Script Diversity *draft*class topic*

As Deloitte's study put it, "diversity's new frontier" is "diversity of thought." I feel the country club's script pool is especially headed for script homogeneity, although I do not believe they are as bad at continuing to innovate as this article makes it seem results from the homogeneity.

The Club's script pool is becoming more homogenous through the leader's effects, emigration, and "genetic drift." The GM naturally enjoys working with others who think analytically and have the same "instincts" when handling problems, creating leaders effects by encouraging his managers to emulate his behavior. Because of the desire to have a management team with the "right" instincts we also see emigration of those who do not "fit" - not a bad thing necessarily. Managers are given a lot of independent responsibility and have to handle a lot of unique situations, so often they can come up with any kind of creation solution as long as the overall solution is in the "spirit" of the company's values. I'm sure we also contribute some to genetic drift by recruiting from the same or similar sources each season. We keep trying to come up with new ways to recruit but as soon as one source gives us a couple great new hires, we go back to that source and want to know if we can get any other new hires "like that" from the source.

We cannot change the way our departments are divided and subdivided, but we do respect that those assign to a specific are the experts in that field. They know their problem inside and out and are given the freedom to come up with their own creative solutions to address the problem they know so well. Mutation is encouraged only to the extend that new ideas are created that still move towards the spirit of the company's values. For example, at IDEO I'm sure they encourage being inventive but being inventive in a certain way, such as respecting others' ideas, and some people "fit" while others do not. Immigration is not an issue for the company since checking for cultural fit is a big part of the hiring process.

I think there is an untapped opportunity for the company to let creative thinkers who have the right instincts work on projects outside their area of expertise with the team from that department/sub department. For example, if the cooks are working on how to get the dinner buffet setup faster after lunch buffet ends, having an accountant join them on the problem may help simply because he or she is a new set of eyes and can ask a lot of seemingly obvious questions like, "do they sell wheels for the type of equipment you use so you could just wheel it away?" because just like any human beings regardless of our script diversity environment, we get jaded by the things we see, use and do day in and day out.

The second tactic I would recommend is giving each person an 'opposite' buddy. It sounds weird, but it is what my coworker and I do for projects sometimes. I know I overthink things and try to get the best quality possible at the detriment of my time. I know she rushes through projects and sacrifices quality. So for important projects we often double check each other's work - she makes sure I'm spending time what's important and relevant and I tell her where she needs to spend more time adding polish. The results are great and we came up with it after both doing StrenghtFinders and finding that we had complimentary styles on getting to work on a project. If others had someone like this they could really benefit adding new approaches to getting things done!

Final Reflection

1) Read through your blog from this semester. Recall all of the experiences you've had a long the way -- the highs, the lows -- the fun moments, and the moments of drudgery, and even the moments of dread.

Oh my, I didn't do as good a job about typos and proofreading as I thought... yikes.

2) What sticks out to you as the most formative experience? The experience that you'll remember years later? What was your most joyous experience? What experience are you most proud of yourself for accomplishing?

I'm definitely proud that I went out and talked to strangers for interviews. The first day of class, I thought, talking to people? psh, that's nothing, I've got this. But recording people is a very different element to throw in. It made me nervous to even ask people if I could record them, it seemed to make talking to them so complicated all of a sudden, so I'm really proud I was able to record so many interviews! I did skip asking people if I could record them when I did the Free Money exercise, though, I thought it complicated giving away the dollar a little too much for the activity (so I planned ahead to have Bill just film it all from a distance - sorry strangers!).

The most formative experience was Free Money. I absolutely love the show Brain Games and have seem almost every episode. For those of you who don't know, it's a show where they do these types of social experiments and then analyze the results based on the science of human behavior. I didn't realize I'd spent almost my entire life watching these social experiments and reading about them in school, loving these stories, but never actually conducting these myself. It felt SO different to be the one giving away money instead of the one watching Jason Silva try to give the money away.

The most joyous experience is definitely interviewing my friends about secret sauce. They seem to know me for who I am, and they love me anyway. It's great because that's basically how I would define love anyway.

3) At the beginning of the semester, I mentioned that I wanted each of you to develop an entrepreneurial mindset. And we repeated the mantra -- I am an entrepreneur. Now, at the end, do you see yourself as an entrepreneur? Do you think you have moved closer to developing an entrepreneurial mindset?

Oh, no way I'm not an entrepreneur, but I do think I've tried on the shoes. I know entrepreneurs do these kinds of things because they're crazy passionate about whatever it is they believe in. That's great, that kind of passion makes them do weird things like talk to people about their dreams and all the other activities we did outside my comfort zone. I remember a blog post by Pat Rothfuss, my favorite author (http://blog.patrickrothfuss.com), where he said before he got published, he was just a weirdo who loved his book so much he would talk to anyone who listened about his book. Now he's a huge hit and gets paid to talk about his book! It's that kind of passion that makes you do weird things and be successful.

4) What is the one recommendation you would make to the students who are going to journey down this path in the future? What would you recommend they do to perform best in this course? What would you recommend they do to foster that mindset?

I'd stick with my advice from the midway point. Keep a positive attitude that this is your personal path, and then grit your teeth, put your head down and just go through all the activities that you can and work ahead.
1. Work ahead of schedule - I found myself without internet at one point, missing the deadline on a valuable assignment by accident once, and sick with the flu for a week after a week of no internet. Crazy stuff! But working ahead avoids that stress.
2. You are the only thing in your way. Worrying about the assignment (worrying is different than analyzing) takes up more of your time than just doing it.
3. Embrace pushing your comfort zone as the way to learn and grow.

I'd also recommend viewing these activities as wearing the shoes of an entrepreneur. They're just motivated to do all these weird things because they're passionate about their idea instead of just a student motivated by getting a grade for school.

Celebrating Failure

1) Tell us about a time this past semester that you failed -- whether in this class, or outside of this class. Don't spare any details! It'd be even better if there was something you tried several times this semester, and failed each time. 

I failed at losing weight, and it is something I keep failing at because I keep boomeranging back to where I started. 

By April 1, when I left my job at the country club, I was 205lbs, a personal high. At 5'7" and 28 years old, this is not a healthy weight, and in addition to the health risk I was upset I couldn't fit into my clothes anymore. I was convinced it was my schedule, work kept adding more hours and any free time went to finishing up schoolwork. I simply didn't have time to cook, workout or lead a healthy, balanced life.

When I left the club, I purposely didn't take a new job right away. My new job was my body and starting on April 2, I was eating vegan and working out daily at orange theory, an intense 1-hour workout class. I was also taking supplements to curb my appetite. I was going from zero to sixty to make as much difference as I could as soon as possible.

At first, it was working and I lost 20 pounds in the first two months. I saw 185 on the scale and was fitting into a size 12, down from 14. I was doing it! For the first time in my life, this was going to be permanent, I promised myself. I meant it. Even though I'd failed over and over, this time would be different. This was my lifestyle change.

Then in June I was studying at home for a week, cramming in the schoolwork in preparation for a week of vacation. In order to save time, my boyfriend and I decided to do the P90X videos at home, instead of going to the gym or orange theory. About the third or fourth day is the Plyo day. I'd never done a Plyo workout, but it turns out it's a lot of jumping around on one leg and then the other, and we have a tile floor.

I woke up the next morning with terrible pain in my knee and a clicking sound when I bent the knee. The knee hurt all the time for weeks, going up or down the stairs of my home hurt. Walking the dog hurt. Everything hurt, and working out definitely hurt. The doctor took an x-ray, ordered an MRI and told me no squats, lunges, stairs, working out, etc. for now and probably ever, expecting I had a torn meniscus.

I felt my world crumble down. Without exercise, I had no way to fight off the heavy foods of my European vacation and worse (or better?) the buffet and endless party that is a tropical cruise. I saw the weight gain looming, and it did.

The weight returned, slowly, like usual, and I was back where I started. Except now, working out to burn off the weight isn't the same kind of option. Thankfully, the MRI report indicates its likely an MCL sprain and the doctor says to go easy on my knee for three months and it will heal. But what will happen to my weight in those three months?

2) Tell us what you learned from it. 

I wish I could say I learned how to succeed at it, identified whatever it is I've been doing wrong. I didn't. But I did learn a lot about the anatomy of the knee, and I'm continuing to learn about it. And I learned that if it had been a torn meniscus, that doesn't exactly heal, and might have required surgery or some level of "just living with it." A sprained MCL is much better problem to have because it will heal and I can have a normal activity level again. I do however need to be careful of the existing wear and tear on my cartilage if I want to keep using that cartilage for the rest of my life. So it could have been much worse, I need to be thankful for that. And I should have stayed positive! Until we got the MRI we assumed the worse and took it easy on my knee, which is the right thing to do physically but I should have had a positive attitude. No harm would have come of it and I could have avoided being heartbroken that my fledging running hobby was over faster than it begun.

I'm meeting with a physical therapist this week to come up with activities I can do to keep my cardio going - likely swimming - and what exercises will strengthen the supporting muscles around my cartilage to help it out during the rest of my lifetime.

I learned the importance of a mentality of focusing on what you can do, not what you can't do.

3) Reflect, in general, on what you think about failure. Failure is hard, isn't it? It's embarrassing, sure, but it also means that we have to change something about ourselves. Talk about how you handle failure (emotionally, behaviorally). Finally, talk about how this class has changed your perspective on failure -- are you more likely to take a risk now than you were four months ago? 

Although my philosophy on failure is "learn from failures and celebrate failures and successes" it is harder said than done. Especially for us "high achiever" types who are very self-critical. In reality, failure feels like a dark, dark, cold place. It's probably somewhere at the bottom of the ocean, where things are eerily perfectly quiet and pitch black.

But you don't get to stay there forever swimming in self-pity. A little light comes along and distracts you and leads you away, and next thing you know you're not in that sad place. You're somewhere else having a grand old time and you look back at the failure place and see it's not at the bottom of the ocean, but in a beautiful reef and you were just being silly not realizing how well off you were when you thought it was the end of the world. Silly me!

I don't know that this class helped me with my perspective about failure, it affected more my "get 'er done" mentality of tackling the assignments and pushing my comfort zone.  This might be because work was not graded on quality, but instead bravery (i.e. how many assignments you took on). In the past I've failed math quizzes or the everest expedition and sulked for a few days, feeling like a failure, and then ramped up speed to make sure I finished on top, but that was in reaction to the traditional grading model or even performance reviews at work.

Elevator Pitch No. 3

The feedback I worked on was clarifying how investors would make a profit

"Go Green and Make Some Green!"

Youtube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmGTb0YDEtQ

I had the "aha" moment for Elevator Pitch #2, which I think was my best one. After that, it felt hard to improve on one I already thought was the best I could do. I think what made #2 the best was that I used props, it made what I was talking about come alive, like the kid who used the coffee cup for his elevator pitch. This time I tried talking near a fridge, but we are in between vacations so I didn't actually have any food to throw away!

Free Money

Part 1: The Strategy

After talking with Bill, my boyfriend and designated cameraman for this activity, we determined we'd stop by the popular movie theater near my family's house for Fourth of July. I chose this location because it would be busy on the holiday, customers walking in would be walking in with a purpose and likely on a little bit of a time rush, and I wouldn't look weird standing in front of a movie theater. Additionally, the large parking lot would give my cameraman a convenient place to park and film my interactions without being too obvious.

The Prediction

I'm sure I can give away all five bills, after all it's free money and I'm really good with strangers. I think I come across as kind of the harmless stranger.

Where: Movie Theater Entrance

Who: Individual Adults Heading Into Theater

I gave some thought about which movie customers to approach and determined I wanted to find these people to offer money to:

• Individuals (not people in groups), since I was giving away one dollar bill at a time; for example it would be weird to give a group of three people one dollar bill
• Walking INTO the movie theater, for the requirement of "interrupting" people
• I was going to look for adults in the age range older than teenagers but younger than "elderly" folks because kids are weird and I didn't want to make any older people nervous or confused, especially if they had hearing difficulties (I was thinking of my own grandmother in this case)

What: Just Because

I planned on starting conversations by saying "hello," "happy fourth of july," or "hello, I'm Christie," and then simply asking, "Can I give you a dollar?" My immediate reaction if this happened to me is to ask why, so I'd expect this of the strangers, and I'm going to tell them just because, no reason, no strings attached. We studied reciprocity as a principle of influence in our other course and the power of reciprocity is so strong people will shun free gifts just to avoid being indebted to someone else. I remember the example from the book was the Hari Krishna giving out "free" flowers in order to get a donation in return. I wanted to see how people reacted to being a dollar just because, and also because I'm a terrible liar I couldn't rely on myself to present an alternate reason. I know we needed a genuine reason, but my most believable genuine reason would be a "no reason, just because" reason.

Part 2: The Results

Everything is in place, and my first thought, standing there with dollar bills in my pocket is... "I changed my mind, I don't want to do this activity, I feel like a creeper," and sort of wishing I was invisible.

(youtube here)

Attempt 1: Young adult male, Success!

Me: "Hello."

Him: "" (nothing)

Me: "Happy fourth of July."

Him: (smiles) "Happy fourth of July."

Me: (presents dollar) "Can I give you a dollar?"

Him: (pauses/stops walking) "Why?"

Me: "Just because. I have my own reason, but for you, there's no reason, there's no strings attached."

Him: (cautiously) "OK..." (takes bill, starts walking away) "okay!" (nodding because this is cool)

Attempt 2: Bald, beefy older guy, Fail!

Me: "Hello!"(holding dollar bill)

Him: "" (nothing)

Me: "Can I give you a dollar bill?" (holds up dollar bill)

Him: (gives me wider berth) "No thanks" (keeps walking)

Me: "What? But it's free money!"

Him: (brief pause as he walks past) "Give it to someone who really needs it."

Attempt 3: Adult female employee, Success!

Me: "Hello!"

Her: (looks up surprised) "H-hello?" (stops)

Me: "Happy fourth of July, I'd like to give you a dollar."

Her: (looks surprised/confused, then smiles and takes dollar) "Oh, what a blessing! Thank you."

Attempt 4: Lady smoking and checking phone, Fail!

Me: "Hello! Can I give you a dollar?"
Her: "NO."
Me: "It's free money."
Her: "NO." (moves on, I am dismissed)

Attempt 5: Guy who walked faster when he saw me, Fail!

Him: (starts walking determined and not making eye contact as soon as I start his way)
Me: "'Scuse me, can I please give you a dollar?"
Him: "No." (walks faster/wider)
Me: "It's free money" (calling to his back as he keeps walking)

Part 3: Reflections

Whoa! I can't believe three out of five people turned down free money! Despite the warnings, I simply hadn't believed it would be hard at all give away the money. I was totally wrong! I didn't realized I'd really have to have a compelling reason for giving away money or it wouldn't work. If I redid this exercise, I'd go back and review the article about reciprocity and figure out how to get people to accept a gift, maybe saying "I need your help for a study, can you please use this dollar bill to pay for your ticket" or some reason at all.

   

I made a few wrong assumptions about the people I'd be interacting with. I thought getting their attention would be the hardest part, and in some ways it was if they didn't slow down their walk or really give me their attention, but this would have been resolved if I had a more compelling reason for interrupting them. I also made the right assumption that everyone's first reaction is "why?"  I also didn't realize how short the interactions are, looking back at the footage I have 5 seconds or less with people - way shorter than an elevator pitch! Whatever reason I come up with next time had better fit into that time window.

My boyfriend - the cameraman - was not surprised. He reminded me that we've seen a similar exercise when watching Brain Games, one of our favorite shows. Host Jason Silva had a similarly difficult time giving away free money, even after he left the money sitting unattended on a counter.

Brain Games "Free Money"

At least it's not just me, but it feels really different when I'm the one doing the activity instead of watching the show from our living room sofa!

Selling Cycle

Segment: "moms"

1) Describe your segment's "Need Awareness." / Describe your recommended tactics to generate awareness of your product/serve in the same time and place your customers generate awareness of their need.

 

Based on the interviews and previous posts, a head of household (usually the mother or father) cleans out the refrigerator each week and makes the grocery list for the weekly grocery shopping. To reach their eyeballs during this weekly ritual we could put advertisements on:

Places for advertisements:

• the trash bag boxes! We could even figure out what kind of trash bags our target users buy, such as if they use recycled plastic trash bags maybe they care more about reducing waste. 
• we could run TV ads on trash night.
• place ads on magnetic grocery lists

2) Describe your segment's "Information Search." / Describe your recommended tactics to place your product/service in front of the customers' senses.

Not based on any interviews, but common knowledge, sometimes we google "recipes with ___" and then enter the item of the ingredient in our fridge. Maybe we have a bunch of unused chicken, or leftover basil, etc. and want to know what we can do with it. Instead of directing people to AllRecipes.com maybe we could direct them to FridgeReminders.com and list the recipes there. It's a feature many blog posts have talked about. An SEO campaign would make sense, especially if we target the most often thrown away foods (EPA data, etc.).

3) Describe your segment's "Alternative Evaluation." / Describe how you will cater your messages to meet your customers' preferences -- what would you propose for a specific unique selling proposition?

These could possibly be SEO campaigns around questions such as "how long do apples stay good," "can you freeze chicken after its been thawed," etc. that would be related to people's alternative evaluations of how to save the food instead of throwing it out. If we can answer their questions on our website, it could pull them in to learn about a product, i.e. the app, where they can have all this information managed for them.

4) Describe your segment's "Purchase Decision." / Describe your recommended channel/distribution/payment tactics to meet your customers' preferences.

It seems like money would definitely be a motivator. However, on trash night, the food is already spoiled and is a weight quantity, while a week earlier in the store it was a value, dollar amount. I think we might need to advertise in the grocery store, hey all that stuff you just spent money on? make sure you get your money's worth!  They may choose to buy more or less of items if they knew there was a product to help them manage it.

• advertise on grocery receipt
• advertise within grocery store
• advertise on the grocery bags
• give out free chip clips

5) Describe your segment's "Post-Purchase Evaluation." / Describe your recommended tactics for managing your customers post-purchase period.

This is a weekly cycle so the first step where they clean out the fridge was what I found in interviews was the post-purchase evaluation. If everyone ate the food in the fridge, then they did a great job of fridge management and there's no waste. So everything from the first step except maybe also advertising on tupperware, since it seems the adults eating the leftovers at work helped reduce food waste.

SEO Analysis

The firm I have been analyzing this semester does not have much in the way of SEO efforts because it does not make sense as part of our marketing efforts (see other posts about segmentation, etc.). One of the two people on our marketing team recently moved on after a couple years in her entry-level marketing role, since her college studies specialized in SEO optimization and she didn't get to use any of this valuable skill at work.

However, I have done SEO optimization for my mom's law firm http://www.joannhoffman.com a few years ago when I was right out of college and they transitioned to a vendor to provide the service for them when I left to work full time in HR and hospitality. 

***

Keyword Selection: What are the keywords used by the firm? Do they have one, overarching keyword, or do they instead develop keywords for each revenue driver?  Analysis: How effective is this keyword approach? Is (are) the keyword(s) specific enough? Are they too obscure? 

     

The company did not appear at all when I put in terms such as, "best places to live in boca raton," "best country clubs to live boca raton," and similar terms I thought relocating families would search for, including "best communities for families in boca." To be fair, competitors did not appear either. What did appear were articles from magazines reviewing communities n the area and the quality of life in the area, so it is probably more important to get featured in these specialty magazines and get listed with realtors. The company only appeared when I specifically searched for the company's name:

Backlinks: What tactics is the firm using to generate links into its site? Analysis: How effective are these tactics? Are they establishing credibility for the firm? Does the firm largely rely on its own social media, or is it making efforts to attract links from other credible organizations?

The firm's site is for people who already know the firm exists. The website has an active member-only page of its website where once members log in with their username and password, they can find all the activities and information going on at the Club, which is highly convenient and effective. But those members are already customers. From the perspective of a potential customer, this is someone who has probably been shown the property by a realtor and is going to learn more about it, see what others think, or get a refresher on what the property offers. So the non-member pages that can be accessed offer a beautiful overview of property and the facilities.

Content Generation: How is the content geared toward keywords? How regularly is content updated? Does the firm's Web site use blogs or some other approach in generating content? What other forms of content does the firm upload? White papers, podcasts, videos? Is it evident how this additional content is aligned by keyword? Analysis: What would you recommend to enhance the firm's approach to content generation?

Content on the public side of the website is updated only if facilities are renovated. In that case the new information had to be added to the pages and the photos uploaded. This doesn't draw in any new web-hits, just gives accurate information to those seeking an overview (see Backlinks). The members only pages are updated constant to be relevant and useful to the members. These are not searchable to accessible through a search engine.

I think having a "In the News" public page that lists the most recent mentions in magazines, articles and the local paper would be a win-win. It links back to new content so the page stays updated and "fresh" in the mind of the search engine and shows off to visitors that we always have the latest and greatest. Winning awards and getting renovations often get mentioned, even if just small blurbs, in the local paper at least.

Conversion Tactics: How does the firm generate leads from their Web presence? How do they follow up on those leads? What kind of information do they have on customers before they contact them? How tailored is their messaging when they follow up on a lead (i.e., how do they exploit customers' evaluative criteria)? Analysis: What would you recommend the firm do to improve its Site's ability to generate leads and convert customers?

Our website had built-in management software to see where visitors come from. This information is controlled by our marketing department so I am not able to comment on it. Our membership department tracks this as well, but in our segment it is important to look at internet-based leads data net to leads from magazines, realtors, etc. to look at overall marketing efforts. This is very different than most businesses today, where almost all new clients are internet-referrals.