The next time someone lays a “communication” issue on you, try this:

“That sounds interesting. Help me out. Describe specifically what you see happening and why it’s a problem.”

This should get the discussion going and help drill down to the real issue. This is helpful both internally and when working externally with partners.

source: All Things Workplace

I was chatting with a co-worker about a Logic class she was taking. This brought back memories from my college days – I minored in Philosophy. It also led to the inevitable discussion about how one’s education applies to their profession. Many people assume that I acquired my Marketing expertise while earning my MBA. Likewise, people often assume that my undergrad and graduate studies in the Social Sciences and Philosophy do not apply to my profession, but they’re wrong. Here are 3 reasons why:

1) Empathy – Sociology

Empathy is the most important skill for Marketers.

Empathy is simply putting yourself in someone else’s shoes – like a potential customer or partner. For example:

• “If I was a potential customer or partner, what problems might I have and how might this company’s products help me? If they don’t help me, how do I improve them so that they do help?”
• “Looking at a competing product, how does it benefit me as a customer? If I had to decide between my company’s product and the competition’s, which one would I buy?  What can I do to ensure that my company’s product will win that decision?”
• “How do I best explain the benefits of my product to a potential customer in a way that meets their specific needs and solves their specific problems?”

This is what Marketing, and in particular Product Management and Business Development, is all about – determining what someone values and figuring out how to provide that value or communicate that value to them. If you don’t get Empathy, you won’t be able to do this and you won’t be a successful Marketer.

Let me say it again: Empathy is the most important skill for Marketers. Where do you learn Empathy? Not in a Marketing class. Don’t believe me? Look up Marketing on Wikipedia. Then search that page for “empathy.” It’s not there. The closest concept you’ll find to Empathy is Marketing Research. Marketing Research is not Empathy. Marketing Research does not necessarily put you in someone else’s shoes. If you’re not already in their shoes, you won’t know what questions to ask.

So where can you learn about Empathy? In a Sociology class. Sociology is great for Marketers because it teaches you how to understand and apply Empathy. You also learn how to keep your own background or biases from getting in the way of seeing other perspectives. The trick is making the leap from using Empathy to understand societal issues to using it for business.

2) Opportunity Cost – Economics (yes, Economics is a Social Science)

If you hear things like “What do we have to lose by giving this a try?” to justify a new product or partnership, then you know that this person hasn’t considered the Opportunity Cost.

Opportunity Cost is about allocating resources between competing projects. It is the cost related to the next best alternative. If you can only do one thing, which one are you going to do and what are you forgoing to do it? For example, you have to decide between the following:

• adding a new feature to your most popular product – Net Present Value (NPV) of $5 million,
• entering a partnership to resell someone else’s complimentary product – NPV of $8 million, or
• launching a new product that appeals to a new market segment – NPV of $10 million.

If you chose the partnership (perhaps because you wanted to get to market faster and thought it would be easier to implement), the Opportunity Cost is $2 million. It’s the difference between the new product which is valued at $10 million and the partnership which is valued at $8 million. As long as you understand the implications of this decision and have sound reasons for why you’re doing it (speed to market, easier to implement), then there’s nothing wrong it.

Once Marketers learn how to apply the concept of Opportunity Cost, they’ll make more informed arguments both for and against projects, develop stronger business cases, and make better decisions when choosing between competing projects.

3) Critical Thinking – Philosophy

Speaking of persuasive arguments, it is hard to be persuasive if you can’t think through both sides of an issue. Your brain gets a major work-out doing just that in every Philosophy course (particularly in the Logic class that started this whole discussion).

Philosophy is the study of the big ideas like why do we exist, how do you truly know something, and what is right or wrong. It is known for its critical, reasoned, and systematic examination of these ideas. These are extremely difficult concepts to grasp and every issue has multiple, nuanced sides. It’s enough to start yelling matches and to make your head hurt. Wars are fought over these very ideas. Just as in business, there isn’t always one right answer.

But there is a way to get to the best available answer. Philosophy teaches you Critical Thinking skills:

• how to ask the tough questions designed to get at the heart of an issue,
• how to think through complicated issues with multiple shades of grey, and
• how to see things from multiple perspectives while recognizing that your biases can often cloud your viewpoint.

Armed with these skills, Marketers make better decisions regarding what types of customers to target, what types of products to launch, or what types or partnerships to pursue.

Final Thoughts

Understanding and applying Empathy, Opportunity Cost, and Critical Thinking are essential skills for Marketers. I learned these skills studying Sociology, Economics, and Philosophy. I use these skills more frequently as a Marketer than those I learned in business school. So the next time you see a BA instead of a BBA or an MA instead of an MBA on someone’s resume, don’t assume that the person with the business degree will add more value. Otherwise, you might be overlooking someone that could add a new perspective and significant value to your Marketing organization.

I spent 6 years in business development working for 2 large, established players. One of my many responsibilities was evaluating unsolicited, incoming partnership opportunities. While I had never heard the term “ham and egging” referenced in Dana’s post, I experienced it on a regular basis. She describes it as:

…”ham and egging” was first coined by Columbia’s professor Amar Bhide and Harvard Business School’s Howard Stevenson. The term refers to the technique of convincing multiple stakeholders that others are working with you despite the fact that you’re only in talks. The only problem is that most early partners only want to work with you if other reputable partners have already signed on.

Explains Bhide and Stevenson,”the ultimate ham and egging solution is for the entrepreneur to simultaneously convince each participant that everyone else is on board, or almost on board.”

It seemed like most startups attempted to use this approach. Fortunately I knew all about it. I had seen this from the inside in prior years working at multiple startups (I was not in business development roles at these startups). This technique was specifically discussed and planned. There were other tricks, but I’ll get to those later.

It’s amazing how many people at large companies take these claims at face value. I often had to remind my peers and superiors that just because someone says they’re working with a major player doesn’t mean they are. That leaving a voicemail or sending an e-mail for someone at Google doesn’t mean that they’re “in partnership discussions” with these companies. If it’s not announced or if they don’t have a reference, then it doesn’t exist.

My point here isn’t to imply that startups are shady, though some are. My point is that you can’t always take things at face value. People at startups (especially the founders) believe in what they are doing. Many truly believe that they will eventually have the deal that they talked about. They believe that their product will do what they say it will, even though it isn’t built yet. They believe that they’ll eventually have the traffic they are promising. They just need that first deal to get it all going. The problem is that most big companies are not able to take a risk on a partner that hasn’t already proven their product. So startups are in a tough position.

Here are the tricks that I frequently saw startups using:

1) Ham and egging (as explained above). If there’s no partnership announcement or reference, then you should be skeptical.

2) Exaggerating revenue, subscribers, user base, unique visitors, etc. If they won’t show you actual traffic logs or put numbers in writing, then you should be skeptical. Confidentiality is not an excuse for not providing this information.

3) Exaggerating product capabilities. If they don’t have a fully functioning demo or don’t have it in operation with another partner,then you should be skeptical. You should insist on sending up an engineer to check out their operations.

4) “We’re going to be in town anyway, so we might as well meet in person for a demonstration.” This one always makes me laugh. While not terribly sleazy, it is annoying. I was in Dallas. No one is in Dallas “anyway” (at least not very often). I heard this from well over half of the startups trying to get in the door with us. This means I’ve literally heard this over 100 times. Don’t be pressured into wasting your time and that of your management team to meet with someone where there is no real opportunity just because “they’re going to be in town anyway.” If they tell you they’re going to be in town anyway the week of X and then tell you they can meet with you at anytime, then you know they’re lying. They should at least have the intelligence to block out a few time slots so it looks like they actually have some meetings.

Having said all of this, I did a lot of deals with startups and most of them worked out OK. The key is due diligence beyond that needed for larger potential partners. Hopefully this will help you in your future dealings with startups.

I call BS on this. I worked for the other evil empire – Verizon – for 7 years. We used to get e-mails from our government affairs group every so often presenting the company’s position on various issues and encouraging us to write our representatives in support of these views. These e-mails were from “corporate”, not from our business unit. Never once did anyone from our business unit nor in our chain of command ever bring up one of these e-mails. No one cared. There was no pressure. I find it very hard to believe that it would be much different at a very similar AT&T.

…Nielsen management, after years of research, has finally come up with an adequate solution to cluttered e-mail inboxes and inefficiency in office environments: control-deleting the reply-to-all button from the messaging software…

…In a memo, republished by Folio, Andrew Cawood, Chief Information Officer for Nielsen Company, writes that the measure will “eliminate bureaucracy and inefficiency”…

But is this really the reason for the change?

…About half a year ago Mitchell Habib, Executive Vice President at Nielsen, managed to accidentally cc all Nielsen employees in a reportedly arrogant note to another employee, ending his e-mail with the now famous-in-certain-circles punch line “Who do you work for, and why do you think copying me on this is appropriate?”.

I suspect that particular blunder led to this strange situation.

Perhaps an e-mail etiquette class and paying more attention to what you’re doing would have been a more graceful solution. Though as was stated in some of the comments, I’ve seen the “Reply to All” button bring corporate mail servers to their knees on more than one occassional even leading to a termination in one case.