Tag: digital strategy

Reading Update January 2016

avsand

One of my personal projects for the year is to read (listen to – I’m an Audible.com freak) 24 business books.  Please check out my Reading board on Pinterest for other books I love.

January was a good month for reading.  I cranked out 4 books.  This is all part of my master plan for having an outstanding, amazing, breakthrough year!  Below is a quick summary of each one.

Content Inc. - By Joe Pulizzi

Content Inc is all about how business is changing and how content and the internet is the platform to this new game.  If you have a content vacuum, how can people (more importantly your current and future customers) understand who you are and what you have to offer.  Perfect example is Joe’s site promoting the book.  How many books that you’ve read have their own movie trailer?  Joe’s approach is to build an audience first!  Align your passion, ensure that you have a unique offering, develop your style & tone, build your base and then reap the rewards for all the hard work!  Must read.  It has to be part of your business model.

OverSubscribed - by Daniel Priestley

I swear I didn’t do this on purpose but Oversubscribed was the perfect follow up book to Content Inc.  Daniel Priestly authored one of my all time favorite books – Entrepreneur Revolution. This new book Oversubscribed didn’t disappoint. Oversubscribed tees off on the same principles as Content Inc. Content is critical to building your audience and filling the vacuum of what you and your organization are all about and then the book goes takes that model so much further. Its all about supply and demand.  Its all about building anticipation with your audience and then celebrating your customers!  What can be more powerful that actually celebrating your customers?

Outside In - By Harley Manning & Kerry Bodine

Again I don’t think I could have picked a better book to come next.  I’ve been following Kerry Bodine and Harley Manning on social media for some time.  Outside In is an insane blueprint to what my company Zuggand is doing to help our customers deliver Digital Customer Experiences (DCX).  Again this book is in alignment with the previous two books in that we have passed out of the Age of Information and into the Age of the Customer (and execution).  Being customer centric (or obsessed) is the new differentiator.  The authors take a research based approach (which I love) to systematically designing customer experiences.  I love the examples in the book.  And we aren’t talking about little websites you’ve never heard of.  This book has the Forester brand, research and army behind it and is working with amazing customer-obsessed companies like USAA and Fidelity.  So many takeaways and it lays out a plan for any business to go through this customer experience transformation. It can also be used as a brilliant career development plan for any person that aspires to be a Chief Customer Officer or a Chief Digital Officer.

Crush It! - Gary Vaynerchuck

I read about Gary Vaynerchuk and his Wine Library store years ago.  An amazing story about how Gary help build and transform his family store into an impressive enterprise.  It wasn’t until about a year ago that I first saw him on youtube with his new brand though.  I’ll admit that at first I was a bit turned off.  It’s funny because before I even started writing this article, I saw this post on Instagram from Gary today.

 

GaryVeeInfluence

I love a good F-Bomb like no one else, but when I heard him drop it in the first minute of a video it shocked even me. (Did I mention that I LOVE a good F-BOMB???) Maybe it is his “east” cost style that rubbed my “west” coast style.  But then I saw this video on 6 MINS FOR THE NEXT 60 YEARS OF YOUR LIFE – A RANT.  And now (and I can’t believe I’m going to say this) I am (BIG sigh) part of the Vaner Nation. (f*#* I said it!)

Again, this couldn’t have been a better book for me right now.  Its his oldest book that is on Audible so I decided to start there and catch up.  Gary stays true to his DNA, as he loves to say.  He knows his strengths and he plays to them.  He is a master of his craft.  In his DailyVee video on January 27th The Family Business (you can jump to 6 mins and 54 seconds if you like) he articulates what he does for a living.  “I day trade attention.”  That’s what this book is about.  That is what Gary is all about. That is what each and everyone of us should be about!

 

 

Dear Disruptive Force

avsand 2 Comments

Subject: Become a Disruptive Force

Dear CEO,

As you know we are going through very innovative and disruptive times.  New technologies and ways to use technologies are being invented every day.  I’m sure you feel the pressure from within your organization, from your board and from your customers that you must accelerate change and your organization’s ability to adapt.  I also have no doubt that you personally know someone who runs an organization that has suffered a major security incident in the past two years as well.  This is definitely a rock and a hard place situation.

At my last organization we were in that exact situation.  We had years of neglected systems and employees.  Here’s what we did.  We realized that there wasn’t a magic wand or a bucket of money that would fix our problems instantly.  We knew that we needed a phased approach.  The approach had to be aligned to the key transformation objectives for the entire organization and this approach had to realistically balance Run The Business (RTB), Change The Business (CTB) and Grow The Business (GTB).  Taking this approach, you end up with a nice roadmap matrix that can be used to clearly communicate with all of your stakeholders, help level set expectations and take a little stress off you.

I know you were wishing that I was going to tell you about some really cool new technology or system that you could buy and it would instantly fix all of these big challenges.  The problem with technology (and a lot of tech vendors) is that it will only do what you tell it to do.  Without a clear vision it’s just a really fancy paper weight.

Now that you know what percent of your resources (people, dollars, etc.) you can dedicate to changing your business (the CTB portion) you are ready to become a disruptive force!  Now you are ready to make new industries and there has never been a better time to do it!

Start with your customers.  Find out what they want.  Listen to them. Work with them.  Validate what you thought you heard and then work with them some more.  Now compare your customer’s expectations to your industry and then compare to new business models.  True innovation starts here.

Take baby steps and achieve quick wins!  You will also need to partner those quick wins with core underlying capabilities that allow you to automate and scale your business. With the technologies and capabilities that we have today it is possible to do just about anything.  We shouldn’t be asking “can we do this?” We should be asking “should we do this?” or “is there a better way to do this?”

There are some very disruptive technology trends that you should be taking advantage of too (as long as they align to your customer’s expectations and new business models).  Cloud, big data, security, responsive apps, APIs, integration platforms are just a few.  These technologies combined with new business models are completely game changing.

You are not alone in this.  There are champions all over that want to help you in your journey.  Seek them out.  Empower them to make mistakes.  Give them the freedom to make your org a disruptive force.

My partners and I recently founded Zuggand (zuggand.com) to help organizations develop integrated digital strategies so you can thrive in today’s unprecedented world of business velocity and agility. I’m currently looking for a few key executives to work directly with to create Enterprise Digital Transformation.  I can provide you with my detailed experience and my references are top notch.  I’m interested in only working with people that are looking to seriously shake things up and achieve big outcomes.  If this is of interest or if you’d like to discuss please let me know.

Sincerely,

Aaron V Sandeen
co-founder, Zuggand
LinkedIn (please contact me via LinkedIn)

(*note: I’m following the Blogging 101: Zero to Hero approach to blogging from WordPress.  This article is the challenge for Day 6: Write to Your Dream Reader – so if you know any kick ass executives looking to become a disruptive force, please pass this along! I have a few in mind!)