Production as strategy

www.zeusjones.com

TF

+1+1

612612

279279

14001401

2640 Lyndale Avenue SouthMinneapolis Minnesota 55408

Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.

Production as strategy.And other contradictions of making modern brands.

May 20, 2011

Modern brands are defined by what they do.



Classic model of a brand.Built for a mass-media

world.


Modern brand model.Built for a world driven by

experiences and

interactions.

COREBELIEF

Established 2007 to build modern brands.We combine strategy, design and digital expertise. Many of us came from the digital side.


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A tale of two cities.Charles Dickens writing about London and Paris in 1775.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

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A good description of Zeus Jones in 2009.



Closing a hole in the sales cycle.Sales often delayed or lost

in the dressing room due to

need for approval.

Go to BP

Peruse the department

Choose items to try on

Try on clothes



Closing a hole in the sales cycle.Sales often delayed or lost

in the dressing room due to

need for approval.

Do more research

Share photos

Look at photos and consider outfits

Go to BP

Peruse the department

Choose items to try on

Try on clothes


Adjust outfits

Take PB Photos

Purchaseclothes



It was our best project of 2009.


It was our best project of 2009.It was our worst project of 2009.

What consumed most of our attention.And what ultimately limited our success.

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Surface background alternativesWe spent 3 weeks arguing against yellow, and then we lost.

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What we should have focused onUsing the content, learning about our customers, learning about our clothes.


We invested all our effort in the least valuable part of the experience and none in the most valuable.

Things we focused on Things we forgot about

Making it cool

Making it pretty

Stability

Perfecting an object

The customer

The experience

Building it

Making it cheaply

Making it fast

Flexibility

Perfecting a process

The data

The output

Building upon it

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Strategy is the process of making assumptions.As the world becomes more complex your chances of being wrong increases.


Products and experiences reveal new opportunities for usage after they're built.That’s just one of the ways they differ from communications.

Image via RedDogFever Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/reddogfever/


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The services we love the most are always in beta


We needed a modern approach to production that:Allows more consistent opportunities for feedback, new ideas, innovation, and iterative progress

Documents ideas, discussions and decisions and makes them available to everyone.


Traditional Project ManagementBased on Fredrick Taylor's

"Scientific Management"

written in 1911

Used to scope out

systematic projects that

require up-front planning.


Traditional project management framework.Predictability and systematic, linear development

Deterministic, reductionist approach that rely on task

breakdown

Stable requirements, analysis and stable design

Compliance as a means of project control

Individual resources as interchangeable cogs in the

machine.


Problems with traditional project management methods.

• Creates a false sense of security that projects are being managed by exhaustive planning, measuring, and controlling.

• Adds unnecessary upfront cost and time for planning which in the end will be tested and changed throughout the project.

• Requires detailed, rigid proposals that are developed at the beginning of a project are written at a point in the project with the most uncertainty.

• Does not see participants as skilled and valuable stakeholders in the execution of the project.

• Change is seen as a result of poor planning which leads to the perception that the project is failing.


Traditional project management creates inefficiencies.Fixed price bids/contracts are bad ideas for both

Design/Development companies and the client.

Clients think they are reducing their financial risk

with a fixed bid, but the reality is that it forces them

into a position where their money is almost always

wasted (see figure below). For developers, it almost

always motivates them to reduce the delivered quality

in order to make it within budget and/or time.

Always

Often

Sometimes

Rarely

Never 45

19

16

13

7

Source: Chaos Report v3. Standish Group. Copyright 2005-2006 Scott W. Ambler

Average percentage of developed functionality actually used when a traditional, linear approach to requirements definition is taken on a "launched" information technology project:


See, it was a production problem.


Agile project management.Evolved from the agile

software development

manifesto in 2001 and the

fields of human interaction

management and business

process management.


Agile project management frameworks.Flexibility and dynamic, cyclical development -

Launch with less, evaluate and revise

Focus on Guiding Vision

Change management and communication

Collaboration as a means of project improvement

Employees as skilled and valuable stakeholders


Projects should and will change during execution.We manage the change to improve the project.


A fundamental change in how we organize and work.

• A view of organizations as fluid, adaptive systems composed of intelligent living beings

• A recognition of the limits of external control in establishing order, and of the role of intelligent control that employs self-organization as a means of establishing order

• An overall problem solving approach that is humanistic

• It regards employees as skilled and valuable stakeholders in the management of a team instead of cogs in a machine

• It relies on the collective ability of autonomous teams as the basic problem solving mechanism.

(2003-2008). Agile Project Management. Retrieved February 9, 2010 , from CC Pace Web site: http://www.ccpace.com/Resources/documents/AgileProjectManagement.pdf

http://www.ccpace.com/Resources/documents/AgileProjectManagement.pdf

http://www.ccpace.com/Resources/documents/AgileProjectManagement.pdf


It limits up-front planning to a minimum based on an assumption of unpredictability, and instead stresses adaptability to changing conditions.

Image via RedDogFeverZeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.




Turns out it was a strategy problem after all.


We needed a modern approach to strategy.One that limits the number of up-front assumptions made prior to developing a solution.

One that marries strategic development with product development.


One that reacts to new opportunities as they become available and uses them to solve business and marketing problems.

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Google even more.“Help us re-think how we

list our products.”


We started by asking ourselves what can be done? Rather than asking what could be done?

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Design as strategy: audit of product pages.Many product pages have an API that show what people are doing with the product.


The things people do with products are more interesting and more descriptive than the products themselves.Strategy emerged from design.


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A cultural dashboardNew opportunities emerged from production.


Production as strategy.We made it in 3 weeks, so we only built the things that were quick and easy to build.

Things we focused on Things we didn’t

Making it cheaply

Making it fast

Flexibility

The output

The data

Perfecting a process

Building upon it

Making it cool

Making it pretty

Stability

The experience

The customer

Perfecting an object

Building it

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Execution became a strategic conversation which made it less subjective and less arbitrary.


Production as strategy frameworks.Turns client and agency into collaborators, outcomes

are purposefully unclear therefore no side can claim

to have the answer.

No separation between “thinking teams” and “making

teams,” thinking doesn’t end.

Projects improve as they progress.

Creates a situation where there are often too many

opportunities rather than too few.


A fundamental change in how strategists work.

• Need to get your hands dirty, can’t remove yourself from the actual making of things.

• Focus on behavioral pivot points rather than mental pivot points.

• Build strategy from the ground up rather than from the top down.

• Be more aware of what you don’t know that what you do know.


A fundamental change in how producers work.

• Think about change as an opportunity instead of something that derails the plan

• Create more opportunities for check-ins and collaboration

• Develop plans based on duration and resources vs. hours


Develop strategic processes, not strategic plans, whose minimum outcomes will meet your objectives.But which also have the potential to deliver far more.


Strategic starting points.

1. What’s the desired outcome in order to solve the problem?

2. What needs to happen first in order to achieve our outcome?

3. What can be built quickly to enable that?

4. How can building it deliver enough business value that the problem becomes easier to solve?


GMI ConnectHelp to create a culture of

cross-team and cross

division collaboration at

General Mills


Collaboration worksheetCollaboration activities

Meeting spaces

Rich conversations

Collaborative workspaces

Q&A platform

Identifying people to collaborate with

Case study library

Virtual whiteboards



relative to development

difficulty.

Hard to Build Easy to Build

Hard to Accomplish IRL

Easy to Accomplish IRL

Meeting spaces

Rich conversations


Q&A platform


Case study library

Virtual whiteboards



relative to development

difficulty.

Hard to Build Easy to Build

Hard to Accomplish IRL

Easy to Accomplish IRL

Meeting spaces

Rich conversations


Q&A platform


Case study library

Virtual whiteboards

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General Mills ConnectCreating a culture of collaboration in the company.

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Connect strategy has been driven by user need and user observation.

Case Study: Senior Management Conference

• Used like twitter to post questions / feedback before & during conference

• Presented on displays around campus for “virtual attendance”

• 1000+ attendance

• Increased attendance, new interactions, new connections

• Allowed people to search for conversations after the event

Traditional strategy Modern strategy

Theoretical

Mental models

Prediction

Testing backwards

Monolithic

Results oriented

Reductionist

Practical

Tangible products

Observation

Testing forwards

Iterative

Guided by a vision

Expansionist



Traditional strategy builds traditional brands.Strategy for a predictable,

focused outcome.


Modern strategy builds modern brands.Strategy guided by a vision

and designed to create

complex and surprising

experiences.

COREBELIEF

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Modern brands connect in a more human way.Production as strategy is a more human way to build brands.

www.zeusjones.com

TF

+1+1

612612

279279

14001401

2640 Lyndale Avenue SouthMinneapolis Minnesota 55408


Thank you!Questions and workshop.

Business

Production as strategy