Book Short:  On The Same Page

Being on the same page with your team, or your whole company for that matter, is a key to success in business.  The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive, by Patrick Lencioni, espouses this notion and boils down the role of the CEO to four points:

1. Build and maintain a cohesive leadership team
2. Create organizational clarity
3. Overcommunicate organizational clarity
4. Reinforce organizational clarity through human systems

Those four points sound as boring as bread, but the book is anything but.  The book’s style is easy and breezy — business fiction.  One of the most poignant moments for me was when the book’s “other CEO” (the one that doesn’t “get it”) reflects that he “didn’t go into business to referee executive team meetings and delivery employee orientation…he loved strategy and competition.”  Being a CEO is a dynamic job that changes tremendously as the organization grows.  This book is a great handbook for anyone transitioning out of the startup phase, or for anyone managing a larger organization.

I haven’t read the author’s other books (this is one in a series), but I will soon!

Book Short:  On Employee Engagement

The first time I ever heard the term “Employee Engagement” was from my colleague David Sieh, one of the better managers I’ve ever worked with.  He said it was his objective for his engineering team.  He explained how he tried to achieve it.  I Quit, But forgot to Tell You, by Terri Kabachnick, is a whole book on this topic, a very short but very potent one (the best kind of business books, if you ask me).

It’s got all the short-form stuff you’d expect…a checklist of reasons for disengagement, an engagement quiz, the lifecycle of an employee that leads to disengagement, rules for dealing as a manager.

But beyond the practical, the book serves as a good reminder that employee engagement is the key to a successful organization, no matter what industry you’re in.  All managers at Return Path — this is on the way to your desk soon!

Most scenic airport.  Ever.

If all business travel started or ended like this (Jackson Hole), the world would be a happier place, I’m certain.

Why Do People Behave Like Jackasses Online?

I won’t disclose the name of the person who did this, but here’s the chain of events:

• Person registers for our Postmaster Direct service to receive targeted offers via email.  This is a closed-loop, double opt-in registration process (so the person had to register and then click on a confirmation email)
• Person receives a handful of relevant, targeted offers from us
• Person finds my name on our corporate web site and messages my wife on Facebook to tell her that her husband is a dirty spammer who needs to learn a lesson, and would she please make him and his company behave?
• Person finds my blog and comments on it saying “don’t give return path any email addresses, they spam the crap out of you. I’ve already filed a complaint with the BBB. If this doesn’t work, I’ll have to use some unorthodox means of getting their attention.”  As if said person hadn’t already used unorthodox means of getting my attention
• Person finds a few other blogs on which I am mentioned, and posts similar negative personal comments
• I politely email Person back, asking him if he had tried to unsubscribe (which works) or contact our customer service email (which is manned and emptied out daily) or email me directly if he felt so inclined to remove himself from our database, remind him that we are double opt-in, and somewhat less gently tell him I thought he was out of bounds for messaging my wife on Facebook
• Person emails back, much softer tone, says he never tried to unsubscribe because he’s never had success doing that in the past
• I email back, ask for all his email addresses so I can add him to our suppression list
• He emails back, tells me that he doesn’t want to stop getting our emails, he just wants them at his Hotmail account instead of his work (.gov) account

Perhaps sometimes the anonymity of a keyboard isn’t a good thing.

Book Short: Stick Figures That Matter

I have read a bunch of books lately to try to improve my presentation skills. The latest one, The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures, by Dan Roam, was good, and quite different from some of the others I’ve read recently like Presentation Zen and Beyond Bullet Points, both of which are much more focused on effective use of Powerpoint.

The Back of the Napkin takes a different approach. The focus is much more on creating compelling visuals. It’s not about Powerpoint so much as it is about teaching how to crystallize concepts into tight and compelling schematics. Roam creates two pretty good frameworks for thinking about this: one that breaks down the message of a given slide into its most simple element — are you describing a who (use a portrait), what (chart), when (timeline), where (map), why (plot), or how (flowchart)? And a second that takes that element and asks five questions about the best way to convey the information — simple vs. elaborate, quality vs. quantity, vision vs. execution, individual vs. comparison, or change state vs. as-is.

Both frameworks are good, and if you’re already doing really good presentations, this will help improve them. In short, I’d say The Back of the Napkin is a good read if you’re obsessed with creating compelling visuals, but it’s more of a deeper drill than the two books I noted above. I’d read and master the material from Presentation Zen for 101, then dive into this topic for the 201 course.

Pendulum Swinging Back?

The TechCrunch news du jour is that Jason Calacanis has stopped blogging and is instead using email to communicate with his circle. 

It’s interesting to note that after months (years?) of “email is dead” stories specifically around blogging, RSS feeds, and social media in general, the pendulum seems to be swinging back to email.  You should read Jason’s words yourself, but his notes are mainly that there’s too much noise and self-promotion in the blogosphere, while email promotes intimacy and efficiency.

Not surprisingly, TechCrunch is a doubter, but we’ll have to see.

Learn Word of Mouth Marketing

Our friend, former RP colleague, and WOM guru Andy Sernovitz is hosting a small-group word of mouth marketing seminar. Usually he only does private training for companies at a very large price, so this is a rare chance for 50 people to get the best introduction to word of mouth that there is.  I blogged about his book a while back here.

We’ve arranged for a $250 discount for our clients. Use code “welovereturnpath” when you register (kind of catchy code, isn’t it?).

This is a very practical, hands-on course. In one intense day, you will:

• Master the five steps of word      of mouth marketing
• Construct an action plan that      your company can start using the very next day
• Get the same training that      big corporations (Microsoft, TiVo, eBay) have received — for a fraction      of what they paid
• Know how to translate word of      mouth marketing into real ROI
• Participate in an active,      intense day of practical brainstorming (not boring theory)
• Learn from Andy Sernovitz,      the guy who literally wrote the book on word of mouth marketing

Andy promises you will learn a repeatable, proven marketing framework that is easy to execute, affordable, and provides measurable results within 60 days.

More information: http://events.gaspedal.com

Chicago: July 30 and September 4

Pass it on: http://events.gaspedal.com/banners

Please, Keep Not Calling (Thank You!)

It’s been three years since the federal government passed one of its better pieces of legislation in recent memory, creating the Do Not Call Registry which is a free way of dramatically reducing junk phone solicitations.  At the time, registrations were set to expire every three years.  When I signed up my phone number, I stuck a note in my calendar for today (three years later) to renew my registration.  I was planning on blogging about it to remind the rest of the world, too.

To my great surprise, when I went to the site today, I saw this note:

Your registration will not expire. Telephone numbers placed on the National Do Not Call Registry will remain on it permanently due to the Do-Not-Call Improvement Act of 2007, which became law in February 2008.

That’s two great pieces of legislation.  What will they think of next?

Driving Out of the Bubble

It’s easy for those of us who live in the Internet bubble to confuse the words “startup” and “entrepreneur” with the word “technology.”  Every once in a while, I am struck by a fantastic entrepreneurial idea that’s low-tech or no-tech. 

In the last few weeks, I’ve learned of two of them — oddly, very similar ideas.  They’re both going after the New York City black car limo market (all those car services that take business travelers to and from airports and meetings), which is a lucrative but kind of gritty business.  I’ve used black car services for 16 years now, and while I’ve found one that’s pretty good, they all have massive customer service problems and are pretty expensive.  It’s a market ripe for revolution.  But how to execute it?

Kid Car New York is one new service that is attacking this market with an alternative car service that’s oriented around families and kids.  The cars are mini-vans.  The drivers are trained in safety and friendly.  The cars all have car seats and bases in them, which are sanitized from one passenger to the next.  The drivers are actually employees with benefits — this company is trying to do to car services what Starbucks did to convenience store workers.  There is a membership/subscription pricing model that makes it feel more like a club.  While it’s moderately more expensive than black car competition, Kid Car is a natural alternative that appeals to a big niche audience.  The entrepreneur is a friend and former Return Pather, Topher McGibbon.  He’s excited about revolutionizing a sleepy, rough industry.  Mariquita and I have used Kid Car for a bunch of trips with the kids, and it’s like night and day.

In a different way, Ozocar is doing the same thing.  It’s a black car service with a fleet 100% made up of Toyota Priuses (if that’s the plural — I keep wanting to call them Prii). That’s the hook.  If you care about your carbon footprint but still have to do things like fly on planes and get to and from airports, why wouldn’t you pick a service that’s more environmentally friendly?  I tried Ozocar last night for the first time, and it was perfectly fine.  Plus, I felt better about myself the whole 18 minutes home from LaGuardia. 

Ozocar reminds me of my friend Andrew Winston’s book, Green to Gold (I posted about it here), and how businesses can be both more sustainable and more valuable at the same time.  Both Ozocar and Kid Car are great examples of innovation being driven by customer needs and market opportunity unrelated to high tech.  They’re great services, and I hope they succeed.  I just wonder how businesses like these get funded with all of the venture focus in the world on high tech and life sciences.

Run, Brad, Run!

A few years ago we announced our support of a charity called the Accelerated Cure Project for Multiple Sclerosis (see the post about it here and learn more about Accelerated Cure here).  While we have a strong culture of giving back to the community at Return Path and do that in several ways, we chose this charity as the main beneficiary of our corporate philanthropy efforts for three reasons:

1. We wanted to support research into finding a cure for MS to honor and support one of our earliest colleagues, Sophie Miller Audette who was diagnosed with MS about 5 years ago (and is still going strong as one of our key sales directors!) – and since then, two other members of the Return Path extended family have also been diagnosed with MS
2. We wanted to support an organization with a focused mission and one where our contributions could really make a difference
3. Accelerated Cure has a very entrepreneurial, innovative culture that’s consistent with our own – and a solution-oriented approach to their cause that resonates with our business philosophy

We got introduced to Accelerated Cure by Brad Feld, one of Return Path’s venture investors, who is a friend of Art Mellor, Accelerated Cure’s founder and CEO.  Brad’s an interesting guy for many reasons, but one reason is that he has a goal of running 50 marathons (one in each state) by the time he’s 50.  He has eight years and 40 marathons to go, and to make it a little more significant he decided to try and drum up some sponsorships for his quest and donate the money to Accelerated Cure. 

Return Path has decided to be one of Brad’s anchor tenant sponsors by pledging $1,000 for every race he completes.  This is half of Brad’s goal of $2,000 per race, and we hope it will inspire others to donate so he can beat his goal.  Of course, Brad wants to do more than just run these marathons – he wants to, well, accelerate his performance.  So, taking a page out of the VC handbook, we’re setting up an incentive program for Brad of an additional $500 donation for every race that he completes in less than four hours. 

Besides liking both Brad and Accelerated Cure, this particular vehicle for donating money is especially meaningful to us.  A good number of Return Path employees past and present have run marathons and even competed in triathlons and Ironman competitions (including yours truly, but in a way that certainly makes me want to keep my day job).  And Seth Matheson, Accelerated Cure’s new development director who has MS, is an avid marathoner who is contemplating an Ironman competition himself.  And as I always tell our team members, running a startup is a marathon, not a sprint!

You can follow Brad’s progress – and make a donation yourself – here.

Poor Systems Integration Just Makes It Worse, Part II

In Part I, I talked about how sad/amazing it is that large companies don’t tie their systems together well in this day and age of flexible computing and 1:1 marketing.

A recent research study that our consulting team conducted at Return Path points to more of the same as it relates to email marketing.  The two big findings were that:

– 2/3 of companies in our survey don’t send an immediate welcome message to their new subscribers

– 3/4 of companies in our survey don’t use personalization, even though most ask for personal data

Appalling, right?  The full study, and a 12-minute webcast done by the study’s author, my colleague Bonnie Malone Fry, are available (and really well done!) here.