In this episode I talk to Brad Smith – founder of Braap motorcycles.
Braap – that has to be the best use of onomatopoeia in a brand name I’ve heard.
Brad founded BRAAP at the age of 19 by traveling to China to find a manufacturer for his idea of a simple customisable design.
He visited 50 factories hunting for one that would bet on his vision. As luck would have it the 50th factory agreed and with investments from two Frenchmen he met earlier in the week while traveling, the journey began.
He’s now competing with Yamaha and Honda as a reputable bike company in Australia, fulfilling his dream of providing affordable dirt bikes to get more people into racing and more riders on bikes in general.
Here are a few things brad and I talked about.
Routines and rituals.
Having a Monday sales call has been crucial in measuring and driving growth at Braap. Much like a stand up, Brad runs his meetings in rapid fire – reviewing metrics fro mthe previous day, goals for the day ahead and what they will work on improving that day. They’re hiring a specialist to get structure into their meetings and to get them outcome focused.
BHAG and story vs. hard metrics
Brad is a big believer in BGAHs but also urges everyone to focus ultimately on the next 90 days and what they can do to improve. It’s a step from following his dream and building a business around his passion for motorbikes – into a profitable business that’s thriving.
We talk about his parents and the standards that they set and also how he holds himself accountable through a core group of focused friends. He also talked of his advisory team in Texas. Much like a Mastermind – Keith Cunningham runs their 10 member chairman’s council for a week each quarter – and it’s brutal.
Numbers on the wall. Forget the story – focus on the outcomes and results.
Of course it wouldn’t be right if we didn’t talk digital!
Brad talks a little about how they measure results from social media to sales. Leads are collected through a social sales teams – piped warm into his CRM. We wrap it up with an understand if the power of both a good story and some opinion beating data.
I hope you enjoy it and I hope I get a chance to bring you more interviews in the future.
You, as a member of my tribe intimidate me. I’m scared into not posting, through fear of as my friend AJ puts it – posting NONTENT. You know, that: meh, blah, filler, “like or share if you agree” type content. I need our connection and the learning I get from consuming your content. I want to share value to get value.
But it struck me. That is the exact message I want to give this week.
Create Epic Value And Give It Away
As many will know by now the rationale behind inbound or content marketing is to create content that answers questions that potential customers may have. In essence you are aiming to be the subject matter expert for your product, industry and niche. The main aim being to subscribe them to a content journey that ultimately converts them to purchase or partner with your brand.
The byproduct of creating answers to questions your customers may have is a bank of SEO rich pages for Google to index. If you are checking the terms people use to find your website, and using Google’s keyword planner (or other optimisation tools), over time this bank of content should ultimately help push you up the SERPs. Getting you closer to number one in Google.
The trouble now, more than ever, is that we are all creating content and competing for eyeballs. Facebook and Twitter are overloaded, YouTube is flooded, even the TV has far too many channels for us to watch. We need to go beyond just answering problems to actively adding value with our content.
One answer is to create unique audience specific content – go niche.
One great example of giving away useful content is the website www.backofanapkin.co.nz created by Sacha Judd of the law firm Buddle Findlay.
The website, aimed at start-ups, provides a boilerplate company document. It outlines the main points of a company’s structure to ensure its is documented – covering things like: the parties involved, who gets what share of ownership, who gets what profits and how decisions are made.
Lightly branded with a Buddle Findlay letterhead, it’s a valuable tool for startups and connects them with a community.
I also made a little form last year to help people conduct a Digital and Social Media audit. It is designed to help small businesses check that they are on the right path and to develop a short roadmap to getting their digital presence right. I hope it has some value for a small business looking to get their online profile right.
Even though it is in essence the exact same strategy I would use with a multinational company or personal brand – it’s ingredients. It’s not the mix, nor the exact methods i’d use to bake my online cake. Hopefully it entices a few more people to check me out as a potential chef. Digital marketing chef that is.
Although that epic piece of valuable content can be related to your core business it could equally be about a unique technique, skills or knowledge you have developed. Brett Kelly was an avid user of Evernote – so much so that he decided to create Evernote Essentials a book that sold 16000 copies. This ultimately led to him being employed by Evernote.
Here are a few others that have already gotten in on the game:
The POST Method – is a method for defining strategy that’s been around for the web equivalent of a lifetime. Back in 2007 the good folks at Forrester coined the POST methodology. I’ve found it to be a fantastic tool for making strategic and tactical decisions around projects online.If you haven’t guessed it’s not a strategy around posting things on blogs or social media, it’s an acronym.
The method starts with People
Clearly defining who your target audience is and what are they like is key to any project – it labels who you are trying to reach. the tighter the description here the better. Most marketing and communication fails by trying to appeal to too wider audience. There’s a are a phrase I love around this – “If you try to please everyone, you please no one”.
Everyone with a pulse or middle aged men is not a defined target market.
Now you could leverage buyer personas – which are kind of like an ideal profile of your target. You could use existing client data to find the median person. the demographic and psychographic profile of your main customer.
One simple way to do this is to go check the demographics of your facebook page fans. I wrote a post on this last month for insiderCXM (reposted here) if you’re interested. With a simple look at your stats you can see your median age, sex, and their location. You might be surprised and find out you’re targeting the opposite, but lets hope it fits with what you were thinking. Dig a little deeper by looking at the pages they like and you can start to get a feel for their psychographic profile too.
Now if your target audience is not on Facebook or if you’re properly into this you should slo do some market research and interview some existing and or potential customers. its the best way to create the perfect persona.
What partnerships could get you to this audience?
The second part to this people equation is working out what partnerships could get you to this audience and how could help you communicate with them? Your research might show that they are all fans of a big sports team – so partnering with them and doing a little brandscaping might work.
Someone must be accountable for driving this to success
The third part is working out initial thoughts on a RASCI chart for the initiative, who is responsible, accountable, consulted and informed about it. You may not have all the seats, but for anything to happen someone must be accountable for driving it to success.
Ok so you’ve got a clear idea of who you want to reach and who’s involved. What do you want to tell them. What’s the Objective of what you’re doing? the O of POST.
Objectives: Here you can outline the message or action or goal you have for this audience.
What are your goals? Are you more interested in listening in order to gain insights? are you messaging to them or communicating an initiative or campaign? Do you want to engage with brand ambassadors or just get someone along to a gig? Once you know what you want, then you can drive how you will act.
That’s The Strategy – Let’s say I start communicating as the CEO with my fans on Facebook or Twitter – what will my company do if people reply – what if they say something bad, what if they have great ideas – how do I get them in a backlog , how do I prioritise them. This is the strategy – planning for how you change your relationship with customers? What do you want to get out of these relationships? Which direction do you want to take and what is the underlying proposition?
With these strategic decisions made – then and only then – do we get onto the final part. The part where most people start. You know the phrases – “We should be on Facebook, everyone’s there” or “are we tweetering this?”
Choosing the right Technology
It’s here you define the medium that best matches your audience, the message you want to give and how you will change your organisation when you meet your objectives.
you look at what applications or websites you should you use? SEO, SEM, and how much time should this take? This step reflects the choices you make in the first three steps. if the people you want to connect with aren’t on Facebook or hate video messages or will demand transparent rapid responses – something your P O and S answers have determined – then making a viral cat video to post on Facebook is just wrong.
So once again – People first, Objectives and goals next, Strategy and then LAST – Technology that will help you get there.
If you like to hear more about this and a few other things that I think are really useful, check out my latest podcast.
When it comes to shopping and buying – be it online or offline – there’s are distinct modes or phases in which we operate.
Researching – what do I want?
Searching – where can I get it?
Purchasing – how do I get it now?
Much like taking the wrong bus or missing the express, being driven to the wrong part of your website or shown the wrong message can really ruin a user’s experience. So creating distinct or at least relevant experiences for each of the three phases is key.
Traffic coming in from search engines to your website – and the keyword terms used – can give a very strong signal of the intent a customer has to purchase. It can in some cases tell us exactly which mode a buyer is in. So lets look at the various phases.
Educate your potential customers with Content Marketing
When people are arriving at your website from broad search terms they are in the first of our phases as a buyer – discovering what’s on offer and what potential solutions there are to my needs.
It is here that through content marketing you can educate clients of the benefits of your products, help solve their problems, and make them aware of your brand and your solutions.
You should be answering any questions clients have around benefits of our products. You could help out by comparing products through a comparison infographic or article. This should all be created with the intention of easily sharing on Facebook and Social Media.
On social media you can support the discovery of your brand by sharing answers to their question. But given that at this stage many may not be aware that your brand has answers to their problems (and that we don’t go to Facebook to shop – we go to be entertained and informed) your social media posts should also create brand awareness. Videos around successful customers, or posts about your brand can help to create an affinity with the WHY of your organisation.
LEGO, Johnnie Walker and Apple are notoriously good at tapping into deeper underlying needs that we surface as needs for their products or at least to connect with their brand. Check out their brand videos on YouTube for ideas.
When they’re searching – make sure they know the great range of products you have – right now!
If a customer is in the searching mode, providing a faceted search of your full range of products is key. eCommerce experts and successful eCommerce platforms are such because they have mastered the art of displaying products in a way that is easy to navigate, search and refine. Even so, as buyers we can often find the breadth of products on offer too much or too hard for us to decide, so as customers we have methods that we use to simplify difficult decision making (Heuristics).
There’s two Heuristics here that can play to your advantage – abundance or availability and scarcity.
Abundance
You need to ensure that a potential customer can see you have a broad range of products, and that in shopping with us they’re not missing out on options elsewhere. This could be through displaying the number of results on a page, the number sold today, the number of similar items and the social proof of likes or shares of an item on Facebook. These would indicate a wide range, and that others have purchased here before.
Scarcity
Conversely, scarcity can be used here to push a customer through to purchase. Maybe with a count beside each of the number left in stock (be it real or fabricated as I’m sure many websites do).
Some companies ensure exclusivity from suppliers of a certain colour, team logo or model that will appeal to audiences. Limited editions like Jordans, the Sebastian Vettel Lexus FX50, or Jamie Oliver cookware.
While in this mode shoppers know some things they might be after – but you also have to support those who as Henry Ford is misquoted as saying – might not know they need your product.
“If I’d asked people what they wanted, they would have asked for a better horse” – Not said by Henry Ford.
If a customer is purchasing – stay out of their way!
A customer that uses the phase “iPhone 6 white 64GB” has a strong intent to purchase that item and already knows the model, colour and memory size she is after. She also knows that memory is a distinct feature of iPhones.
If you are supporting the organic or natural ranking of your web pages on Google with paid advertising, an advert for this phrase should point directly to your eCommerce shop and to the page of the White iPhone 6 with 64GB of memory. The landing page should have a clear call to action to add to cart and purchase. Even better you could pre-populate a guest cart with the phone already added.
A large image of the phone should confirm you’ve got what they’re after. As this is a filtered results page of your own product search, there should be the ability to X out some of the filtered items – like the colour or memory – BUT DON’T let this get in the way of the main call to action.
While I loath to call it a strategy, I have decided to take a strategic methodical approach to my use of Twitter.
I’ve decided to:
Network, share and support a core group of influential people in my Dunbar 150 list – daily
Participate in weekly #sshour social selling chats and one other #hashtag chat from a new, unrelated field.
Post useful and insightful links to content from those in my 150 list and insightful sources
But why just three core things you say?
Stick to three focus points and measure their success
I have been reading the book Good To Great by Jim Collins. I which he thorough researches and presents the core elements of what’s behind great companies – those that outperform consistently over time. He summarises a good concise strategy very well.
If you have more than three priorities, you don’t have any ~ Jim Collins.
Hence the three pronged approach I am taking on Twitter. They are each in different areas, are SMART and can be measured independently.
My Dunbar 150 list – or small group – allows for focused core networking
The UK psychologist Robin Dunbar did some quite thorough research into human relationships and the number of meaningful or at least memorable relationships we can keep. He came to the conclusion that the average person can only really keep – to some reasonable level – relationships with 150 people. If I think of my personal relationships this sounds about right. 50 odd work contacts, 50 odd friends, 25 family members and 25 business connections – give or take.
So hence my Dunbar 150 list on Twitter – it’s still growing, but will include a core group of people – people who’s Tweets are worth reading, they share good content and I really value their input to my time on Twitter.
Participating in #sshour now #SBizHour and other chats to discover new contacts
Being part of a larger hashtag based chat lets me discover cool new people on Twitter, to get different perspectives and a chance to expand my knowledge. I’ve also found myself following along with design hashtags, UX, customer service and just recently social C suite chats. All help me connect with more people and develop a breadth of knowledge.
Share really useful content
Finally, sharing stuff that is really of value is paying off. People comment on it and share it more frequently. If I take the time to explain why it is of value and also add a supporting visual element – content I tweet far more useful! I hope. You will get the odd motivational quote or bit of humour in the mix but I hope that in general you’ll get valuable content from my stream in 2015. Less noise, more signal I hope!
If you’d like to listen to this post I’ve made a short summary here:
On a personal note. Many thanks to those subscribed to my blog. I wish you all very happy holiday season and a great 2015!
There is one thing that Google and its assorted trawling bots love, and that is fresh content. If that fresh content is also linked from established websites, then Google has every reason to believe the content is quite good, assumes it has some kudos, and will rank it higher.
This, of course, is brilliant good for the content creator, and the website where the content is housed. Fresh content is the key to this process – the oil that keeps the engine running if you like – and is critical in a healthy inbound marketing strategy.
But often, creating bespoke singular content is an expensive process. So how do you get the most out of new content? Hopefully this blog will go some way to identifying new content opportunities from old or existing content:
1. Switch the format up
As an example – if you’ve run surveys of your clients or market then reformat them. Oh and tweak for SEO as you go. Here’s some options:
Video summary of the findings to YouTube
Press release
Segment the full report – show industry cuts
Social media sharing of research nuggets. Social Media B2B do this very well embedding tweetable nuggets into an article. Like this article on content marketing stats.
Create an infographic from the summary
More social media sharing and discussion
Micro poll your users as to if the results still stand true
Publish results from the micro poll
2. The Friday roundup / in depth piece
Give followers a lean-back post to digest on Saturday or Sunday. Branding Magazine sends out a summary listing of their hot posts of the previous five days. Good for those relaxing on a Saturday morning with bacon and coffee. In contrast to a round up – the economist has a lean back section for a more in depth read on existing topics and themes.
3. Get all analytical
Find out which of your posts were the most popular in terms of traffic from various search terms. Promote them on social media. Rework those that are off target.
Use Topsy to compare trending hashtags, or trending phrases and really target your next article.
4. Think of your old posts
Continuing the analytics theme – give your old posts will little traffic a tweet or a share if there’s something relevant in the news related to that post. Use this one sparingly though as it could annoy your close followers. And tailor it to each audience!
If your blog is on WordPress, you may even want to consider the plugin Tweet Old Post which will automate it for you.
5. Newsjack
Your products or services might not be famous yet but helping out someone in a broadcasted bad situation can be powerful content. Oakley sent a new model of sunglasses to those leaving the Chilean mines a few years back – it was global news and everybody saw it. It gave others the chance to create loads of content around them.
It could also be a way to reassure your clients that this won’t happen to them – like password protection. A great example of newsjackking was Lastpass providing a tool to check if your LinkedIn password was stolen. They re-purpose this piece each and every time a new website is hacked or comes to the limelight for security breaches.
6. Croudsource an article from your comments area
I love when people point out an idea you’ve missed on a comments section from another article or blog. Use those ideas and expand on them in another post.
Your Turn
Did I miss anything? Let me know in the comments section. I’d love to create another post!
Learning the best techniques, tools and apps to do your job is a personal journey we’re all taking. I thought I’d cover the tools I use in content creation and hope you might find some useful.
And, having subscribed to shotkit.com for photography inspiration – here’s a shot of my kit.
Location: Auckland, New Zealand
Current computers: HP Probook laptop, 2014 Mac Pro (when our designer is off site), 2011 Sony Vaio touch VPC at home.
Current mobile devices: IPad Air, iPad 3 and Sony Xperia Z1 Z3 (a Christmas upgrade from Spark – waterproof and 20.1 megapixels of goodness with 4K video. Backups? = Z1, HTC SV and Samsung S2).
What apps/software/tools can’t you live without?
APPS for WORK
Evernote – for storing ideas, lists, research and contacts. I pay to have it auto save and back up – It comes in handy when you’re using it on multiple mobile devices.
Google Now – for finding the quickest public transport to my destination and recommending photo opportunities and new restaurants. Then the Auckland Transit app (far more accurate and useful than the Auckland Transport app and with all the functionality that it misses).
Foursquare (and the annoying sibling forced upon us – Swarm), for verifying the restaurant/destination is good and grabbing discounts
Email (OWA 365 and Gmail).
Trello for managing my blog, and work workflow and prioritisation of my backlog. I even have a ‘Home’ work board, for my DIY and home maintenance tasks.
Instagram– because I’m passionate about photography and know “the best camera is the one you have with you?”
I telecommute on occasion but work is based in Newmarket, surrounded by three dormant volcanoes, Mount Eden, Saint John and Hobson. Each providing a good lunch hour stroll with enough incline to get the heart going and the mind refreshed.
At work I rotate from – my laptop sitting desk – to a Mies van der Rohe seat – to a stand up desk with my iPad.
What’s your best time-saving shortcut or lifehack?
Perform a stand up twice a day. Review what you’re doing, what’s working, what’s not and what you’ll adjust for tomorrow.
What everyday thing are you better at than anybody else? Simplifying.
What’s your favorite to-do list manager? Trello.
What do you listen to while at work? My colleague switches us through gangster rap and hard rock radio stations each day and I have a few DJs I switch to on SoundCloud like DJ Theresa when I’m in a creative flow state or Brazilian Samba or a
What are you currently reading?Good To Great having just finished
What’s your sleep routine like? To bed at around 22:00 or 23:00 and awake at 05:20 each day. On the weekends I get to bed when I tire (a little earlier usually if we’ve had a good day at the beach).
What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
It doesn’t matter what you study at university, college or school, you’re just there to learn ‘how to learn’ the best you can. Get good at that, and everything else gets better. – David Allen (my grandfather).
Anything else you want to add? Dan Miller put the notion of teamwork well in a podcast I discovered this week. A Clydesdale can pull 8 tonnes alone but as a pair they can pull 24, and with training 32 tonnes.
Fill in the Blank: I’d love to see BLANK answer these questions. I’d love to see Dan, Anya, AJ, Simone, Scot and Chuck answer these questions.
Agile Project management techniques, lean principles, learning and iterating are things that I’ve become quite passionate about over the last years.
Seeing the results that “Going Agile” can bring to an organisation in terms of delivering value to the end user and business value over and beyond traditional methods gets me happy. It makes me think of the other applications for agile outside of software development – ways to really challenge organisations to take it to other teams like marketing and even into the sales and the recruitment process as well.
I even think in minimal viable product terms when I look at websites, marketing materials and even my renovation list at home.
I’ve been down in Christchurch today. Our fighting city in New Zealand that’s grinding its way to recovery from two city flattening earthquakes. A town of survivors, reminded of loss each day. A town that needs to iterate fast to get back on its feet and adopt new practices. We talk of digital disruption, we’ll this town has every disruption, from its core, to its psyche, it’s direction, transportation, infrastructure and lives turned upside down.
Many would say the town council needs to adopt some lines from the agile manifesto “working content over documentation” and “Simplicity – the art of maximizing the amount of work not done – is essential”. Getting themselves up to speed again and functioning in a new normal shall we say.
Despite the hardships the city faces, Jason Wills the CIO of Harcourts introduced me to an excited team. Enthusiastic, that’s focused on improvement and learning. A team that is excited about bringing value to our end users. A team that has adapted Agile project management quickly. Despite being only in their second year of agile the team sizes epics with great accuracy (chunks of work taken into a cycle of development) and knows what they can accomplish in a sprint cycle (the time frames they work in).
Jason and I had a fantastic day and thought we’d summarise some of the key points in a podchat – yes autocorrect I’m making a new word – for you.
Some of the pieces that most surprised me were:
Our commitment to agile, going all in with a coach and training
The rate of agile adoption in New Zealand amongst CIOs
The surprising side effects of agile adoption
The breakdown of knowledge silos
The resolution of business continuity issues through the sharing if knowledge
How it has lead to greater transparency
How the artefacts of scrum, like the scrum board with post it notes depicting workflow, have really helped business prioritisation
And yes, even some agile marketing slips into the mix which I’m amplifying as we role out our strategy.
I’ll let Jason continue the journey but please let me know what you think of this podcast format and if you’d like to hear more. I’m keen to start talking about incremental improvements, business value and that crossover between online and offline.
I’ve been talking to another of our Harcourts leaders Gilbert Enoka, the mental skills coach for New Zealand’s greatest sporting team the mighty All Blacks rugby squad. Hopefully he’ll share some tips and insights in a coming podcast too!
The truth is that the double-barrelled, hard-hitting Chinese blogger is probably the most popular blogger in the world. Ordinary, he is not. The numbers are staggering.
With over 500,000,000 hits to his blog and an average of one million reads for each post, he’s renowned for attacking (which he plays down) the local government and commenting on state funded movies that fail. A modern-day Robin Hood? Possibly, a rebel/player/geek? Definitely.
Han Han is also a best selling author and pro-race car driver and his magazineParty (cover left) sold a million issues before being censored and shut down. Although a super blogger he’s not a big fan of Sina Weibo (China’s version of Twitter). He thinks he’ll get too distracted looking at sexy profile pics rather than reading tweets.
Having already set your view of Han Han as a partying Fast and Furious extra – why am I interested and why should you be? Well his success as a blogger is down to a formula that translates to any language.
Here are ten reasons why Han Han thinks he has something over his blogging competitors:
1. Practice – slightly arrogant perhaps, but he believes he writes better than others, and as we all know the secret there is practice.
2. Be amusing – Han Han says humour is a great way to separate himself from other bloggers.
3. Write simply – if you’ve got something to say don’t wrap it in acronyms, waffle or hyperbole hard to read/understand words.
4. Appeal to your audience – he takes what’s happening around him and turns his observations in to speak his community understands.
5. Take time to post – just because it seems instant to get out a tweet, status update or blog post, doesn’t mean you should forget to research your article and switch on spell check.
6. Cover what’s hot – and don’t just photocopy what you are seeing. Give your users some perspective and explain why they should care.
7. Remember what happens in Vegas stays online – Han points out that the freedom social media and blogging give him to get things out means censors can’t remove it as it’s already reposted, shared etc. He also says it means there’s no editorial team there changing the meaning. But he does have to keep an extra eye on proof.
8. Be a contrarian – Han Han pushes boundaries, challenges local officials and breaks the shackles of traditional Chinese media.
9. Know your limits – if you’re throwing down something controversial or contrarian be prepared to back it up. And if its really controversial, understand the repercussions. “I thought i’d have been questioned by officials by now,” Han Han told News Asia.
10. Be Cocky (confident) – Han turned down an interview with Barak Obama because it meant he would have had to get up early before his Race that day. A few lessons to take form that is: by appealing to a new audience, Han could have alienated his loyal fans – so don’t switch your focus just to meet a new niche. Stay consistent. Secondly, by being slightly aloof, Han Han has increased the hype surrounding himself even more.
This interview with News Asia highlights perhaps why Fast Company placed him as the 25th most creative person in business globally, up there with Oprah, Yuri Milner and Scott Forstall in 2012.
Responsible for 2/3rds of New Zealand’s local internet traffic and with 3.4 million members (3/4 of the local population), TradeMe is New Zealand’s second largest internet company. So strong that eBay can’t edge into their space. Most amazing of all is their ability to sell 3000 chickens on the website each day!
Despite using Agile project management and all the latest technology to build their platforms in a customer centric manner, they still face all the problems of any other internet based business does, in terms of developing their software teams.
The Self-Organising Organisation – Total Squadification at TradeMe
On Wednesday I heard from David Mole @molio and Sandy Mamoli @smamol who described their story and the steps they took to scale their teams using a self organising approach.
TradeMe we’re starting new stories to create features regularly but not shipping at the rate they expected
Last years they were in a situation that might be familiar to some of us. Despite their best estimates and efforts, they struggled to release incremental changes on a regular basis. Deployment wasn’t an issue, they had two deployments a day but team members were being stretched across multiple teams and dependencies and bottlenecks were developing.
Coupled with the odd “I need x by tomorrow” feature that would appear form their CEO, the core original developers were being pulled from teams to work on a specific new feature. Entire new teams were hired to help them do it. This method of growth meant an expert was involved, but that the team went through Tuckman’s phases on a regular basis.
Portfolio cards on the wall showed all the projects going on but still new features were being prioritised and there were bottlenecks with testing, design and acceptance.
Management brought us these “just get it done” jobs and they took someone from the roots of our organisation with knowledge to the top of this new project. If we were playing Jenga – our team was starting to look like this. ~ David
Clearly, dictating ‘who works on what and how’ wasn’t working, but what could?
Their FedEx Hackathon days provided inspiration for a solution
FedEx day: A 24 hour build to push out something cool. FedEx days were about getting stuff done in a fun way. Enjoying working with your teammates on something cool. And of course the question arose: why can’t it be FedEx day every day?
If we were privy to a FedEx day we’d see:
All participants wanted to be part of a cross functional team.
Teams were small. The biggest had 6 members.
Nobody is multitasking.
Nobody was worrying about being idle.
Much like a great team building day.
Could squads be the answer and could they scale it?
It was Scrum at its finest and it got them thinking of Squads. Small stable teams who work sequentially on one thing. The evils of multitasking never cuts in!
Others had led the way but TradeMe needed to do it on a much larger scale
Spotify have written an amazing white paper and selection of accompanying video presentation about how they structure their development team. Have a look at the white paper tribes, squads, chapters and guilds from Spotify.
Of course fear of change kicked in. There’s a big difference between being agile and doing agile. They were adamant that the process shouldn’t be at the detriment of creativity. So rather than tackling the most resistant part of the organisation which might seem like a good move, they decided to take 20 of the most shining team members and polish them to a diamond.
Then they’d bring others along quickly!
Total Squdification, a pilot and then all in!
After meticulous preparation, in a single day they brought the group of twenty together and asked them to self organise into squads.
Product Owners pitched the steam of work that each squad would work on and despite their fears, the team behaved like trusted professionals and self selected three squads. Fully skilled and with all the team members required. Ready to work with people they enjoyed working with on a project they were interested in.
With a successful pilot as proof of concept, they they implemented Total Squadification across the entire 100 plus member team. Creating 10 of their required 11 squads in a single day.
Sandy has a great write up on the process here and a Team self selection kit to help others wanting to implement a similar model.
It’s a spectacular feat that had many pitfalls along the way. A single blog post wouldn’t do the intricacies of their preparation justice.
It’s also the results that excite me.
Self organising teams upped productivity, morale, retention and business results
When Sandy and David began their squadification day, they asked that the team think not only of what is right for the but also what’s best for TradMe. Thinking of their needs and that of the business has meant that six months in and all metrics are up and continue to rise.
Understanding that people know themselves best and that they know themselves better than their manager, was proven. The squads are still intact and working well. The process has also identified the projects no one wants to touch, which has helped them recruit specialist for those projects.
Could this work in your organisation?
On of the greatest benefits I see of self organising is that beyond getting to work with people you prefer to work with on things you prefer the culture changes. I think these type of changes would occur:
Not being told what to work on allows teams to follow their passion.
Members will feel more inclined to speak up about their ideas for improvements.
They will think of the team and the company more than their individual goals.
If squadification day became regular, or if trading windows were opened like in football for people to shift squads, then the idea of guilds and chapters would prosper.
Chapters of designers would meet regularly to share insights and techniques. Guilds of a specific industry or sector would share knowledge and ideas for how to make each squad function better.
All and all it was an insightful evening and I’m still thinking through this and it’s ramifications on job structure and the sharing economy. A blog post to come soon.
So to wrap up, could this work in your organisation? Are there team members and projects you’d love to work on or instigate? Are there team members that might not make the cut, or some you’d like to buy in from other teams? Let me know in the comments.
by Jim Collins. I which he thorough researches and presents the core elements of what’s behind great companies – those that outperform consistently over time. He summarises a good concise strategy very well.
(this is great as an audio book – Steven reads it and it’s very motivational).
Han Han is also a best selling author and pro-race car driver and his magazine 
Nick Allen - Marketing, Growth & Running 