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I’ll put my hand up. I’ve made a few mistakes in my time. There’s a few memorable ones.

The one that really sticks in my mind is when I was at Kodak.

I was a young graduate, fresh out of University, and on my first project. Being led by an amazing Project Engineer by the name of Malcolm Hart. The project was to part-project manage a new machine installation into one of the areas of the huge Kodak site, in Harrow, UK.

So, with most projects, there was a testing phase. We were to fly out to Italy to test the machine before it came over, so if there was something not so right, it could be rectified there and then.

I was told, make sure you get some ‘test product’ over to the facility in Italy, so we can test it with our products and record the results.

I was on it! I got a variety of material, packaged it all up nicely so it doesn’t get damaged and put it into a pallet and marked it for shipment to Italy, and with the address of the address facility. I also then, devised the testing, which products we’d feed through the machine and how – and the results that should be recorded and even a little graph to show if they were in specification or not. If not, then why not and we could do some root cause analysis.

Malcolm and myself travelled over to Italy, Bologna. We got there, mid-afternoon and went to the facility.

We saw the machine, it looked awesome.

Right, Bal – let’s test it. Sure, Malcolm… and then I turn around to a local engineer, can we have our product I sent over to test please.

No. No product of yours arrived.

What? – you can imagine at this point, the heat had just been turned up a notch!

What do you mean? I sent it, with my own hands, from Harrow to Italy. To this address… it must be here. Could you please look for it.

After some time investigating, we tracked the shipping company and it was sat in a postal service warehouse, which was now closed and not open till the morning, and they required some paperwork.

I learnt a valuable lesson. Make sure, if you send something, confirm they receive it!

In this case – we managed to get the material late the next day, but lost a day of testing. A valuable lesson indeed.

I can assure you, anything I planned from that day on… and till this day, is like a military operation.

So, if you do fail or make a mistake. Learn from it…

I often get asked about Data, Big Data… and how it’s changing our lives. How it’s able to know more about me, than what I know about me!

Having data is one thing. Analysing it, is another.

With data, you want to be able to find out what happened and more importantly, why did it happen? Then you would be moving in the realms of predictive analysis and prescriptive analysis (what will happen and how can we make it happen).

As we share our information with  more and more companies, mainly through purchases we make (both, online and in-store), they are using that information and data to learn about us. Learn about our patterns and how we behave. How is Big Data impacting Sales, was also a question from the audience at my recent keynote talk at the Sales Innovation Expo in London last week.

The easiest to describe it, would be in my opinion, with an example. So here goes…

I go to Boots (the Chemist) at most lunchtimes for a Meal Deal. (I’m going to share some intimate detail now…) I go for the triple chicken sandwich (the one that has chicken and bacon, chicken and salad and chicken and stuffing). Along with that, I get a fruit juice, usually the SaVse green one, and then a packet of crisps, usually a packet of Kettle Chips, sweet chilli flavour. I swipe my Boots loyalty card and collect my food. Now, admittedly, this is not on a regular basis, but it is at least 2-3 times a week.

As I did it today, I spoke to my colleague and said… I had to queue and wait for someone to serve me. They could have one or two self-service tills – now, I know Boots have these in other stores and I’m sure they are rolling them out. But the store I went to, they didn’t have any.

Then my ‘Lean Thinking’ kicked in. That could, and probably is, one way to save time for the customer. But what about, they used data on their e-POS (electronic point of sale – the tills where they scan the items and take my payment), to learn about me. For example, in this example, they could easily, put those items I buy for lunch, into a bag, in the fridge section, ready to be picked up and taken away. That would save even more time!

Once again, I’ve seen similar things in other stores, where they have the sandwich, drink and snack already in a small bag, ready to take rather than having to pick the individual items up. It’s all about saving time. But then, a good question… how do they know when you’d be in and when you wouldn’t?

Well, data… once again, could tell you which days I’m in most regular and what time I’m making my purchases. On top of that, they could even text me… Bal, we’ll prepare your lunch, are you coming in today? – Reply with YES or ignore if NO. I could reply back with YES, and guess what, they know Bal is coming… wouldn’t take too long for someone to put the items in the bag and in the fridge section.

But what if someone else takes it? – Well, that’s only a good thing! Why not build a little bit of inventory. I’m sure I’m not the only person having that combination. Why not upsell, or get me to try a new juice, some different types of crisps – and this could be something Boots could discuss with suppliers.

On top of this, you could really get connected. Boots could connect with my calendar. In my calendar, they could see where I am and where my meetings are taking place. Then they could feed this back into their system, and they’ll know when Bal is coming in and when he isn’t. This is now getting into the predictive analysis. Boots knowing where I am, what I’m doing, and then being able to influence my decision in what I buy for lunch. They could leverage Google maps, and at 11:50 send me a message – Bal, we see you are travelling but there’s a Boot’s 5 minute walk from you, where you can pick up your usual lunch.. and don’t forget your Advantage (loyalty) Card points!

So, that is Big Data. It’s Data that is big and can be very clever. Hence you’re seeing more and more organisations and companies learning more about you and your preferences. Many of the times, it should be making a process easier for you, or simpler. For the company, it’s another sale.

Because that’s what it’s all about. Selling.

Thank you to the Shutter Socks guys, they made a short video of me last week. It was great meeting all the folk there, and I especially like to interact with the audience, take questions and listen to what they would like to say… my next talk will be in Amsterdam in June (more details to follow).

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to speak at the Sales Innovation Expo in London.

I had a great time at the expo, seeing all the different stands and what people had to offer, everything from CRM solutions, to marketing products, from dressed up folk selling their products to various speakers sharing their knowledge.

So what did I talk about? – well I shared a a few insights into how you should think like a customer, walk like a customer and talk like a customer. Well, not in that order and technically, not in that style. I shared my insights in how you should understand the customer and what they see as value. I shared some insights into Lean Thinking (no plug for my blog!), and most importantly, a few case studies. Case studies with results and proven ROI – but using these principles you can also use to make a good return on investment.

I won’t go into the whole presentation, but below is the Lean Thinking cycle I shared.

For those who don’t know what Lean is, it’s the elimination of waste. Waste is what we can identify in a process, and can be categorised into one of seven categories. I’ll share more in future blogs, but for now, there’s a couple things to remember, one is to understand your customer and what they want. What they really really want.

Back to the Expo, and the Sales folk were out in force. But there were one or two who i thought could have put more effort in…

But then, maybe that’s their style. Minimalist. Met some great people, and lots of opportunity. Not sure if there was one, but would’ve been great to see a networking type of event embedded – something like where you have 5 mins to pitch what you do, and then for others to rate you 1 – 10 in terms of a) how they could collaborate with you or b) if they know someone who’d be really interested in what you do. This would then develop so many opportunities for people to get involved, and most importantly share ideas with each other.

That was another one of my slides, and you may have seen it on twitter. You may be clever, but you don’t always have to have the answers. Go and talk to others. Go and collaborate. Go and listen to other people and what they are doing. Go and figure out what your customer really wants and how you working with others could provide that.

Go figure.
Go Do.
Just Do it!

Last week, the Tech Nation 2017 Report by Tech City was released.

It provided some great insights and reading (Images have been taken from Tech City)

Now, if you haven’t had the opportunity to read it – I thoroughly recommend you search for the report, download it and have a good read. Hopefully the image above encourages you to find out more.

For me, it’s a great read – for a number of reasons.

1. It shows the importance of ‘Digital’
   1. The digital era is well and truly here. There’s no denying it. We have to make sure we’re not only on-board but have fully adopted it.
   2. It’s only going to get bigger and bigger – look at the figures in the image above… look at the figures in the report…. £97bn from Digital Tech Industries contributed to the UK Economy… let that sink in for a moment.
   3. People are learning more and more – this shows in the average salary. My daughter who is 10 is learning how to code! She’s even coded her first game.. admittedly it’s no Angry Birds, but i’ll let her learn and give her time.
2. IT’s not just London
   1. This was also mentioned via a tweet by Tech City. It’s true…
   2. Look at cities outside of London – Manchester, Reading, Birmingham, Nottingham, Leeds, Newcastle, Milton Keynes.. they’re all investing, attracting and enhancing their offerings to Tech Companies.
   3. And Tech Companies are finding London expensive.. well, when you have to pay £6 for a beer, you know it might be a good time to look elsewhere.

I’ve traveled around the World. There’s alot of cities who have their Digital Eco-system in place. And they’re known for it. But many more cities around the World are rapidly developing.

Going to be a little bias here.. but Atlanta in the USA….  Georgia Tech are assisting with the cities phenomenal growth!

Then there’s Tel Aviv in Israel. Huge.. and I mean HUGE! Start-up community.

If you, your organisation, company, establishment, family, friends, colleagues are still thinking, What is Digital? – you need to hurry up!

Over the years, I’ve placed a heavy emphasis on how important it is to have good leadership that can drive you and the organisation forward.

It’s critical that they not only show you the vision, but assist you along the path.

You could say, I was lucky in that aspect. Not only my immediate manager, who was Vice President of IT Leadership, but my CIO and CEO (Chief Executive Officer) were all in support of the Innovation work that was happening.

My CIO (Chief Information Officer) would often share his vision, what he would like to see happening and this was all from feedback which he’d receive from Leaders within the business and also, what the other CIO’s of major organisations were looking into.

With that leadership, we were able to develop ideas. Ideas which then went onto a pilot or proof of concept phase – using the Lean Startup methodology, we’d really work on them in a fast manner – Learn Fast, Fail Fast.

If it wasn’t going to work – that’s fine.

Let’s learn from it.

Learn and move on. Learn, why didn’t it work – and if changes were needed, make them then move onto a new test, new pilot or something new. We didn’t keep pushing the same thing until it worked. We made sure we had something that worked, that we could let the customers pull from us.

When I support and talk to other organisations, one thing is key… Leadership. They need to support. They need to be behind any new innovative ideas, technologies or thought processes.

You can look at some of the top companies in the world, and how their leaders and CEO’s talk about ideas. How they talk about innovation and either new technology or something new, that will drive the business forward and achieve success.

Shadow of the Leader

This is something I picked up from GlaxoSmithKline.

It’s very much what it is. Whatever the leader is like, the rest of the organisation will be like that. Because that is the shadow he casts onto them.

If the CEO/Leader is innovative, driving change and wants the company to be a success… that shadow will be on everyone below him, and then they’ll cast it below them. The organisation then will be successful.

What kind of shadow do you have?

What kind of shadow do the leaders in your organisation have?

 

Do you sometimes feel, there’s quite a few social media platforms out there and more and more are popping up all the time?

The other day, I was trying to explain to a local business owner why they should be all over social media.

They’ve got the usual Facebook page, which they update, as and when they get time.

I suggested, have they looked at taking photo’s and posting them to Instagram?

Also suggested, perhaps making a few short videos, and posting them onto a YouTube channel.

Maybe engage with some younger folk, via Snapchat.

The response – if i’m doing all this, who’s going to do the work?!

Absolutely right! – who is going to do the work.

Well, there’s a few options.

1. Understand the Social Media Channels that work for you.
   1. Not all will be as effective.
   2. There’ll be some key ones that’ll really work for you
   3. Some may not be worth exploring
   4. Those that work – schedule 15-20 mins a day, to share engaging content
2. Good Quality Content
   1. People will only watch, listen or read if it’s engaging.
   2. Videos and Photo’s always work well.
   3. Understand what it is you sell (service, products, etc..) and tailor the content accordingly.

Not everyone needs to be on Snapchat. Not everyone needs to be Periscoping.

But there are a few more platforms you should be on, than the usual Facebook page you have.

Not sure how they all work?

Well, I found this great picture describing Social Media with a Samosa! (and let’s be honest, who doesn’t love a Samosa!) – it’s very much tailored for an individual, but you can learn from it and apply it to a small/medium size business.