How a manufacturing theory helps Jeff Bezos—and you—focus on what really matters
The Week recently ran a story about Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos making all of his senior managers read, The Goal, by Dr. Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox. So why would Jeff Bezos – widely considered one of the most visionary CEOs today —want his team to buy into a business book’s philosophy that’s mostly concerned with manufacturing effectiveness?
Bezos is one of the most influential marketing minds in the country. When thinking about your marketing strategy, what should you know that he knows about, The Goal?
Theory into Practice
I have been building marketing strategies for software manufacturing companies for many years. I’ve read The Goal and understand its philosophies because I have had to learn about its main topic, the Theory of Constraints (TOC), and how it can change the way manufacturers do business. If you want to know about this aspect of TOC, definitely see our resident guru, Rick Denison’s blog. However, to summarize from my perspective, TOC tells us to look at the limiting factor – or constraint – to understand a system’s output.
In Bezos’ story, writer Pascal Emmanuel Gobry says: “The reason why this is so profound is that most managers spend their time trying to improve every part of the system they oversee, often with very mixed results. But if the output of the whole process — even an improved process — is still limited by the bottleneck, then any effort spent optimizing anything else is basically wasted (and can even be counterproductive).”
If your marketing efforts feel unfocused, find your bottlenecks to get moving again in the right direction. Here are the top three bottlenecks that I have found empowering to overcome:
1) Data Mashup – That’s my term for unsynchronized, or data without any context. You can have the best automation software out there, and the biggest of big data, but if you’re unable to synchronize that data so that it is transformed into meaningful information, what’s the point? When executing on Pull-based, or modern marketing methodologies, you’ll want to identify the specific constraints of the system(s) and/or marketing programs you’re running and whether you’re able to not only measure your desired KPIs, but influence them. Often, this means integrating your marketing automation, CRM and even financial systems to paint a complete picture.
2) Taking Your Eyes off the Prize –Let’s face it—marketers are busy people. We’ve got multiple stakeholders all fighting for our attention. I have found that retaining customer focus is the hardest job of all—but remains the true “prize” in any marketer’s eyes. Find out where and why your teams are taking their eyes off customer needs and get them back on track.
3) Getting Real- At Synchrono, we are all about meeting our customers where they live. We spend a lot of time and effort out there in the production environment, constantly refining our software to make manufacturers more consistently successful. We look for their pain points to find out how we can help. In “Lean speak”, our continuous improvement efforts helps customers with their continuous improvement projects.
What are your marketing pain points and what are you doing about them? If you’ve got problems with your product, with your processes or with your people, don’t sugarcoat them or sweep them under the rug. Get real about the constraints you need to address in order to execute a marketing strategy that positively influences your desired KPIs. Is it your ability to access the right data? Your customer focus? Messaging and content that hits the mark – or something else? It takes courage to be objective and brutally honest, but if I were pressed to tell you one thing you can do to improve everything about your marketing, it would be this—be real about your issues and meet them head-on.
Promote Continuous Improvement
Our synchronized manufacturing software helps identify and manage constraints that inhibit the flow of production. At the same time, our systems provide meaningful information to guide continuous improvement efforts. The same principles hold true for effective marketing – identify issues, make informed adjustments and measure the results. And don’t settle – stay sharp and continuously refine.
Certainly, Jeff Bezos has been pretty fearless in his career. . . I think he’s right on the money about looking for bottlenecks first to gain incredible insight into our business—but more importantly—our customers’ business. Pay attention, it will point you in the right direction!
– Marketing
