Wrapping up the Program - Part II

Following up on Part I, I thought I would highlight some of my favorite projects from the program. Some were things that I was a part of, while others came from classmates. I've mentioned some of these before, in previous blog posts.

The first was the summary presentation we gave for Leadership & Organizational Behavior (LOB) class. The 1st semester was an interesting transition for everyone in the class, not only readjusting ourselves to academia but also transitioning into a structure where teamwork and trust were critical factors in success. The focus of the presentation was supposed to be analysis of our personalities against LOB criteria, but what it turned into was a very revealing look into the personalities of our classmates. Their history, their fears, their hopes and dreams, and their ability to trust the people in the room with personal information. For most people in the class, it was the first opportunity we'd had in 3-4 months to really understand who we'd be going through the rest of the journey with. For me personally, I used it as an opportunity to try out a presentation style that I had seen a few times, but had never used before. It's a variation on something called Pecha Kucha, which we eventually used in the 4th semester for our final Leading Change presentation. When I gave the presentation, I think I made some people uncomfortable (less structured, less formal, limited analysis). I was trying to use the style to convey the pace at which my working environment (Internet Technology) moves, and I believe that came across to some extent. Regardless, it was my first attempt at using the MBA program as a vehicle to try new ideas which could be reused in my working world.

BGracely LOB Personality Semester Project 5Dec2008

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Our final Business & Global Economics (BGE) project involved a country/region and investment analysis in Emerging Markets. BGE was the 1st semester course that really taught me that I had much to learn about the complexities and inter-dependencies of the global economy We choose to analyze UAE, which at the time of our selection (Aug.2008) seemed like an exciting, vibrant new beacon of the global economy. Our analysis and recommendation highlighted many of the possibilities being created by the massive influx of petrodollars, but it also cautioned against a potential bubble. Having new eyes for UAE, it has been extremely interesting to watch the reports of the demise of Dubai in the early to mid part of 2009, and then the more recent reports of its resurgence towards the end of the year. I believe the stories of Dubai, and its ultimate success or failure are still to be written, with results being somewhat unknown for another 5-10 years.

WFU-MBA-BGE-Team5-UAE-5Dec2008

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Towards the end of our 2nd semester, our Managerial Accounting professor (Dr.Bern Beatty) asked Brian Healy (EVP, Kindermusik) to come speak with our class about how they implement Open Book Management. Not only was this an excellent look at how an entrepreneurial company was putting unique leadership styles to work, but it also began a business relationship with Mr.Healy that I hope to leverage for another start-up that I may launch in 2010.

Open Book Management - Critical Number

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Another 2nd semester project allowed Portia Mount and I to explore an element of Marketing that gets heavy coverage from the press, but is still not well understood my most of the business world or academia. We explored Social Media and Social Marketing in the context of the Obama Election campaign, but tried to constantly bring the context back to everyday business environments. It was an interesting culmination to our Strategic Marketing course, as each sub-team also created a final presentation that focused on an angle of Internet or Social Marketing. Since that presentation, I've actually had 5-6 companies approach me about training/educating their executive teams about Social Media/Marketing best practices and way they can engage with this new media.

ObamaNation - Lessons from the Front Lines of Social Media

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The 3rd semester was all about International Business. We had the option to focus on China, Japan or South America (the India trip was canceled due to the Mumbai bombings). Eight of us choose to spend two weeks in Beijing, Xian, Shanghai and Hong Kong. We chronically our journey on the China Blog. It's still difficult to put the magnitude of that trip into words, but needless to say it completely changed my views on my career and the 21st century.

To conclude our Entrepreneurship course, we were asked to focus on a new business model or idea. I decided to focus on Gracely Girl Designs, which is an online appearal business that I created with my wife in October 2009. The primary motivation for the business was to allow her a creative outlet to coincide with the raising of our children. But what we found in designing the business was an ability to operate almost entirely virtual and with a structure that was incredibly flexible. I presented this business as a model that could be adopted by classmates that wishes to stretch their entrepreneurial legs, but also maintain their existing jobs (at least for a while).

Gracely Girl Design

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Our Management Practicum was focused around the theme of Environmental Sustainability, and how we could attack that problem in a way that found balance between environmental challenges and business challenges. Many of my classmates came up with incredible ideas (to be discussed in Part III), presenting ideas to start businesses that will have lasting impacts for thousands of people in the US, Latin America and India. Their work will go beyond business success and will thrive in the future successes of mankind. Our team took a technology focus, looking at ways to more efficiently deploy IT Data Centers, the 21st-century "bit" factories that will drive the output of electronic addictions. Considering that today's Data Centers consume 2-3% of all US electricity, with exponential growth expected as Smart Grids and Electric Vehicles become part of the US economy.

Looking back on the breadth of our projects, I'm still amazed at what can be learned in just 18 months. Not only did we develop domain-level expertise in many areas, but we created a framework of knowledge that will allow us to take on strategic challenges throughout the 21st century.

Wrapping up the Program - Part I

As of 1pm, barring any last minute disasters (not sure what they would be), my journey through the WFU Executive MBA program is complete. Our final grades were posted today. All that's left now is to receive my diploma at a ceremony in January.

As the last group to ever go through the Executive Program, the ending is somewhat bittersweet (the format was canceled in Fall 2009 due to strategic changes by the WFU Schools of Business). Being EOL brought us closer together as a group, but unfortunately we won't have subsequent classes to build the alumni base. The Executive program was started over 25 years, and was the original MBA program offered by Wake Forest.

Instead of just waving good-bye to this blog, I thought I'd finish it with a series of posts recapping some of the most important things I learned over the last 18 months.

Breadth of Knowledge Matters

Whether you're faced with a Strategy problem, a Marketing problem, a Finance problem or an Organization problem, no decision can be made in a vacuum. Having a fundamental understanding of a breadth of subjects, learned across a wide range of industries (through case studies, classmate experiences, etc.) is invaluable in making executive level decisions. Today's markets move much too fast to build companies that operate in silos, so bringing a breadth of knowledge to daily decisions will make the difference between survival and failure in the 21st century.

The World is Global...and Semi-Global...and Regional...and Local

While the Thomas Friedman's of the world grab many headlines, not every problem today is global. It is invaluable to have the experience of visiting and working in international markets (which we experienced), but knowing when strategy needs to be global is even more valuable. You must be ABLE to step out of your CAGE and see where it makes sense to bring ADDING solutions to market expansion. You must think globally, but act locally.

Create True and Lasting Value

As we saw from the financial crisis of 2008, and in numerous other examples, it is incredibly easy to financially engineer the books or manipulate markets in the short-run in return for near-term profits. But the 21st century, with it's hypermedia cycles, will quickly destroy companies that are not competitive and do not create true value for customers or partners. NOTE: "Lasting" is a relative term. It may only be 3-5yrs, but it's a mindset that should be infected into every company that strives to be competitive and differentiate themselves by creating tremendous value with their products and services.

Think like a CEO

All too often we tend to get caught up in the value of our functional area or market, and fail to see the bigger picture in front of us. Without the correct strategies, financial models and product portfolios aligned to solve customer problems, many ideas are just a set of random details.

Think like a Baby

At times, we plug all the data into our fancy MBA models and answers emerge. But do they always make sense? Have they taken into consideration local factors, or basic inter-dependencies? Have we thought through the simplest of details, asked the simplest of questions? For parents, we're often amazed at the way children are able to ask the most direct questions for complex topics. That type of questioning is valuable for executives as well.

Build Your Personal Brand

The personalization of media and the ubiquity of the Internet allows each of us to be our own Marketing/PR/Ad agency. Companies will come and go, but your personal brand is the one element over which you can have direct control. This blog was created for alternative learning purposes, but it eventually became a foundational aspect of me beginning a journey to better understand how a personal brand is built, cultivated and expanded.

200 Posts!!

200 is a completely irrelevant number, but I happened to notice it in the blog-log and it made me stop and think about what that meant. I started this blog between the 1st and 2nd semester as an experiment in trying to foster a new type of conversation between my classmates. My hope was that they might extend some of the classroom discussions online. That never really panned out, but I learned a number of other lessons in it's place:

1. A blog, like anything else, takes practices. A lot of practice. With 200 posts, I've created just under one per day, which isn't too bad. It forces me to find a style (maybe 3-4 paragraphs), but also allows me to try some new things (embed videos, etc.). I am by no means approaching a "moderately average" level for quality, but by making it habitual it does force me to consolidate my thoughts and find ways to communicate them.
2. I have found that a number of people/classmates do occasionally read the blog, but many of their comments are sent to me via email or verbally (face-to-face). I'm surprised by how many people tell me they don't want to communicate their ideas or feedback in public. I would think that MBA students seeking to become higher-level leaders would welcome the opportunity to practice their public writing or communication, but I vastly under-estimated that element of the blog.
3. As I've mentioned before, it's been amazing to me how many people from foreign countries have visited. I hope that maybe that means I'm starting to take a more international view of the world and those international posts are somewhat interesting. The international aspect of our MBA program has easily been the most interestng portion for me.

The other experiment with the blog was to gain a much greater set of "hands-on" experiences with social media and online communities. This is becoming such a huge part of marketing, branding, communicating, community building (internally & externally for companies and new ideas), that I felt like I needed to really understanding it from the ground up. Could I do a better job of building my personal brand? Could I effectively communicate new or complicated ideas? Could I foster discussion with new communities of people with common interests? Could I master some of the basic techniques needed to spread content and ideas around the Internet?

The answer to all those questions is still a work in progress, but I definitely know 1000% more now than I did just 12 months ago. I've been able to take the learnings from this blog and turn it into a Social Media strategy for my company that has drawn over 100,000 visits to our company blog, 50,000 visits to our company's YouTube channel, and over 25,000 downloads of collateral that helps to drive new product sales.

So thank you to anyone that has taken the time to read the blog and provide any feedback. I've found it to be a great experiment and a needed outlet for my itch to write. I'll continue with it through our graduation in December, and take the learnings with me to my various other professional outlets. Maybe I'll be able to get to 300 before the program is completed.

ObamaNation - Lessons from the Front Lines of Social Media

As promised, here is the presentation that Team 5 gave in our Strategic Marketing course on advances in marketing.

As I mentioned before, there was so much that could be covered. We felt like these 5 powerful concepts played a

major role in the success of the Obama campaign. We also believed that those items could be translated to most

businesses, which was the other key goal we had for the project.

After the presentation, as good set of questions and discussions ensued around how to apply this to other

businesses, where we think the next social media trends will emerge (start-ups emerging

from all the layoffs), would this work if it extended beyond 2yrs (most marketing campaigns don't go

that long), and how to create a spreadable message (keep it simple, inclusive and positive).

NOTE: Several people asked this was done to push a specific political agenda. The answer is no. Our team

is made up of Republicans, Democrats and Independents. We chose the Obama campaign because of its

visibility. Since few of our classmates plan to run for political office, our ultimate goal was to help the class

learn concepts that they could apply to their businesses.

ObamaNation - Lessons from the Front Lines of Social Media

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What isn't in our ObamaNation presentation...

As with any project, some ideas or concepts don't make the final deliverable and are left on the cutting room floor. Our presentation is next weekend, but I thought I'd highlight some of the areas that didn't make it. It's not that they weren't important, it was just a matter of getting down to something that was powerful and could still fit in the 10-15 minute timeframe. It was a tough call, because our research uncovered so many interesting and valuable concepts that were used to drive the Obama campaign.

Here's a list of things we would have loved to cover in more details:

• How to migrate a company's existing marketing / advertising culture from internal-centric to community-centric (transparency, brand ownership, brand variations, etc.).
• Edge Economies and how to let data "into the wild" to achieve results you never could have with existing internal personnel.
• Partnerships - how to engage stakeholders across your value chain to create greater breadth and variety of your offerings, without additional costs to your business.
• Breaking the rules and blurring the lines between traditional STP-based Marketing (Segmentation, Target, Positioning) and the uber-STP and micro-STP Marketing used throughout the campaign.
• PR management during crisis, across various media types.

We'll figure out a way to get our notes on this areas publish somewhere, because they were created through many hours of research and late-night discussions. We actually discussed this topic prior to the class and had both hoped it would be the focus of our studies. It wasn't covered that much in class, so the project became the highlight of the course for us. We're just hoping to do justice to such an important trend in marketing.

A Preview of our ObamaNation (Social Media) presentation

In the publishing industry, there is nothing worse than being "scooped" by your competition. In other words, they got the story to press before you did.

Portia Mount and I are presenting our Team 5 Market Trends report this weekend, something we've been looking forward to all semester.

So I was slightly disappointed to open the mailbox last week and see the cover story in Fast Company (see right) that highlights how Chris Hughes brought social media to the forefront of the Obama campaign and played a huge role in his eventual election. An excellent piece, it highlights many of the focus areas we planned to present.

One of the key points the article makes is that Hughes was the least technical of the three Facebook founders, instead being the one focused on how all this technology could highlight or enhance human behaviors and interactions. While our presentation intends to touch on the underlying technology, there is an entire section devoted to applying the techniques and lessons to almost any business. The approach taken by the Obama campaign will not only revolutionize how elections are structured in the future, but also how companies and individuals will market their brands and products going forward.

That last point is the focus of our presentation. We hope we do it justice in the 10-15 minutes alloted to the presentation. I'll be sure to post the presentation and highlights in subsequent posts following next weekend. If anyone from the Wake Forest community would like to attend , it will be on Saturday April 18th, between 1-3pm in Babcock Room 1101.

How does Twitter make money?

Following up on my previous post about Twitter basics, I thought I'd address another question from class that raised a number of concerns. "How does Twitter make money, and should I trust my information to someone that may not be here in XX months/years?"

Excellent question, and definitely something to be concerned about as you consider new business decisions. I wrote about several ways that Facebook could make money (in addition to advertising) several months ago, because I enjoy using the service and would like to see it continue. Or maybe I'm subconsciously auditioning to be a Product Manager at Facebook...who knows? Either way, it's interesting to look at how these Freemium companies can generate revenue and stay in business.

As of now, Twitter does not have a revenue model. In fact, this has been the center of much speculation amongst the technorati lately. So let's look at the basic ways that Twitter could make money, as well as some additional opportunities for companies to leverage Twitter to drive revenues for themselves.

1. Advertising - This is the simplest to understand. Just like Yahoo! or Google, Twitter could begin to monetize their traffic by placing targeted advertising along side the tweets. And considering the real-time nature of their traffic, this could create new advertising models for companies trying to reach certain demographics.
2. Additional Tweet Space - Tweets are currently confined to 140 characters, a throwback to the days when Tweets were mainly sent via SMS (Text) messaging. But some people and companies struggle to get their message out in this short format. Supporting larger character lengths may be a service that Twitter can monetize.
3. Auctions for "Suggested" listings - This came up recently, as new members often struggle with who to follow.
4. Integrated Services - An example might be something like this: Starbucks sets up a Twitter "watching" service that looks for people complaining about traffic-jams or any other delay. When they see this, they determine where the users are located. Then they send those people a Tweet offering a coupon to the local Starbucks. This is a very basic example, but there are thousands of possibilities for companies that want to come up with creative ways to reach their target audience. Twitter could offer a service for those companies that can't do this themselves (SMB's with limited IT knowledge), or companies that aren't sure of the right way to engage with social communities.
5. Broaden the Scope of the Platform - One of the key elements to any Social Media company or service is a willingness to broaden the usage of the platform. This means that not only could others create monetization opportunities, but you can leverage new opportunities because of the increased breadth. This could mean creating new partnerships to leverage the information in Twitter feeds, or allowing partners to insert themselves into the conversations in new ways.

That's just the tip of the iceberg of ways that Twitter could make money. I'm sure there are dozens more.

There is also the possibility that Twitter will get purchased by one of the major social networks, or by Google.

Strategic Marketing Presentations

One of the things I really like about our Strategic Marketing class is that it is primarily focused on analysis and application of marketing as it relates to our current role (or future role).  It's not heavily focused on quizzes and exams, which often tend to be exercises in memorization (imho).  One of our group projects for the class is an analysis and presentation of an area of marketing that we believe is new, interesting and potentially of use to our companies.  The topics are chosen by the teams, with the goals being both team analysis and teaching something new to the rest of the groups.  I wrote about the Team 5 topic in an earlier post, but the rest of the team projects were announced this weekend.  I haven't seen their abstracts yet, but I thought it might be fun to list some of the things I'd like to learn, and see if any of those aspects get presented.

February 7: Team 1 – “iphone apps”

• How does Apple market the AppStore to developers vs. how Facebook markets their platform (Facebook Connect, Facebook Applications) to developers ?
• Is Apple doing enough with the AppStore concept to leverage developers (or customers) to look for applications that could work between Macs, iPhones, AppleTV, etc..?
• Apple is claiming huge download numbers for AppStore.  What flaws do you see in their model or execution?

February 21: Team 3 – “Search Engine Optimization”

• Beyond paying the highest bid for keywords, what other techniques are companies using to get on the 1st page of Google searches? (Digg, etc.)
• Are the SEO techniques and strategies different for company websites vs. personal blogs?
• Do you expect SEO models will work the same with mobile computing as they do today with desktop computing?  Does the location aspect of mobile computing offer new SEO paradigms?

March 21: Team 4 – “Social Networking”

• If you were VP of Marketing, what would your mission statement look like for using Social Networking to enhance aspects of your company?
• Success with Social Networking requires a willingness to be open and give to the community, which is often counter-intuitive to companies used to controlling information, branding, etc..  What have successful companies done to find the right balance of control vs. openness?
• Talk about how Zappos is using Twitter to impact many aspects of their business, especially as it relates to customers and the community that looks to Zappos for footwear.

April 4: Team 2 – “Interactive Marketing”

• Is it a good idea to create forums where your customers can have interactive conversations which could turn into interactive marketing, without your company being in the middle?
• What are the keys to creating authenticity in interactive marketing, as opposed to coming off as phony?
• Are some groups within a marketing organization (or any part of the organization) better suited to drive Interactive Marketing initiatives that others?  Is there a minimum or maximum distance from the customer (or target) that is required from that organization?

April 18: Team 5 – “ObamaNation: Lessons from the Front Lines of Social Media”

Strategic Marketing Project - Lessons from the Front Lines of Social Media

I'm pretty excited tonight because we got our mid-term Strategic Marketing project approved. (The abstract is listed below) Portia Mount and I had actually talked about a concept like this prior to the class starting, so we were glad that we'd be allowed the flexibility to choose the topic and scope.

Portia is VP of Marketing for her company, so I believe she's been thinking about aspects of this since last summer.  I got the original idea while reading this article from Umair Haque, as part of a continuing series he's doing on Edge Economy and the need for radical innovation to break us out of the challenges of the current economic crisis.  It also connected for me as I reflected back on stories from both Wikinomics and The Future of Work, as they looked at the value of sharing information externally, building communities, building partnerships, and truly building companies that can survive in the pace of the 21st century.  Listening to Seth Godin's podcast on Tribes and Leadership today completed the circle for me, showing how all of these pieces and ideas came together in the 2008 election.

The other element of the project that I'm excited about is that we're hoping to show how this 21st century approach can be applied to more traditional brick & mortar companies.  Portia and I felt like this would be an interesting challenge to research, as well as our way of giving something back to the rest of the class.

The paper and presentation aren't due until mid-April, but I'm already looking forward to starting on this project.  I'll be sure to post updates as we move along.

=======ABSTRACT========

ObamaNation: Lessons from the front lines of social media.

This presentation will look at how the Obama campaign used social media strategies to mobilize grassroots audiences to win the White House and what business might learn from this success. In this presentation we'll highlight noteworthy examples including:

1. The use of Social networking sites such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter that created new online communities.
2. The Campaign website and its use of targeted messages to create urgency to generate record breaking campaign donations
3. How mainstream newsmedia outlets took advantage of the unprecented online presence during the campaign season to connect to new and younger voters
4. How the rise of the citizen journalist and an expanded blogosphere allowed Obama, a virtual unknown at the start of the campaign, to gain global recognition in one campaign season