The Brainzooming Group

It’s been some time, but here’s another in the ongoing series of “The Rules of Can’t Be Right” pieces. Consider these tips to improve your ability to spot potential spreadsheet errors.

• Approximate numbers so you can do the math in your head as a double check before you begin, i.e., an 8% increase in 745 replies can be estimated at 10% of 750, or 75 minus 15 (15 being 2% of 75) or 60. The precise answer? 59.6.
• Use the Data Filter and Sort capabilities in Excel – filters allow you to get a quick look at all the values in a table, which is great for spotting outliers or eliminating small variations in test fields (i.e., standardizing on either “management” or “mgmt.” as a descriptor). The sort feature allows you to rearrange tables based on various dimensions to highlight potential problems.
• Learn Pivot Tables in Excel – beyond their traditional analytical value, Pivot Tables are great for quickly looking at combinations of data to highlight problems. Recently, I was given a table in Excel that looked fine. By putting it into a pivot table and checking some relationships, it became apparent that 4 lines were missing from a SUM equation and 50% of the costs that should have been represented in the table weren’t accounted for properly.

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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I presented on creating strategic insights from market research at the Frost & Sullivan Marketing World conference with assistance from Jennifer Nelson (Johnson & Johnson), Bill Lenihan (Philips), and Barb Murphy.

The interactive Frost & Sullivan conference format called for presenting several strategic case studies. While I don’t usually speak on corporate case studies in presentations, this opportunity along with a pitch Barb was doing recently caused us to discuss – from an audience’s perspective – what a beneficial case study should incorporate:

• A few pieces of general information about the company or market under study – The audience doesn’t need to know everything about the situation; share just enough so we can judge how closely our own situations are to yours.
• A brief problem or opportunity statement – What general strategic situation did the company face? Possible salient points might include the business / market condition (growth, retraction, cost cutting), product lifecycle stage, internal or external audiences, types of customers, business expectations, type of strategy employed, objectives, etc. Again, these needn’t be shared in excruciating detail when all we need is a point of reference to our situations and a sense of the signals that suggested the strategic problem or opportunity was present.
• Three to five generalized lessons learned that it would have been great to know beforehand – Remember this about the audience – we’re “you” before you learned what you learned in this situation. The real benefit for us is to discover what you now know so we can get to the same successes faster or avoid what didn’t work for you. The key question for you to answer: “How would I be able to replicate the steps that took me from the initial strategic situation to success?” That’s what we’re interested in hearing.
• A few critical success factors – The elements essential to repeating a comparable success with our strategy.
• A general indication of results – We don’t need something overly detailed. It’s more important to have a sense of what we can expect, i.e. single or double digit improvements, how soon benefits can be realized, how long they’d last, etc. And avoid all these things – skip “in depth” discussion on your company statistics, videos that don’t move the topic forward, solutions only possible by using you or your vendor, and wasted time extolling your company’s incomparable virtues (i.e., a sales pitch).

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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My wife has been putting together some very complex puzzles lately, with many pieces, odd shapes, and undifferentiated images from piece to piece. Completing them as quickly as she does requires intense concentration.

Along the way, there are times when she’ll get stuck; it will seem impossible to find the particular piece she needs next. Often when she’s in that situation, I’ll walk by, chat briefly, and she’ll find the piece (or I will) almost instantly.

She credits me with being good luck when that happens. While that certainly makes me feel good, it’s obviously not true. I suspect one of two things is going on when this happens and both tie directly to perspective, as so much of creative problem solving does.

If I happen to find the piece, it’s simply because I’m bringing no previous perspective to the problem. I’m seeing the patterns of shapes and images from a new and different angle than she is. And if our brief interaction is coincident with her finding the piece, it’s because the time we interacted is enough to break her concentration, allowing her if not a new, at least a fresher perspective as she reimmerses herself in the puzzle.

So next time you’re working alone, concentrating intensely on trying to solve a problem with the door closed and the phone on send, consider letting yourself be interrupted. The break in concentration may be just what you need to figure out the problem or to at least have the interrupter do it for you!

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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Does you work group repeatedly gravitate toward familiar ideas when innovation possibilities are considered? If that’s so, here’s an alternative prioritization strategy that could help break the cycle. It’s a typical four box prioritization grid, but with a twist.

Use “ease of implementation” for one axis, with a range of “simple” to “complex” to implement. On the other axis, instead of the more typical “expected benefit,” use the “level of comfort with the idea” and a “very” to “not very” scale (as shown in the diagram). Having your group prioritize ideas in this way opens up new areas of discussion on tendencies you have to prefer familiar, non-innovative ideas.

For simple, but uncomfortable ideas, focus on understanding what creates discomfort about the innovation. For uncomfortable ideas more complex to implement, probe on whether there’s long-term potential that could create competitive advantage (or look for ways to implement the idea with greater ease). The key with both cells is getting to the heart of the innovation discomfort. Is it because there are significant flaws in the idea or is it really because the idea is new, challenging, and unfamiliar? If it’s the latter, that’s often a clear sign that the idea could yield tremendous potential for customers who aren’t part of inertia inside a company that thwarts developing new products and services.

For ideas seen as very comfortable, the vital question is how to inject new features and benefits making them more viable yet potentially increasing internal discomfort.

Try this approach and see what it does to move your group toward innovative possibilities that represent more dramatic market changes and impacts. – Mike Brown

The Brainzooming Group helps make smart organizations more successful by rapidly expanding their strategic options and creating innovative plans they can efficiently implement.  To learn how we can structure a strategy to keep you ahead of your customers, email us at brainzooming@gmail.com or call us at 816-509-5320.

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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Forecasts and size estimates shown with multiple decimal points are scary because they invariably imply a phony level of precision. When you’re estimating something, understand up front how precise the answer has to be, and present the result accordingly.

Doing a near-term estimate for a production forecast is one thing. But if the question relates to a market’s size to gauge relative market share or reasonable long-term growth expectations, it’s probably appropriate for your answer to be a range, and maybe a pretty wide one (2x or 3x differences between the low and high end may even be reasonable).

Also, rather than investing all your efforts in one estimate, approach it with multiple methodologies or sets of inputs to create credible boundaries for your estimated range. That’s “precision” that’s more valuable than any level of phony decimal places.

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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How many people in your company read trade pubs and websites from your industry? Probably a lot of them.

How many of them are deliberately perusing content from industries outside yours or in functional areas outside their fields of expertise? Probably not all that many.

So what should you do about it? Be a contrarian – go where everybody else isn’t, checking out trade pubs and web content from outside your industry such as:

• Industries known for innovation or performance in areas where your industry lags.
• Industries with similar, but more advanced life cycles than yours.
• From functional areas that your business may ignore, but probably shouldn’t.

Pursue this approach and keep answering the question, “How can we apply this out of industry content to our business situation?”

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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Here’s a checklist you can use in considering a new business opportunity or campaign to assess whether you’ve addressed critical elements of a marketing plan. It’s especially helpful to use in business environments where you have non-marketing people driving product launches or efforts without a full grounding in how a strategic AND implementable marketing plan will increase the probability of success.

For each question, choose whether the most appropriate answer to each question is: YES, NOT SURE, or NO. If there is one NOT SURE or NO answer, the basic elements of a marketing plan aren’t in place. Ensure all the questions are answered satisfactorily and understood by the organization before deciding to launch the effort.

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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