be 3-D. Yet, over the past three months, I'd say that 65% of the ads have been for 3-D TV.Why is that? Thought leadership. The television manufacturers have correctly deduced that 3-D TV is sexy and if they can lay claim to3-D TV leadership, then there will be a trickle-down effect on therest of their products. You or I might not buy a $6,000 3-D Sony TV,but we may think to ourselves, "Hmmm... those Sony guys are innovative. I bet their more reasonably priced $750 TV must be pretty good as well, and it's in my price range. I'll buy that."

Whether we are high-tech marketers or CPG marketers, we all need to do the same type of bold leadershipclaims with our own products. We need to force the competition to respond to us. Even if the product or feature is not shipping yet,start to claim credit for its value today!

Right now, there is not a single 3-D TV for sale anywhere. Yet all of the companies mentioned above literally say in their advertisements: "We're the first people to bring you this innovation." Personally, I have no idea how five companies can all be first to deliver a product that hasn't shipped yet. But the point is that all these companies are trying to claim the innovation mantle and displace their competition in the mind of the consumer.

I've encouraged my marketing team to take a page out of the 3-D playbook and be bold in their marketing message. Claim the innovation mantle. Displace the competition in the mind of your consumer. Selling the vision and pitch the product. To quote Robert Frost, "Freedom lies in being bold." I'd add, "So does revenue."

The Cultural Paradox of Marshall, Texas

2010-04-27T22:04:00Z

I am in Marshall, Texas for business meetings over the next two days. Marshall is in the northeast corner of Texas, just across the Louisana line. I've never been here before and my trip today has reminded me of the provincial nature of most people's lives and perspectives.... starting with me.

Up until last Thursday, I had no idea where Marshall even was on the map. I'm an east coast guy, through and through, and my American travel experiences have pretty much been coastal, with the occasional stop in Chicago thrown in for good measure. I've been up and down the east and west coasts dozens of times. The speed at which I live my life, my interests, food tastes, the books I read, the sports I watch, the political beliefs that I hold, all in large part have been strongly influenced by where I live and the time I've spent on both coasts.

What was amazing to me, as I drove from Shreveport, Louisana, to Marshall today was the diversity of our country. People always talk about our diversity, but I guess it really hit to me today as I was driving. On a 40-minute trip, I saw ads for nine different restaurants specializing in catfish. The roads (straight as an arrow for miles after mile), the houses (mostly ranchers on huge plots of land), the restaurants (catfish and bbq seem to dominate), were all as different from Natick, Massachusetts, as you could imagine. As for the people I've talked to, let's just say that stereotype actually still fits... people in the south are flat out much nicer (and patient) that people up north. (And I can say that as someone born & bred in Baltimore, and as someone who has lived in New England for almost 20 years.)

While this may be cliché (here is where you should cue the Star-Spangled Banner music), I found myself truly appreciating the diversity of our country. Because while there may be some superficial differences, underneath it all, we're all bound by a certain core set of beliefs around freedom, people's individual rights, and even one vote for one person. It's what makes America great that we can have such geographic-driven cultural differences, yet one macro American culture that ties all together.

This cultural paradox, if you want to call it that, is likely what makes running for US President so difficult. If you're Barack Obama, or Mitt Romney, or Sarah Palin, or Hillary Clinton, how do you appeal to folks from New York City, Los Angeles, and Marshall, Texas without becoming some bland candidate who spouts platitudes about how great it is to be American? (Kind of like this blogpost?) Our core beliefs unify us, but our local preferences and lifestyles are dictated by local geography and local customs that in many cases are intertwined.

Personally, this is why I love to travel. It gets me out of my comfort zone and reminds that there are lot of different people in this world, and a lot of different ways to get to “end of job.” Just because I've done something one way does not mean it's the only way or the right way. It's easy to fall into that trap though when you stay in one location and fall into your comfortable routine. Innovation and new ideas come from “comfortable discomfort,” when you are able to see something familiar in a new light or when you are forced to realize that your perspective isn't necessarily the only one.

Chasing the Cloud on Internet Radio

2010-04-15T20:56:00Z

Today, I was a guest on Novell 's new radio show, CloudChasers . You can find the link to the conversation here. But rather than excite (bore?) you with all the details of what we discussed, instead I want to use this blog to discuss the marketing implications of a web-based radio show.

We produce CloudChasers in conjunction with our advertising agency, PJA Advertising and Marketing . It's a weekly 30-minute radio show that is syndicated to an Internet radio station, and also stored as a podcast. The point of CloudChasers is not to promote Novell products or solutions (in fact, during my appearance today, I didn't use the word “Novell” once). Rather, the show is designed to be an interactive discussion around cloud computing to help our audience members cut through the hype in the market.

What's interesting to me as a marketer about CloudChasers is that it is taking an old medium – radio – and repurposing it for a new one. At its most fundamental, talk radio is about two (or more) people discussing an interesting topic, with the freedom to explore avenues as they come up. It's a very organic form of communication, and it's why talk radio continues to be a popular medium today. The conversation is live, non-edited and goes where it wants to go.

Contrast the freedom of talk radio with the traditional form of internet audio – the webcast. With a webcast, you are limited by the content of the next slide. If the discussion goes an interesting direction, you can explore it briefly, but eventually you have to come back to the content on your slide, and the tone shifts from discussion to presentation. Webcasts are typically “produced” with fancy slides, and script to follow. A discussion is infinitely more interesting than a presentation.

The flip side of doing an internet radio discussion is that without slides, the audio needs to be absolutely impeccable. If all people are doing is listening, then the sound quality needs to be top-notch, without any popping or noise in the background. People are not distracted by slides, nor can you use the slides to help re-inforce your point if the audio fails, even for a moment.

When I showed up today at PJA, I expected to be led into a soundproof studio. Instead, I went to a conference room, and a couple minutes later, a single tech showed up with a mixing board, some studio-quality microphones and an Apple MacBook. When I asked about the total equipment (sans the MacBook), I was surprised to find out the total cost was under $2000. That means that professional quality audio is suddenly affordable. Not cheap, but affordable. This price point is truly a democratizing factor, making radio accessible to everyone.

All in all, I found my CloudChasers experience to be enjoyable. I really enjoyed my discussion with Dustin Amrheim from IBM (@damrheim) who is a technical evangelist for WebSphere. More importantly, I hope our listeners learned something, or were at the very least entertained for 30 minutes. And I remain optimistic and enthusiastic about using new forms of media to communicate with prospects, partners, customers, or just plain old “interested parties.” Too often as marketers we find one tool – like the webcast – and beat it to death again and again and again. But with affordable technology, and a little courage to try something different, we can find new ways to engage and educate, and even potentially drive a little demand.

Want to learn more about CloudChasers or internet talk radio? Join our LinkedIn Group here or listen to me on the radio here .

The Baby Factory

2010-04-07T17:58:00Z

My wife had identical twin boys two weeks ago, which is why this blog has been a little quieter than I would like. Everyone is doing fine, and I'm now trying to re-establish a routine, and part of that routine is bringing my blog back to life.

My wife had a c-section and was in the hospital for five days, and my boys spent twelve days in the neonatal intensive care unit dealing with standard premature baby stuff. Which means that I spent the better part of two weeks in the Beth Israel Deaconness hospital, and that meant plenty of time for observation.

As an aside, I do want to call out the fabulous doctors and nurses at Beth Israel. They do a fantastic job. The quality of care that my family received was phenomenal. If you're going to have to a baby, I highly recommend going to the BI.

One of the reasons that the BI is so good is that they have amazing processes. They have a process for everything: from the most simple stuff (diaper change, then clothes change, then clean hands, and then bottle feed – in that order, everytime) to the most complex stuff (the pre-surgery wash-n-scrub routine designed to eliminate infection.

When I commented to the nurse that I was impressed with their processes, she turned to me and said, “Well, we deliver 5,000 babies a year here. We better have some good processes.”

While marketing high-tech products is certainly not the life-or-death work that takes place in a hospital, I think the process parallel is important. Without strong process, you end up with random acts of marketing, an uncoordinated presence to the market, and no way to demonstrably measure your results. Not only do you waste a huge amount of people's time and marketing dollars, but you don't have any impact.

The trick is to balance process with flexibility. The high-tech industry moves rapidly. The only constant is change. Frankly, that dynamic excitement is why a lot of us work in the high-tech industry. It's okay to have process, but you can't be so wedded to the process that you can't adapt when the market situation changes.

At Novell, we've put a pretty basic, yet solid, marketing process into place. Each year, before the strat of the annual planning process, the solution & product marketing team writes a Market Requirements Document for each of the markets in which Novell plans to compete in the coming year. The MRD is not a Novell strategy document. Rather, it's an outside-looking-in view of the market – theoretically as valuable to our competitors as it is to Novell.

Our leadership team uses these MRDs as key planning documents to develop our company strategy. Once the strategy is declared, the marketing team writes “Market Plans” which are Novell's detailed strategy to win in the market. These Market Plans encompass awareness, demand generation, partner marketing and enablement activities so that we can have a holistic picture of what we want to do in the market to drive a certain result. We also clearly declare what metrics we are going to use to measure ourselves.

Finally, the team sits down to write solution positioning documents and product positioning documents. These documents clearly define Novell's unique value to the customer and how we solve their business challenge in the designated market. These positioning documents are used by Novell's entire marketing organization – from the website to customer flyers to partner presentations – to ensure that we speak with one voice to the market.

At times, this marketing process may seem a bit heavy, but it drives a necessary level of consistency into the market, so that customers and partners know who Novell is, what we stand for, and what our differentiated value proposition. The process absolutely needs to be flexible, but we also cannot allow ourselves to get in a position where we change our message on a daily basis. It's a fine line to walk.

At the risk of offending my wife, my newborn twins, and my two older children, I would submit that if you work in marketing, then your baby is your message. You create it from scratch, you nuture it, and then introduce it to the world. You want to protect it, but at some point, you have to release it into the great big world so that it can grow and stand alone. And just like a hospital has a well-defined set of processes to deliver healthy and strong babies into the world, I'd submit that every well-run marketing organization has its own set of processes to deliver healthy and strong messages into the world.

Get to the Point

2010-03-08T19:47:00Z

This morning, I was interviewing a candidate for an open position on my team. While this candidate was unquestionably prepared, I will most likely not be moving him forward in the interview process. Why? Because he took too long to get to the point.

In an interview for a marketing job, it's important to realize that how you answer the question is as important as what your answer actually is. For all intents and purposes, you are marketing yourself in an interview for a marketing role. Yes, you may know every last detail about the market and industry, and you may even understand the products really well. But if you can't put it all together in a succinct package, you're never going to get the job.

When you go into a marketing interview, realize that you are the product. As such, you should know your features and benefits, and also your weaknesses against the competition. Most importantly, you should know the three things you want me to take away about your qualifications for the job, and then you need to weave those themes back into your interview. Don't beat me over the head with them, but certainly make sure that I walk away clearly with three best attributes in mind.

Equally important is the need to be succinct. In interviews, I purposely ask open-ended, unstructured questions to see how you are going to answer. Are you going to create a structure where there is none, and provide me a well-organized answer that drives your agenda? Or are you just going to ramble for six-minutes? If you don't know what you want to say and you can't say it in 60 seconds, how can I trust you to be an effective advocate for the product or solution that you are going to be marketing?

In one of my favorite quotes, Mark Twain once said, “I would have written you a shorter letter, if only I had the time.” Truer words have never been spoken.

Do Unto Others

2010-03-04T19:53:00Z

I was talking the other day with one of my teammates here at Novell. He said to me, “Justin, I feel like I'm always on the defensive here. I can't get ahead of issues. I'm always reacting to what other people, and I can't keep up.”

“Sam,” I said (and the name has been changed to protect the innocent), “there are two ways to think about life here at Novell. You can either do unto Novell, or Novell can do unto you. Right now, you're letting Novell do unto you, and it's eating you up. There are too many agendas here. You need to have your agenda – what you want to get accomplished – and then you need to measure other people's requests against that agenda. You need to be confident in your ability to say 'no' to certain requests and more importantly you need to be able to help other people understand why your agenda is actually in their best interests.”

Sam & I shifted our conversation to discuss what his agenda might look like. We started to “plan the work,” so he could then “work the plan.” Yet this conversation was more than two weeks ago, and I still can't get it out of my head. I think the reason is that this question – “Either do unto Novell or Novell will do until you” – comes down to my one of my core philosophies on leadership.

If you're lucky, you work in a company where the people love their job and they are deeply invested in the company's success. After all, there are 168 hours in a week, and you spend 56 of them sleeping, 60 of them working, and the remaining 52 playing. So you're actually spending the majority of your life at work. (Or at least I am. But that's a sad commentary on my life that's a topic for another blog.)

If you're spending 36% of your life at work, you are obviously deeply vested in the success of that endeavor. And if you're that deeply invested, odds are, you have some thoughts on how your company will be successful. The challenge is that the other people with whom you work likely have their own thoughts on success, and you won't always agree. That's ok – hence the old saying “Two heads are better than one.”

People always ask me what are my criteria for hiring. My first answer is “I hire for aptitude and attitude. You need to be intelligent and driven – and you need to be a strong communicator. You need to convince people to follow you based on the power of your ideas, not because you control their paycheck.” In other words, I hire based on your ability to “Do Unto Novell” and your ability to take input from a multitude of sources, distill it down to an agenda that will make a difference (meaning “drive revenue”), and then help the rest of your teammates understand why this is the right path to follow. Otherwise, you'll spend your days chasing your tail trying to make everyone happy and eventually you'll wind up in my office frustrated, just like Sam.

I'm pretty sure that Novell is no different than any company, from the two-person start-up straight up through giants like IBM and GE. All that varies is the number of people you need to get on the same page. And that's not to say that your agenda will always be the right one, or that you'll have the answers. The best leaders have a plan of action, but are constantly evaluating it against other options and input to ensure that the current plan is the right plan. You need to balance running the trains on-time with the fact that sometimes you need to adjust the destination.

As for Sam, I'm hopeful that he left my office feeling better about his work and that he is now formulating his agenda. I'm looking forward to him showing back up in my office with his agenda, and I'm confident that he has the skills to collaborate with his colleagues to get them all on the same page, driving to the same destination. I'll keep you posted on how he does.

Do Your Job

2010-03-02T18:25:00Z

I've never been in the New England Patriots' locker room, but I've read in the Boston Globe that there is a huge sign in there with the words "DO YOUR JOB" in all capital letters. The implication is that if every individual player does his job and does it well, then the team as a whole will win.

Every person on the Patriots has a unique role to play in the game. The team only succeeds if each individual focuses on doing his job as best he can. Because the Patriots are so good at doing their own jobs, they've won three Super Bowls and were named USA Today's Franchise of the Decade.

I'd submit that the same rule applies in the world of business. Marketing needs to identify opportunities and unique value propositions. Sales needs to build customer relationships and sell. Product managers need to design great products with the features that matter to customers. Engineering needs to write great code. If everyone does their job, then the company succeeds.

Where it starts to fall apart is if people start doing each other's job. Perhaps product management feels that marketing is capturing the right value in the product, so product managers start building shadow presentations that they give to sales. Or perhaps sales feels that PM is putting the right features in the product, so they start going to engineering with specific product features that they need put into the process. Pretty soon, you have complete chaos and a dysfunctional organization.

What people forget when they try to do other people's jobs is that many times what looks easy on the surface isn't actually all that easy when you are the one who has to deliver. In many cases, people have advanced degrees (MBA or MS in Computer Science) that qualify them for their job, or they have years of experience.

As a marketing professional, I'd submit that the marketing function feels this pain more acutely than other functions. I'm never going to sit down and have an engineering schedule review. Nor am I going to assess the QA methodology of an engineering organization. But as human beings, we are all exposed to marketing 200 times a day in our personal lives -- through TV, internet, even our friends trying to get us to join their gym. And we know what we like and what we don't like, and what messages resonate with us.

Marketing is both an art and a science, and the art part of it is almost entirely subjective. So an engineer may not be qualified to evaluate a lead process flow, but she will certainly know if an advertisement speaks to her or not, or if she thinks the messaging accurately conveys the product that she has built. But what's missing here is that this engineer's opinion belongs to an audience of one, and you never want to market to an audience of one. As a marketer, you need to be able to craft a value proposition that speaks simultaneously to customers, partners, employees, investors, analysts, press, and prospects.

It's oftentimes easier to criticize than to create. And tone most definitely matters. When our friendly engineer offers her suggestions for improvement, if it's offered in the spirit of constructive criticism, then more often or not, the marketing team will consider it. However, what is often missing is that we may have tested this idea with several customer focus groups and gotten their feedback. Or we may have spoken with industry analysts who told us to position the product in a specific way to speak to an unmet need they are hearing from their customers.

Now, it's our job as marketers to communicate that information back to our constituents inside the organization. After all, we have the privilege of being the external voice to the market, representing our company and the work of all the employees. We need to be both external AND internal marketers, to explain why the path we took is the right one. But it's a fine line. We don't want to spend so much time marketing internally that we forget to market externally.

As marketers, we need to become ever more adept at listening to all the feedback from all constituencies inside and outside our organization. But we need to keep in mind that there will be ever more feedback than we can possible incorporate into the message. And if we do incorporate it all, then the message becomes watered down, and speaks to no one. A good marketer will consider all the feedback, keep the valuable pieces and then have the courage to discard the other pieces. And then have the courage to stand by that decision, even in the face of fire.

Net-net, this is not an easy problem to solve... and nor should it be. I'll be honest... it's tempting sometimes to do someone else's job... I have ideas for product feature sets, and I've been in meetings with sales guys where I think to myself, "I could do a better pitch than this!" But the only way for a company to succeed and thrive is if we have granted trust that individuals doing a job actually know what they are doing.

After all, everyone wants to be Tom Brady. But if Tom Brady didn't have Matt Light to protect him, then Tom would spend most of the game on his back and wouldn't be able to complete all those passes to Randy Moss. And the Patriots wouldn't be three-time Super Bowl champions.

Focus to Win

2010-02-24T22:22:00Z

Watching the Olympics this week, I've been thinking a lot about focus. I've been impressed with the single-minded focus of these Olympic athletes. I find myself wondering what they must have sacrificed to get to the pinnacle of their sport. Even if they don't a win a medal (and most won't), imagine how awesome it must feel to be the 30th-best alpine skier IN THE WORLD, and to know that you could be #1 if you only skied 2 seconds faster.

These people are all winners, because in my book, simply getting to the Olympics is an amazing personal victory. But how did these people get to the Olympics? Focus. In many cases, these people are such amazing athletes that they could have played any sport. But they picked one. Many of them are smart enough to go to any college in the world, but they passed on (or delayed) college so that they could focus their efforts on training. These individuals have passed on nights at the movies, eating unhealthy food and spending time with family, so they could focus on being the best athlete that they could be. And their reward is to compete at the highest level of their sport.

Things aren't that different in the business world. Everyone knows you need to focus. For any business, big or small, there are more opportunities than you can ever possibly pursue. Yet for some reason, most businesses struggle to focus. They see an opportunity around every corner and it's very tempting to pursue all of them.

Why do businesses struggle to focus? Because it's hard. And it means turning down something that you may be good at. Could Shaun White be a world-class skateboader? Yes, he could. But he spent this past summer living away from family and friends in New Zealand so that he could practice his snowboarding. The result? His second gold medal in a row. Shaun sacrificed one opportunity (skateboarding) for another gold medal.

As my colleagues at Novell know, I am always preaching that we need to focus our limited resources on fewer opportunities, and that we need to have the courage to say "no" to ideas. In our defense, I don't think that Novell is unique in our struggle to focus. Over the past two days, I've read two blog posts on the importance of focus. One from my friend Matt Asay in his blog The Open Road, and the other from Bijan Sabet, a Boston-area venture capitalist. Both Matt and Bijan talk about their admiration for Apple and their renowned ability to focus and deselect market opportunities. Bijan even quotes Apple COO Tim Cook, who says:

“We are the most focused company that I know of or have read of or have any knowledge of. We say no to good ideas every day. We say no to great ideas in order to keep the amount of things we focus on very small in number so that we can put enormous energy behind the ones we do choose. The table each of you are sitting at today, you could probably put every product on it that Apple makes, yet Apple’s revenue last year was $40 billion. I think any other company that could saythat is an oil company.”

Running a business is hard work. But at the end of the day, business is just a series of trade-offs among limited resources. Every single opportunity you pursue has a cost -- another opportunity that you do not pursue. If you elect to pursue all of the opportunities, then you wind up spreading your resource so thin that you ineffectively pursue all resources.

I've seen this problem at companies big & small. Before I went to business school, I worked at a supply chain software start-up for two years. We chased every single customer opportunity from a big auto manufacturer to a large retailer to a consumer hardware manufacturer. Guess what? They all had different supply chains. And we wound up chasing our tail for two years to tailor our product to the deal that was most likely to close that week. The end result was that we ended up going out of business.

At Novell, we have more brilliant engineers and more great ideas than I ever thought I could find at a single company. And as a large, public software company, we have a lot of resources at our disposal. Yet even at Novell, we struggle with the focus issue. Every good idea has its backers, and we struggle to figure out which ones to back and which ones to let go. I've seen us make a lot of progress on focus over the past three years, and it's been reflected in our margin improvement.

But I'd say that we still have room to improve. As a member of the marketing organization, I'd submit that my job and that of my marketing colleagues is to help find the open spaces available to Novell and the market opportunities where we have the best chance to succeed. Then we need to encourage our engineering colleagues to aim their products at those markets. And we all need to have the courage to say "no" to those market opportunities where it will cost too much or take too long to succeed. After all, no one can be an Olympic ski champion and an Olympic snowboard champion at the same time.

How do you drive focus in your company?