Using Social Media to Manage by Objectives

The New York Times recently ran an interview with Mark Pincus, the C.E.O of Zynga. It's an interesting interview. Pincus talks about the importance of employees feeling like they're in charge of something: everyone should be C.E.O. of something. He also talks about hiring people who are still hungry for success and managing people by asking them to articulate a few key objectives for the week.

Regarding his method of managing, Pincus says:

John Doerr [the venture capitalist] sold me on this idea of O.K.R.'s, which stands for objectives and key results. It was developed at Intel and used at Google, and the idea is that the whole company and every group has one objective and three measurable key results, and if you achieve two of the three, you achieve your overall objective, and if you achieve all three, you’ve really killed it.


We put the whole company on that, so everyone knows their O.K.R.'s. And that is a good, simple organizing principle that keeps people focused on the three things that matter — not the 10.


Then I ask everybody to write down on Sunday night or Monday morning what are your three priorities for the week, and then on Friday see how you did against them. It’s the only way people can stay focused and not burn out. And if I look at your road map and you have 10 priorities for you and your team, you probably don't know which of the three matter, and probably none of the 10 are right.


I can look at everyone's piece of paper, and their road map shows every item you were going to do and your predicted results and actual results, and then the results are in red if you missed them, yellow if they're close and green if you passed them. I think road maps are a great principle just for managing your life. It keeps everybody focused, and it lets me know what trains are on or off the tracks.

For me, the phrase that leapt off the page here was "piece of paper." Sure, one could track all these objectives on paper, but I think it makes more sense to post this information on blogs or wikis, where the objectives would be visible to all and where tagging could be used to tie individual objectives to larger departmental or organizational objectives. In other words, instead of using paper, use Jive or MindTouch or Thought Farmer. That makes the objectives amenable, too, to importing into BI tools or simple graphing tools sometimes included in these platforms. And if some objectives are sensitive or confidential, role-based access controls could be used to make them visible only to authorized managers.

There's been lots of talk about how social media platforms help workers share information and expertise. The oft-cited example is a worker discovering which colleagues in other departments have relevant expertise. Social media platforms help people discover and nurture such connections.

I hope that in the coming years, more organizations realize what powerful tools these platforms can be for strategic planning: for collecting information for use in strategic plans and for disseminating and tracking strategic objectives. Let's use these platforms for sharing information up and down the organization, as well as across, and for making strategic objectives visible and understandable to all.

How Good Is The Interface to Your Web Site or SaaS Application? Find Out Now

I've written before about the importance of customer experiences. When I look back on the companies I've worked with over a couple of decades in high tech, the quality of experience a product provided largely determined the success or failure of the product overall.

In the software market, user interfaces obviously play a major role in a customer's experience and, hence, in a product's success or failure. Complex, cumbersome interfaces confused users, prolonged sales cycles, and often limited buyers to sophisticated engineers working in solitary roles. Streamlined, easy-to-use interfaces, often developed in concert with customers, led to faster sales, more efficient operations, and greater business success overall.

There's a wealth of material available on the importance of user interfaces and customer-driven design. Jakob Nielsen, Jared Spool, and Steve Blank all have important things to say on these topics.

Of course, if you're in the middle of a product launch, or you're a product manager working to an aggressive schedule, or you're a programmer sweating to make your deadlines, you probably don't have a lot of time on your hands to do in-depth reading and learn a new set of best practices.

Nonetheless, you'd probably like to make sure the Web site or software you're building meets the needs of your customers to the greatest degree possible, since this is the most direct and cost-effective way to:

• ensure rapid adoption by customers
  
• shorten sales cycles
  
• reduce customer support calls
  

So, busy with development and probably short on time and money, how can you ensure you've got the best user interface possible? How can you nip a problem in the bud now, before it turns into a full-fledged customer support nightmare later?

Introducing Mad*Pow

You can take advantage of a new service I'm now offering with my new business partner, Mad*Pow.

I didn't want to merely write about improving customer experiences, wringing my hands without offering a concrete solution. Instead, I wanted to be able to help any interested companies address this problem quickly and directly. So I met with usability designers, explained what I was looking for, and ended up forming a partnership with Mad*Pow, a leading experience design agency.

They're great folks. They're based in Portsmouth, NH, and their clients include:

• Aetna
  
• American Express
  
• ESPN
  
• Google
  
• Intuit
  
• Journal of New England Medicine
  
• NBC Universal
  
• Starwood
  

You can check out some of their projects here.

Incidentally, Mass High Tech just named Amy Cueva, Mad*Pow's Founder and Chief Experience Officer one of its "Women to Watch" award winners.

The company was founded in 2000, and, as you can see from the client list above and from their Web site, they've clearly grown into a dynamic, successful company. I'm thrilled to be working with them to address the user experience problem.

Rapid Strategic Analysis of User Experiences

So what does our new service entail?

First, we’ll interview you to understand your business objectives and design goals. Then we’ll conduct a thorough assessment of your Web site or Web application. Our analysis will include:

• Heuristic analysis by multiple testers and designers to uncover usability weaknesses.
  
• Competitive analysis (2-3 competitive or comparative sites)
  
• Marketing and messaging analysis
  

We will then deliver an annotated slide deck and a written report detailing our findings, including:

• Analysis of content, navigation, design, brand, and messaging
  
• Vision for the future—suggestions for improvements in all areas analyzed
  
• SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis summary of the user experience overall
  

Our report will answer these vital questions:

• Is your Web site or Web application’s user interface as easy to use as possible? Are any design elements confusing or cumbersome? How well does the interface serve its users?
  
• How well does the interface serve your various audiences?
  
• Does the interface support customers making full use of your offerings? Does it facilitate upgrades and cross-selling?
  
• How does the interface compare to those of your competitors?
  

In addition, you can ask Mad*Pow's design team to offer various design alternatives for your site or application.

We've designed this process to achieve quick turnaround: we expect to work from kick-off interview to delivered report in 5 business days. And we've priced it in fitting with the budgets that are prevailing in today's, um, wonderful economy.

You can read more about the service here. (PDF)

If you're interested in having our team kick the tires on what you're building, please contact us at experience @ bennettstrategy dot com.


Lightbulb photo by rpongsaj, some rights reserved.

Questions Worth Asking at the Beginning of the Year

Strategic Planning

1. Has my company identified 6-10 major objectives for the year and identified 3-6 supporting milestones for each objective? (For more about this, click here.)
   
2. Has this list of objectives and milestones been broadly communicated throughout the company?
3. Are directors and managers using this information to drive their departmental planning and budgets?

Product and Services Development

1. Has my company identified the user experiences that our products and services should provide?
2. Have these experiences formed the basis for development of products, including the identification of features and benefits?
3. Does my company have a process in place for assessing customer experiences and ensuring they meet our goals?

Strategic Communications and Customer Management

1. Does my company have up-to-date messaging guidelines available for all relevant parties, including not only executives, marketers, and sales people, but also all the other employees who might be interacting with customers and the public through forums and other social media?
2. Does my company have a systematic approach for monitoring social media interactions and responding promptly to situations that arise in these ad hoc communications channels?
3. Does my company have IT systems in place to integrate outbound communications with CRM and other internal IT systems?