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Leadership Skills: Unconventional Thinking [Mark Stevens Interview - Part III]

Regis Hadiaris — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 08:32:38 +0000

Note from Regis: This is Part III of a three-part interview with Mark Stevens, best-selling author of Your Marketing Sucks, Your Management Sucks, and God is a Salesman. Mark is also CEO of MSCO, a results-driven management and marketing firm. Read Part I here. Read Part II here.

Regis: Why is it so difficult for many marketers to understand that advertising and marketing is suppose to drive sales?

Mark Stevens: A lot of people just don’t “do marketing.” First of all, a lot of them don’t know what marketing means unless they go into advertising. They go into it because they think it’s creative. Finance is ugly, marketing is creative. That is what they think. Actually finance is extremely creative i.e. the mortgage, the lease, etc.

Regis: Exactly! I have a finance degree so I couldn’t agree more (laughs).

Mark Stevens: But there tends to be the feeling that marketing is creative, so “creative” means: “I should be able to do creative things. What does that have to do with commerce?”

It’s really amazing – you get people who think a marketer can be a creative person, yet most people who go into marketing really don’t like business.

That is the thing: they really don’t like business. They don’t consider themselves business people, they consider themselves creative people. They say “don’t weigh me down with those financials, I don’t want to see a spreadsheet. I don’t want to know about it. And, I don’t ever want to talk to a sales person because a sales person is a low life.”

They think a sales person is a low life. I mean that is what they think! That is so obnoxious to me.

- Mark Stevens

You get CMOs who have no connection to the sales force. “We’re the Marketing Department. The sales morons go out there and sell the shit and we tell them how to sell it.” It’s terrible!

Great sales forces – and there have been some in this country’s history – founded the great companies:

When IBM was in the early days of selling hardware, it had an amazing sales force.
When Xerox was a truly great company, they required that its sales people fly first class, because they called them the “Princes of the company.” It was a rule. It was a rule! Why? Because they’re the “Princes of the company.”

So that is what I think it is Regis. They say “I am not in business! Don’t bother me with finance guys like Regis, because he is an ugly finance guy. He is not ‘creative.’ Why would I need to know anything else as long as I am creating cute campaigns?”

Regis: It’s interesting to go back to what you were saying earlier about business school. Do you think that maybe the way business schools segment paths for being in “business” is the tipping point (for this thinking)? Because you have to pick: Accounting? “Oh no, that’s really dry I don’t want to do that.” Finance? “No that is scary and ugly.” Management? “Well, I am not really sure what that means.” Marketing? “Oh, that’s creative and cool, I will do that!”

Mark Stevens: Absolutely. I think that is a big part of it. Unless you came to school with a mindset that told you you wanted to be an engineer, or doctor, or in finance. The menu of choices if, you came (to college) uncertain, drives you towards the less, it drives you toward what people can view as “gut” (must-have) courses and those with more “creative elbow room” etc.

I just think that business school, for the most part, is counterproductive for most people. It just keeps you out of the workplace longer…where you really learn. You know you learned a lot more when you started working than you ever learned in school.

Regis: Oh, absolutely.

Mark Stevens: Now in finance, you certainly have to have the building blocks. But then again, Carl Ichan never took a business class in his life. One of the first things he did when he got out of undergraduate school was to create the first options exchange. There was no options exchange and he did it by himself.

I am a big believer in — and you do it through your blog and your relationships and your thinking about unconventional stuff — the idea that people of like minds are continuing through a liberal arts education their whole life. And in a liberal arts education, you are exposed to Newton and Niche, to the Rolling Stones, and to every possible piece of information.

You never know where your idea will come from that will be the thing that will drive you.

- Mark Stevens

I am writing music right now, popular music. I am working with a composer. It’s amazing to be doing this now because when you write music, you have to be in absolute tandem with the person who is writing the music. You have to weave and knead your art together. I write lyrics and he writes the music. But they can’t sit apart, they have to be making love at every single moment.

Yesterday, I had a song that came into my mind. You see, I write everything out, including my books, in my Blackberry. So, a flash came to me and I wrote another song. One [song] I had already written and it was in the can. The second one is written and being composed now. But, I had a flash from nowhere and I wrote the third song in ten minutes. I know it’s a really good song, but I will learn from that song. I had an idea that “God’s a salesman.” So I write a book. Where the hell did that come from? It’s a complete learning process.

The great things come to you out of nowhere and come to you really fast.

- Mark Stevens

By doing something new, like writing music for me, it opens up a whole new card of thought or action that I know I will apply on many different ways beyond just music.

Now, the proudest moment I have in my life is when I was in a restaurant in Greenwich, CT. I asked if they would play my song while everyone was eating. They played it, and I watched people listen to my music. It was just…I can’t explain the joy of that. You have to do it. You never can hear people reading your books, although I love to hear people who have read the books and are using it in their companies. Watching people listen to you music, and not even knowing you’re there…god it’s great!

Regis: That’s fantastic. One question about social media. In general, social media or social networking is in its infancy. A lot of companies are trying to figure social networking/social media out as a marketing channel. Some companies are “touching the stove” and getting burned. Some are figuring out how to leverage it successfully. Do you think social networking is at the point that it can be a profitable marketing channel in an integrated plan (like a “Your Marketing Sucks”-style plan) or do you feel like it’s something that is still too unproven?

Mark Stevens: No, I think you can definitely look at it as a profitable channel. A successful social network that gets enough of a following is an extremely viable business model because of two things: traffic, but more important than traffic, intimacy.

So in a social network, if it is a successful one, you belong to something. It’s almost like an affinity group. The two largest affinity groups in the United States are AARP and the Catholic Church. A social network will come along that will be bigger than both of them. One of them may be already [bigger], I don’t know what the numbers are now. So I think that absolutely can be [a viable marketing channel], it’s just a new way.

You told me you reached for questions for this interview on LinkedIn. What social media does is so interesting because it takes a lot of the old behavior models and makes them unnecessary. A lot of people never wanted to network, because they would have to show up and talk to people. Now, you don’t have to be outgoing; you don’t have to work a room. So the people who used to be successful in networking, the guys that could “work a room” probably aren’t successful in working LinkedIn. It’s a different mindset. It just changes everything.

From a financial perspective I think that the true profitability is yet to come but God, they are just like gigantic networks with intimacy. Nobody feels intimate with NBC. But people feel intimate with their various circles in Myspace, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc. So I think that adds a very important component to the equation and that can be leveraged.

This concludes the interview with Mark Stevens. If you haven’t already, be sure to check out Part I and Part II.

Leadership Skills: Unconventional Thinking [Mark Stevens Interview - Part II]

Regis Hadiaris — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 11:15:33 +0000

Note from Regis: This is Part II of a three-part interview with Mark Stevens, best-selling author of Your Marketing Sucks, Your Management Sucks, and God is a Salesman. Mark is also CEO of MSCO, a results-driven management and marketing firm. Read Part I here.

Regis: Are there two or three leaders who have consistently challenged you and your thinking?

Mark Stevens:

My Dad. He was a salesman. He always told me not to believe anything anybody tells me, just because they are telling me. And, [he taught me] to stop and say “well now, is that actually true?”

He taught me that the higher up the totem pole the person is, in terms of power and authority, the more likely we are to believe at face value what they have to say.

- Mark Stevens

That is really where he would turn on the skepticism jets: he’d say “wait a minute, you are believing that person simply because they have the titled of Senior Vice President or Czar of the Americas?” Ask yourself Mark, “does that really make sense to you? And, what is his or her reason for saying it?” He taught me that.

Carl Icahn. I’ve spent a lot of time with Carl Icahn. He never took a business course in his life, and yet he is the smartest guy I have ever met. I have met a lot of really smart, successful people that we have worked with at MSCO. Carl was the smartest.

Instead of looking at business through the eyes of famous business leaders – Carl was a chess champion at Princeton and a Philosophy major – he looks at business through the eyes of a chess player, and through the eyes of the great philosophers. We would be talking, and I would ask him a question about some deal he was working on, and he would say, “this is what Socrates would say in this case.” He never said, “this is what Alfred Sloan would say.”

So, I learned and understood that greatness often comes from looking at things through a prism, your own kind of prism. Carl looks at life through the chess / philosophy prism.

- Mark Stevens

I think the reason that Carl wins so often is because he was used to making eleven moves in advance. The average CEO he goes after now, even somebody as smart as Jerry Yang [CEO of Yahoo!], thinks two or three moves ahead, four maybe. When you are a competitor, Carl is thinking eleven moves ahead. He is always going to win.

I gave a speech in Berlin this past October. Every year, Siemens invites 180 of the most important CEOs in the world to Berlin for something they call Ascent, which is the premiere CEO conference in the world. After I spoke, we all went on a boat ride and to dinner at this unusual warehouse that was turned into a restaurant. The former world chess champion, Vladimir Kramnik, was talking and he said “You know, when I was going up the ranks of Grand Master, in the middle of a match I used to – and I would plan this – I would make a really stupid move on purpose, and it would completely throw off my opponent. I had to already have my plan for extracting myself from the problem I created for myself, but the [opponent] would be so stunned, that it would throw him back on his heels.” He used this as his strategy for becoming the champion of the world. I found that to be fascinating.

So, Carl taught me that look at things through the prism that you really find helpful, not the common one, necessarily.

Sir Issac Newton. There are two things that Newton taught me. He didn’t mean it for business, but he said, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction [and a body in motion stays in motion].

For every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction.

You know, on your job Reg – and anybody else that reads this interview – someone is going to have a great day, one day next week, or the week after. They are going to sign a big deal, they are going to have a promotion, something is going to be great. I always say to my clients, my team members at MSCO, and my sons. Watch out for Newton! I don’t want to damper your spirits today, but Newton’s coming.

A body in motion stays in motion.

Leaders are driven. They don’t look for balance. They stay in motion. They are not liked by the lowest common denominator. You can’t stop them. You can’t pin them down. You can chop their legs off, and they will crawl through the ground. They are not stopping.

A body at rest, does it stay at rest? You know some people like that in your job, and I know them too. You can’t rouse them. Nothing will rouse them because they don’t have the drive. You can’t rely on them to forge any of your projects, because they won’t carry the ball. I don’t wish them ill will. But, you have know that as you figure out your own success equations and who will actually support you in any project, or dream, or passion that you have.

We only have one life Reg, one life, one life – and we should strive to achieve something significant in it. We should have somebody look back and say, “I learned something from that guy or that women.” He or she left a stamp – something that changed people’s thinking. Something that changed the way they do business. Something that changed the way they do parenting. Something!

Just don’t go through this life from cradle to grave going to work, going through the motions, watching television, eating a piece of pie, and going to sleep.

- Mark Stevens

And that is what most people do. Sorry to say, but that is what it is.

Regis: I couldn’t agree more. And I think that drive is what separates leaders from people who do not want to lead. Do you feel like there are ways to bring people across that gap? Can that be learned?

Mark Stevens: No, you can’t learn passion. It’s impossible. There is a way to bring them across the gap, and that is a leader. A leader inspires. People who do not have the DNA to be driven will ‘take the hill’ when inspired by a leader. They will never do it on their own. They will say “that’s a nice hill.” They will never do it on their own. That’s exactly what a leader does, that’s a great question, because our whole conversation boils down to that.

A great leader, without threats and without bribes, gets people who are not driven on their own to effectively accomplish a mission.

- Mark Stevens

That is what a leader does, and [the people being lead] feel good about because they did it effectively. They never would have taken the hill on their own. They would have looked at the hill. They would have sat on the bench, with a sandwich, looking at the hill. But the leader is so dynamic, and because he or she wants to take the hill, that they want to go take it.

Great leaders don’t have to pay people lots of money. People should be rewarded for what they do, but when you are working with a poor leader, you want to get paid a lot because it’s the only reward you have. When you are in the company of somebody amazing, the amount of pay you get becomes minimally important.

You see great actors and actresses that want to work in Woody Allen movies and Robert Altman movies – and they’ll take tiny paychecks – because they want to be with a leader.

- Mark Stevens

If they are making some dumb-ass movie, the check can’t be big enough. You do not have to bribe people or threaten people if you are a leader. If you bribe or threaten them, It doesn’t really work anyway.

It’s so magically wonderful to watch a leader work. I believe in things that are greater than some of their parts, so you start to go into another dimension when somebody is a great leader. And people want to – for some mystical, chemical, magical reason – want to do something with that person, and that’s extraordinary.

Stay tuned for more from Mark Stevens: In Part III, you’ll learn why there is a disconnect between Marketing and Sales, and Mark’s thoughts on Social Media Marketing.

Leadership Skills: Perseverance [Todd Albery Interview]

Regis Hadiaris — Wed, 07 May 2008 07:24:17 +0000

Note from Regis: This is the first post in Dot Connector’s Leadership Skills series. My goal is to bring you people who exemplify leadership styles and leadership skills needed for success.

Today’s interview is with Todd Albery, Creator of Webolutions at Quicken Loans. Todd is the guy who gets the huge, impossible projects — the ones that make you simply go “no way.” And, through his amazing perseverance, he finds a way to get them done.

In this interview, you’ll hear Todd’s thoughts on perseverance, and how you can use this essential leadership skill to launch memorable projects.

Regis: Can you give an example of a time when you had to exert a lot of perseverance?

Todd: For the past two years I’ve led a project at Quicken Loans called Quizzle. It has been an extremely exciting project – built to be a game-changer in our industry and on the web! However, like any good project, it had its share of challenges.

In the course of development…

We lost important pieces of our development team;
We changed the technology platform on which Quizzle was built;
We wrote way-too-extensive “specification documents”;
We tinkered with marketing stuff too much (Yep, I’m the marketing guy);
We encountered some ‘late-game’ business obstacles.

With this project, we were continuously breaking new ground. We were taking a road less traveled. Sometimes there was no road. Sometimes it was dirt. Rarely were the signs clearly marked. And more than a few times, the destination changed. The project took longer than we hoped. But in the end we persevered. We ended up in a great place. And we got there because we all laced up our boots and took the journey TOGETHER, AS A TEAM!

Regis: As a leader, how do you stay motivated when a project is taking a long time (i.e. when you personally have to really persevere)?

Todd: In a long-term project it’s important to break the project up into smaller pieces so you can focus on the “Little WINS.” It’s tough sometimes when there’s no immediate end in sight, but that’s why you’ve got to take the time to IDENTIFY milestones and CELEBRATE with the team each step of the way.

Personally and professionally, my motivation and energy come from relationships. I stay motivated by building a strong tight-knit TEAM aligned with a BELIEF in a VISION and armed with a POSITIVE (can-do) ATTITUDE. Truly aligned team member will motivate each other daily.

Regis: As a leader, how do you keep others around you motivated when a project is taking a long time (i.e. when your team really has to persevere)?

Todd: There are a few things that I believe are essential to keeping a team together and motivated during a long project:

1. Build relationships: You’ve got to get to know your project team like a family.

Get out of the office together and do things that are 100% NOT work-related. Get to know your teammates in a fun pressure-free environment. Build real relationships and memories that have nothing to do with your work project.
Once you develop those critical personal relationships, you’ll begin to understand what makes your team members tick. You’ll learn a person’s inner passion. Then you’ll know when and where to let someone take the ball and run and they’ll create things you never dreamed possible.
Relationships develop TRUST. Team trust is something that is critical throughout a long project. Then when tough and controversial decisions are made, you will benefit greatly from a team that trusts you and each other.

2. Create a true team: You need to create a team environment to persevere.

Create a team that works TOGETHER towards a common goal. Create a team that is focused on doing what’s best for the business. Create a team that believes in doing the right thing and making decisions becomes much easier.
Keep an eye out for team members who are “me focused.” If you’ve got a cancer in the “locker room,” you’ve got to deal with it. It’s best to confront a problem head-on and sooner is better than later.
Speaking “The TRUTH in love”: be honest and kind; most people appreciate honesty when it’s delivered in a constructive manner (“in love” – for the betterment of the team). Don’t fall into the trap of believing that confrontation is bad, because it’s not. Confrontation is not only critical to moving a project forward, but it will often lead to breakthrough moments for a team.

Note from Regis: I agree that confrontation is critical to resolving issues. To be blunt, I often tell my team that if you’re not pissing people off, you’re not doing work that matters.

3. Involve your team in the vision: You must COMMUNICATE the vision with your team on a regular basis. And it’s even more important (if you can do it) to INVOLVE your team in the creation of that vision.

Don’t be afraid to discuss business dilemmas, decisions, hurdles and challenges with your team.
First of all, it’s always good to get out of your own shoes and get other people’s thoughts and ideas; and secondly, you’ll begin creating team ownership in the project. A project should never be just one person’s project – it should be a team project.
Secondly, by involving the team, you automatically break down the natural blame barriers that too often plague a project and instead, you develop a truly SHARED VISION.

4. Laugh a lot: You’ve got to bring a sense of humor with you to work everyday.

The day you lose the laughter is the day you’ll lose the ability to motivate a team long-term.
Take your work seriously, but never take yourself too seriously.
The trick is to keep the team focused on the task at hand, but have fun while you do it! You’ll be surprised how far daily laughter will go in keeping spirits high and the team motivated. There’s a time to strap on the helmet and get stuff done, but it can’t be all day everyday. Life’s too short to be serious all the time.

Honest disclaimer: We had a couple of added motivational benefits on the Quizzle project.

We had the luxury of working closely with Dan Gilbert, a genius-minded business entrepreneur, who shared his vision with us throughout the project and allowed us to go BLUE SKY and DREAM BIG on this project.
We had a group of folks on the team who believed strongly that Quizzle had the potential to be a real game-changer someday on the Internet!

Unfortunately, we don’t get these benefits on every project, but a great leader can instill belief in a vision, tap into inner passions and allow a team to dream big.

Regis: How does someone learn to persevere?

Todd: For me perseverance was ingrained since I was a kid. My parents instilled the value of never quitting, and giving things my very best shot. I was taught to look on the positive side; find the good in situations rather than dwell on the bad. I was taught to view problems as challenges. I was taught to recognize challenges as opportunities. And opportunities will often times lead to success.

When challenges are the hardest, don’t be afraid. Instead, get excited, because you have the opportunity to find creative, game-changing solutions. There’s a quote from a marketing book called “Juicing the Orange” that went something like this: “Creativity is the most economical form of competitive advantage.” Creativity can be cheap; it can also pull you out of a commodity box and can differentiate you from the rest.

Personally, I love sports. I love playing games. So when a day at work provides a good challenge, it’s like a game, a competition, and my juices start flowing. And at the end of this challenge (just like a game) you either win or lose, right? That’s exciting. So go ahead, play games at work. Embrace your challenges. Play to WIN. And with this approach, more often than not, you will… persevere.

Regis: Do you have any great quotes, books, etc. about perseverance you’d recommend?

Todd: Read any book about a company that made it big and you’ll find that there were many roadblocks along the way, challenges to overcome, and days when the future looked bleak.

A couple of my favorites are “The Google Story” and “Pour Your Heart Into it: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time.” It wasn’t always easy, but in the end it was worth it. “The Experience Economy” is another one of my favorites. In this book you’ll also learn about the importance of creating a great experience for your clients. You’ll learn to be bold and try new things. You can’t be afraid to fail. Through failing and overcoming challenges you gain experience and wisdom.

I love A&E biographies. Listen to or read the biography of any great man or woman and you will find stories of hardship and perseverance that not only shaped their character but made them stronger.

I think a hero is an ordinary individual who finds strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles.
-Christopher Reeve

Note from Regis: We can all learn a lot from Todd, and the ideas he talks about in this interview. Stay tuned for more in our Leadership Training Boot Camp series!