It’s the Economy, Stupid: Aligning Yourself with Your Company’s Business Needs

I recently spent the night sleep­ing out under the stars with my kids. I use the term sleep­ing loosely but more on that in a minute. Through­out the day, other, more appeal­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties sud­denly appeared: A night out with friends, din­ner and a movie. One friend even asked if I wanted to play video games online into the wee hours of the morn­ing. I would have slept more with that option. But I decided to stick it out and focus on what I felt was most impor­tant. And as expected, the night was chal­leng­ing. I tossed and turned on the hard ground, and went from hot to cold and then colder. My kids made sure I woke up at such reg­u­lar inter­vals that the night turned into a series of cat­naps. I was bleary eyed and exhausted by morn­ing. But I woke up to sat­is­fied smiles and hugs of gratitude.

What on earth does camp­ing have to do with media, online mar­ket­ing, ana­lyt­ics? As I thought about that night it reminded me of the media space. It’s no big secret our indus­try has had some chal­lenges recently. And often our cus­tomers are pre­sented with a vari­ety of attrac­tive ini­tia­tives and alter­na­tives as they work to improve their busi­nesses: Sil­ver bul­lets, lat­est and great­est fads, and dis­trac­tions. They seem so much more inter­est­ing or attrac­tive, and we may even con­vince our­selves that they are most impor­tant. Some­times they may match up with a crit­i­cal issue. But often they are just that-distractions.

It’s the Econ­omy, Stupid

Remem­ber the 1992 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign? James Carville coined the phrase that helped carry Bill Clin­ton to vic­tory over incum­bent George H.W. Bush, “It’s the econ­omy, stu­pid.” A country’s key busi­ness issue laid out in all its sim­plic­ity. But at times focus­ing on your company’s most impor­tant busi­ness ques­tions can feel like sleep­ing out on the hard ground on a cold night. Often, these “Key Busi­ness Require­ments,” as they are known around here, are the unspo­ken ele­phants in the room. Maybe you aren’t even sure what they are but are afraid to ask because it should be so obvi­ous, right? Maybe…but my expe­ri­ence is that too many peo­ple in media orga­ni­za­tions don’t know what their busi­ness is really try­ing to accom­plish, and how they fit into the big­ger pic­ture. And know­ing the crit­i­cal busi­ness issues is only half the bat­tle. You might won­der if there’s pre­cious lit­tle to be gained from the work involved. Isn’t it just bet­ter to keep your head down and do what you’ve been doing? Right now, your com­pany needs every extra push it can get to move for­ward, espe­cially in this econ­omy. And the effort can be like the sat­is­fac­tion kids get from a fun night camp­ing out, or a par­ent will­ing to stick it out with them.

Con­sider these ques­tions as you go about your job:

1. Do you truly under­stand what your busi­ness is about? If not, I would sug­gest a meet­ing with your supe­ri­ors ask­ing for clar­i­fi­ca­tion and express a desire to have your work align more clearly with the com­pany goals. You should be hear­ing Key Busi­ness Require­ment descrip­tions like, “max­i­mize our image as a cut­ting edge infor­ma­tion provider using new tech­nolo­gies such as video and mobile,” or “decrease aban­don­ment and improve engage­ment for our enter­tain­ment media des­ti­na­tion.”
Don’t expect your exist­ing work to be elim­i­nated or to receive a pro­mo­tion to “crit­i­cal projects czar.” It just won’t hap­pen. But you will see your work through a new lens when you under­stand the big pic­ture, allow­ing you the con­trol to feed the impor­tant oppor­tu­ni­ties and starve the less impor­tant. Plus your boss will hope­fully appre­ci­ate your com­mit­ment to mov­ing the com­pany in the right direction.

2. Do you spend any of your work­week on these busi­ness crit­i­cal issues? You might think ALL of your time is spent this way. But take closer stock of your typ­i­cal tasks now that you under­stand what’s really crit­i­cal. In my time work­ing with all types of cus­tomers, the most suc­cess­ful have learned as a team to keep their eye on the ball and tar­get those issues that will really move the busi­ness for­ward– not just main­tain the sta­tus quo. In other words, now that you know what the big pic­ture is, what are you per­son­ally doing to help increase cus­tomer engage­ment, drive traf­fic, and strengthen your brand? Are you involved in tasks that can be auto­mated or taught to oth­ers so they can fish for them­selves? If you find your­self strug­gling to find time for these crit­i­cal issues, start small. Just an hour a week can be spent think­ing about your pri­or­i­ties and work­ing on a KBR spe­cific project. As you see results, build momen­tum and share your experiences.

3. Do you have appro­pri­ate buy in from your boss, an exec­u­tive spon­sor, and your peers as you tackle these Key Busi­ness Require­ments? No? Then reach out and speak up! The indi­vid­u­als in one com­pany I worked with were extremely siloed across depart­ments. As we encour­aged them to evan­ge­lize and con­nect, I per­son­ally par­tic­i­pated in cross team intro­duc­tions between indi­vid­u­als that, sadly, should have known each other much ear­lier. Once the mar­ket­ing depart­ment under­stood how sales was using data to drive the pub­lish­ing rev­enue, and sales under­stood mar­ket­ing strat­egy for attract­ing vis­i­tors, com­mu­ni­ca­tion increased, syn­er­gies devel­oped, and bet­ter ideas were born. But you must be will­ing to give as well as get. Per­haps you can do some­thing for some­one in edi­to­r­ial, mar­ket­ing, sales or IT that will make a dif­fer­ence in their big pic­ture. The beauty of dri­ving towards KBR’s is that you should all ulti­mately be work­ing towards the same goals!
All orga­ni­za­tions move up a matu­rity curve. The key is to start where you are today and make mea­sured steps for­ward, accept­ing that you don’t work in a per­fect envi­ron­ment and that you or your com­pany will stum­ble now and then. I look for­ward on com­mu­ni­cat­ing with you more on all things media. My goal is to pro­vide sug­ges­tions and infor­ma­tion on our prod­ucts, solu­tions and strate­gies as they relate to us in the Media indus­try. I hope we can point our con­ver­sa­tions back to these crit­i­cal busi­ness dri­vers and hear, “we’re dis­cussing things that make a dif­fer­ence in my business.”