a bee in my bonnet

Is it just me, or is it the economy?

I read the new job numbers in the Citizen today, in an article that sites 79,100 new jobs across the country in November. (Of course, Ottawa being Ottawa, and the Citizen being the Citizen, the sub head also notes that the numbers "dip" in the Ottawa area. Ottawa is being affected by a drop in government jobs, apparently.)

I was also at a party this week, hosted by my friend Lisa Courtney Lloyd, for her (incredible) network of women marketers. The consensus around the room is that something is happening, that the economy is picking up. In fact, there were a couple of anecdotal tidbits:

• Several of us have seen an increase in the open jobs and posting that are circulating around.  Recently, in my inbox, I've seen several jobs for senior communicators, in the private and public sector.
• Many of us have had a surge in our consulting businesses, beginning in late October or November. A couple of us shared our sense that consultants see the up-ticks and down-swings in the economy first. (Consultants, especially marketing consultants, are often the first to experience the pain of budget cuts. The flip side is that companies often hire consultants as a first step when rebuilding marketing efforts, before deciding whether or where to hire new staff.)
• Several of us also shared a sense that Ottawa is moving away from two very separate economies, one for entrepreneurial tech companies and another for government and quasi government.  More of us are bridging that gap in our businesses. In fact, my friend Margo Crawford, a tech company founder herself, was talking about the work she does with her NGO (non governmental organization) clients, getting them to act more like businesses, and often convincing them there is excellent private sector talent they should be going after.

I realize that none of this is backed up with hard data, and so it may mean nothing.

Still, at the beginning of November, I was looking at one client going into maintenance mode, and was having to hustle to chase what looked to be a small amount of work in December.  Since then, client number one has express an interest in keeping things going at the current level, I have signed a second major client (my first non-tech, quasi governmental client in more than a decade), have inked a contract for a small coaching gig, and have had another friend ask me to write a proposal for some writing work.

© Photographer: Kts | Agency: Dreamstime.com

I am hearing the same noises from my friends, including Francis Moran, Karen McNaughton, Susan Odle, and more.

So, is it just me, or is there something bigger afoot?  How's business for you? Let me know what you think in a comment. 

Doing Business Outside the Echo Chamber

I had the pleasure this month of co-facilitating a workshop on social media with my long time professional acquaintance Lynda Partner. (Thanks to Lynda for including me on this project!)

Demystifying Social Media was an afternoon workshop put on by the Ottawa Women's Business Network.

What was really fun was that the audience was not made up of social media professionals, or even professional marketers, but rather lawyers, accountants, financial advisers, recruiters, retail business owners -- and most had only dabbled in social media, if that.

In Lynda's words, it was fun seeing 40 people go from asking why, to how.

A lot of the credit for that goes to Lynda, and her drive to keep the content relevant to the audience. In addition, my past experience with delivering workshops helped to keep the content interactive.

It was great for me to meet real business people with real-world issues, operating outside my normal bubble, the high tech, B2B marketing circles. And equally great was the realization that Lynda and I had insights that were valuable to people who don't live our issues every day.

Now that the content exists, in an interactive workshop format that can be customized to various audiences  (although it probably can't morph into "Twitter for Seniors"), Lynda and I are keen to see if there might be others who want this kind of hands-on introduction.  If you know of anyone, ping me a note (see contact info link, to the right), tweet me, or just leave a comment here.

My love-hate relationship with goals

Anyone that knows me knows that I like goals. I believe in goals. I embrace goals.

It's been a constant theme in my career, as a consultant and as an employee.  I like "ownership" and accountability in my work, and goals enable both.

Goals (in marketing) are good.

• In setting goals and getting buy-in for those goals, you get alignment with your managers, and support for your day to day activities. Maybe that means more budget (or less budget pressure). Maybe (hopefully) it means a more trusting boss.

  

• Goals awaken the competitive need to achieve that most people have in some way. When I set a goal, I can be extremely tenacious in achieving it, and am euphoric when I achieve a stretch goal. The excitement of achieving goals can energize a whole team.

• Goals, properly set, remind us why we all come to work every day. For instance, goals in marketing should tie to revenue in some measurable way. The goal should not be to "produce a whitepaper," but to "produce a whitepaper shortens the sales cycle." Stated that way, they help to remind me that my goal is to shorten the sales cycle, to increase sales, not to produce collateral.

But sometimes it's just not that simple.

Goals (in marketing) are bad.

Goals can be a curse. Especially if, in focusing on the goal, you lose sight of the purpose of the goal. A well crafted goal can help prevent this, but sometimes we forget to surface and reset our priorities based on a changing landscape around us.

Goals can provide an illusion that we are doing the right things, especially when the company is in trouble. 

In one of my former marketing roles, for example, the management team (of which I was a member) became too focused on weekly, tactical goals. The worse our situation, the more to-dos we added to our lists, the more to-dos we exacted from the people we working in our teams.

Achieving these tactical goals week after week, and crossing items off my endless to-do list, may have helped me feel like my butt was not on the line (even though it was)  but it meant I was not focused on solving the big issues. Instead of generating press coverage, retooling the company's website, or enhancing our visibility in our local community, I should have been focused on generating (or saving) cash in the short term.

Nothing else mattered.

Those other goals may have made sense if we had not faced a serious, unexpected cash shortage, one that we initially thought or hoped was temporary, but they should have faded to irrelevance given the new reality. And I should have refocused my own effort and those on my team away from any goals that did not directly contribute to that over-arching issue.

Lessons learned

• For leaner companies, marketing goals need to be tied explicitly and quantitatively to the immediate business objectives as much as possible (revenue, number of customers, repeat customers).

• Longer term goals (around visibility, mind-share, hiring) are important only in direct proportion to the amount of cash on hand.  

• Companies and management teams need to build in a way to ensure departmental goals can be tuned when the business landscape suddenly shifts. Tactical goals should be focused on the immediate reality, and the strategic goals should be geared to medium-term survival. Being open and honest with departmental managers about the business realities, what is needed to survive and thrive, is one step.

Image credit: © Photographer: Shutter4543 | Agency: Dreamstime.com

Ottawa. Hot or not?

Yeah, Ottawa is in the thick of winter, and so when I ask "is Ottawa hot," I am not referring to a sudden Spring thaw. 

Andrew Wahl of Canadian Business tweeted this report out of McKinsey this morning.  It includes the great visual captured below. 

Looking at the chart (click to see full size), Ottawa looks like a veritable hotbed of innovation, based on increase and number of patents filed. We score low on the diversity axis (meaning that the patents are being filed from a smaller pool of companies) but maybe that's not bad for a smaller centre.

All in all, this is a report I am sure my friends at the Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation(OCRI) will be happy about. (Disclosure: I am on the organizing committee of Zone5ive, OCRI's marketing forum.)

Along with his tweet, Andrew asked the questions "where is Kitchener," home of RIM and, what happens to Ottawa-Gatineau "after Nortel?"  These are excellent questions that deserve further study. I'd like to know what percentage of the patents filed in 2006 (which dictates the the size of the Ottawa circle) are Nortel patents, for instance.

Also, I think this chart is only part of the picture. Sure, Ottawa may have seen a steady increase in patent filings during the period covered, but how many products did it bring to market?  What would this heat map look like if it were technology product revenues?

How many of those products were designed to meet actual, pent-up customer demand, and not some engineer's notion of what would be cool?

I've met a lot of technology entrepreneurs in my decade as a marketing consultant. My concern is that this town maintains its engineering culture and build-it-and-they-will-come mentality. For many engineering/entrepreneurs, the end game seems to be acquisition by a company with marketing muscle, or selling the IP to a bigger player.

Am I wrong? Are things heating up? I'd love to think that Spring is around the corner.