Transcript

In this episode, Jason and Jeff offer listeners advice on how to move from doing things on the “stupid” list to doing things on the “smart” list and how to become a smarter professional services firm marketer.

“If…I was sort of stuck doing a lot of these things that we framed as somewhat stupid, and I wanted to start doing some smart things, what are the things that I would do?” And I made a short list.

1. Act above your pay grade
“[Pick] off one of those things on the smart marketer’s list that you don’t really necessarily have scope to do within your job description and just doing it anyway. Or behave as if you have the permission to do that. That’s my number one.”

“The goal of acting above your pay grade is to get on equal footing with the other leaders in the firm. And you’re going to have an inherent hurdle in that you’re probably not going to have the professional certification that a CPA, or a lawyer, or architect, or some other consultant’s going to have, so you’re going to be immediately discounted for not having that credibility. So the goal in getting on equal footing with them is to understand the business better than they do. And that doesn’t mean every technical dimension, but it means understanding the market better.”

I would suggest three things for people to move that very quickly:

– First thing, if you have not read it, your first step is to read How to Manage a Professional Service Firm by David Maister. It will help you jumpstart your understanding of a professional services firm.”

– Second thing, get a subscription to The Wall Street Journal. Read it.

– And then third, I have a list of books to make you a more strategic thinker on my website. Read those books.

2. Ask for forgiveness rather than permission.
“This, to me, is all about taking sort of measured risk. I’m just going to try something, and it doesn’t have to be a huge thing, but it’s going to be something small, and then just see what happens. I value that skill highly in our team. People that just are willing to put their neck out there and try something without knowing whether it’s going to work or not, and then come to me and say, “Hey, Jason. I tried this, and it didn’t go so well.” Or, “It went exceptionally well. Can we scale this?” I love that. And my sense is that most senior leaders fall under that court, at least the good ones.”

“If your firm penalizes failure, get out of that firm. That’s a horrific place to be in any role.”

3. Be okay with getting slapped on the wrist.
“And what I mean by that is that there are going to be instances when you try that thing, and it fails, and you’re going to get slapped on the wrist. And I think you need to be okay with that. You shouldn’t be publicly lambasted for trying something and failing. But you also have to recognize there are going to be times when inadvertently, a senior leader’s going to be a little bit uncomfortable, and they’re going to look at that thing you just tried and say, “Yeah, I wish you wouldn’t have tried that right now.” Or, “I don’t understand the thinking.” Or, “Why did you do that?”

“It makes me think. You know, you need a wing man when you start taking some risks like that. That if you don’t have a mentor, get a mentor, somebody outside your firm, where you can say, “Hey, I’m thinking about this idea. What do you think?” And a mentor can help you uncover any landmines so that you can mitigate any downside risk that may exist. And it’s just a safeguard for you.”

“If you want to free up the capacity to do your number one, Play above your pay grade, is you have to be prepared to walk away. And by being prepared to walk away, that means leave the firm, and knowing that you’re good enough, that you have options to go elsewhere. And when you have that confidence, and you’re not afraid of losing your job, whether that’s emotionally, or financially, reputationally, it is freeing. It’s liberating and allows you to take more risks and challenge thinking in your firm.”

4. Come with solutions.
“Whenever you identify a problem that needs to be resolved, come to the leader with the solution in hand ready to be implemented, and be prepared to have that discussion about the solution. That’s going to raise your confidence in articulating the problem. That’s also going to raise the leader’s confidence in executing on the solution you recommend and respect for you as a professional, which is going to raise the credibility of marketing’s game from smart to stupid.”

To summarize and try to bring it home:

– The first step is really to create structure around what you’re doing, really create structure around what you’re hoping to achieve for the business.

– The second thing is to think and talk like a business leader, which really is about bringing everything back to the client.

– The third thing is to take some measure of risk, so pick very strategic points where you can try something new that may succeed or may fail, and do that without permission, so ask for forgiveness if it fails, permission if it doesn’t.

– And then every time you surface a problem that needs to be addressed in terms of how the firm approaches their market, approaches the client experience, whatever you’re doing as a marketer, come armed with a solution.

If you do those four things, you should find yourself at the apex of that smart things list in no time at all.

I’m adding number five: always bring data!

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Transcript

Jason Mlicki: So Jeff, I’ve been thinking about these last two podcasts we’ve done together, and specifically I’m speaking about the Stupid Shenanigans, and what’d I call it—Smart Shinola—that marketers are doing, right? So the stupid things and the smart things.

And I feel like we’ve sort of just taken our listeners on what I’ll call a little bit of an emotional roller coaster ride, at least some of them. And I describe that roller coaster ride as, the trough of the roller coaster is the stupid stuff. It’s sort of like you’re commiserating this feeling. If you’re stuck doing these things, it’s sort of negative to be told that they’re not good uses of your time. Or maybe you already knew they weren’t good uses of your time, and you’re sort of commiserating that, “Yeah, I’m stuck doing these things.”

And then the smart stuff is sort of like this vision of a better place, but I feel like we sort of just left listeners hanging out right there, right? This idea that, “Okay, things aren’t so good. Things could be better, but how do I get there?” So this episode or this conversation, I think we should talk about climbing the mountain. So sort of climbing from that trough to that peak or that apex and give people some very specific advice on how maybe to go about doing that. So are you game to go on that ride on the roller coaster?

Jeff McKay: I am, and I think it’s an important one given how many downloads of the infographic followed our conversation, so I think people are like, “Hey, I want to stop this stupid stuff and start doing smart stuff.”

Jason Mlicki: Well, there’s that old idiom, you know, misery loves company, and I think to some extent that that stupid stuff falls into that trap a little times. People love to kind of say, “Oh man, someone can relate to this frustration I’m feeling,” but let’s try to flip that and get them to the better place.

Jeff McKay: I want to take a step back, because if anyone’s-

Jason Mlicki: Do you ever trip and bump into the wall? Because you want to take a step back before we do every episode.

Jeff McKay: I know. I have my little peccadilloes. There’s no doubt about it.

Jason Mlicki: Anyway, go ahead. I’m sorry.

Jeff McKay: I’ve been working on them for years, but my wife is coaching me as well. I hope to correct so many of my shortcomings before I die. Marketing professional services … For our listeners who are marketers, and they’re in these tough roles, and doing stupid stuff and smart stuff, over the years, I have come to appreciate that the head of marketing in a professional services industry has to be one of the toughest marketing jobs around. I also believe it’s the best marketing job around. And I’ve stayed in this industry for so long, because I have so much fun doing it, and there’s so much variety in it.

But this role is incredibly difficult, because number one, the BS of PS and the unique structure of the industry. But we are managing or competing against some of the best brands in the world that hire some of the best and brightest people in the world. We market and sell to the best brands and best companies in the world. We market and sell to the highest levels within those best companies and brands around the world who hire some of the best people.

And on top of all of that, we’re selling these incredibly complex solutions that are essentially air. They’re all intangible product, solving some of the biggest problems in the business world. I mean, think about that. That is a steep climb, a steep climb. That’s not selling new and improved toothpaste. It’s a tough job. It’s a fun job. So I think our listeners should take heart. Take heart.

Jason Mlicki: Those are really valid things to start and frame this conversation, because it’s good to kind of step back and just reflect on, why are you doing what you’re doing? And even when you are frustrated, and you maybe are feeling like it’s not going the way you want it to go, that in the big picture, you’re working towards a greater good in a really great place to be, and so I couldn’t agree with you more.

Let’s dive into this a little bit. I know I told you kind of leading into this that I have been thinking about this since we did that last episode. And I was trying to sort of put myself in the shoes of that frustrated marketer, as I will call it, and say, “If I were in that seat, and I was sort of stuck doing a lot of these things that we framed as somewhat stupid, and I wanted to start doing some smart things, what are the things that I would do?” And I made a short list. These are the things that I would do if I were in those shoes.

In a lot of ways, these are things that I also look for my people to do in our agency, right? They’re expectations I set for them in our work just in general. So you want to dive into that list a little bit?

Jeff McKay: I wait with bated breath to hear the great thinking of Jason Mlicki.

Jason Mlicki: Well, you know, a lot of people do. No. The first one is, I call it, act above your pay grade. In a way, this draws from the podcast we did, and your thinking obviously, on how to manage high-potential talent. And there’s a lot of times, I believe, that the leaders of a firm don’t even recognize necessarily that they’re putting the marketer into the box, and the marketer just needs to start behaving differently, and so needs to start just acting as though they’ve been given authority to operate in the ways that the smart marketer does and to start behaving that way.
I don’t even know specifically what I mean by that off the list per se. But it’s just sort of like picking off one of those things on the smart marketer’s list that you don’t really necessarily have scope to do within your job description and just doing it anyway, or behaving as if you have the permission to do that. That’s my number one.

Jeff McKay: I think that’s a good one. It has elements of fake it till you make it. But I think it is a good one, and it’s why I lay out those expectations for the people on my team, you know? Act like the title above you.

I would add to that this goal for people: fake it till you make it doesn’t really work. The goal of acting above your pay grade is to get on equal footing with the other leaders in the firm. And you’re going to have an inherent hurdle in that you’re probably not going to have the professional certification that a CPA, or a lawyer, or architect, or some other consultant’s going to have, so you’re going to be immediately discounted for not having that credibility.

So the goal in getting on equal footing with them is to understand the business better than they do. And that doesn’t mean every technical dimension, but it means understanding the market better.

Jason Mlicki: Correct. And I would argue, the economics better of the situation.

Jeff McKay: Yes.

Jason Mlicki: It’s how do we make money? And how could we make more money, or better money, or better margin, or whatever. I’ll piggyback on something you said on the fake till you make it thing. The implicit assumption I sort of made when I approached this was that the marketer in this spot is a frustrated one that sort of has the capabilities necessary to be functioning in the smart space, but for whatever reason is being bound into the stupid space.
And so to your point, there could be some learning and training that needs to happen for someone that wants to get to this other side of this list if they don’t feel that they’ve got the business understanding or the business acumen that we’re describing right here, right? If some of the things we’re describing, you’re sitting there listening, and you’re like, “I don’t even know what that means,” well then, yeah. You can’t just fake that. You have to go do some heavy lifting and learn that, and get some new skills and new education, right?

Jeff McKay: Yes, and I would suggest three things for people to move that very quickly. First thing, if you have not read it, your first step is to read How to Manage a Professional Service Firm by David Maister. Go get it. Buy it, hardcover if you can find it. Read it. Highlight it. Annotate it. Reread it. It will help you jumpstart your understanding of a professional services firm.

Second thing, get a subscription to The Wall Street Journal. Read it.

Jason Mlicki: Snooze.

Jeff McKay: Read it every day.

And then third, I have a list of books to make you a more strategic thinker on my website. Read those books. There’s other lists out there, but you’ve got to read to get smarter. And it’s that cumulative knowledge that’s going to give you the credibility and put you on equal footing intellectually with the others.

Jason Mlicki: Yeah, it’s funny. There’s a constant refrain in our economy, and we talked about this. We had a podcast on this about how people don’t read. I still dismiss it only in the sense of, the senior leaders in companies everywhere are voracious readers, and they probably are always going to be voracious readers, consumers of thinking. And if you want to go have conversations with them, you need to be as well-read as they are.

Okay, so my second item on my list was this idea of “Ask for forgiveness rather than permission.” And this, to me, is all about taking sort of measured risk. It’s sort of just, “You know what? I’m going to put my neck out here. I’m just going to try something, and it doesn’t have to be a huge thing, but it’s going to be something small, and then just see what happens,” right?

I know at least for me, as a business owner, as an agency owner, I value that skill highly in our team. People that just are willing to put their neck out there and try something without knowing whether it’s going to work or not, and then come to me and say, “Hey, Jason. I tried this, and it didn’t go so well.” Or, “It went exceptionally well. Can we scale this?” I love that. And my sense is that most senior leaders fall under that court, at least the good ones.

Jeff McKay: At least the good ones. At least the good ones do. If your firm penalizes failure, that’s going to be difficult for you to do. But if your firm penalizes failure, get out of that firm. That’s a horrific place to be in any role. I mean, it’s a telltale sign that you’re Sisyphus rolling a stone up a mountain, and you’re never going to get there.

Jason Mlicki: When we say penalize failure in this context, what do we mean?

Jeff McKay: It could get you fired. It could get you demoted. It could get you publicly lambasted. It could really kill your credibility. You’d be in an environment that’s not a learning one. I think that’s what I mean.

Jason Mlicki: Okay. The reason I bring it up is because, as you know, the next thing on my list is this notion of, “Be okay getting slapped on the wrist.” And what I mean by that is that there are going to be instances when you try that thing, and it fails, and you’re going to get slapped on the wrist. And I think you need to be okay with that.

And what I mean by that is to your point. You shouldn’t be publicly lambasted for trying something and failing, like you shouldn’t be ridiculed, and criticized, and said, “Well, that was a stupid thing to do,” or anything along those lines. But you also have to recognize there are going to be times when inadvertently, a senior leader’s going to be a little bit uncomfortable, and they’re going to look at that thing you just tried and say, “Yeah, I wish you wouldn’t have tried that right now.” Or, “I don’t understand the thinking.” Or, “Why did you do that?”

And it’s going to feel like they’re attacking you, but on some level, they might just be saying, “Well, the timing on that wasn’t real good.” Or, “I wish you had thought that through a little differently or approached it a little differently.” It’s not that they’re saying, “No, don’t do that.” They’re just saying, “Maybe you shouldn’t have done that right now.” Or, “We don’t want to do that right now,” for whatever reason. And it’s not necessarily intended to be a public humiliation, and they don’t try new things. It’s more of a, “I’m not sure that was the right thing. Next time, let’s talk about it together and see if we can find a better direction,” or something along those lines. Does that make any sense?

Jeff McKay: It makes a lot of sense. And it makes me think. You know, you need a wing man when you start taking some risks like that. That if you don’t have a mentor, get a mentor, somebody outside your firm, where you can say, “Hey, I’m thinking about this idea. What do you think?” And a mentor can help you uncover any landmines so that you can mitigate any downside risk that may exist. And it’s just a safeguard for you.

Jason Mlicki: Yeah. Ultimately, there’s always the role of outside advisors to consultants. Not always, but it’s one of the central roles, is someone who’s objective to the situation who can say, “Hey, yeah. This makes a ton of sense. This is what you should absolutely do.” Even when people in the firm know that is what needs to be done, they’re getting that objectivity to get the confidence to do it. So there’s probably some of that as well.

And I agree with you. I use the analogy that you can take some levered risk. You try something new, and you get punched in the face. People say, “That was stupid,” and they ridicule you, then yeah. You do need to look for another job. That’s not healthy. But out here, there are times … And I look back. I’ll tell a very specific story real briefly.

When we were building our new website, our creative director wanted to do some really interactive things with some of the calls to action. And at the time, I said, “I don’t want to do that right now.” And months go by, and I sort of forget the conversation. And months go by, and I’m doing our talk at Profiting From Thought Leadership 2018, and I highlight as best practices some of the things Bain’s doing on their site with interactive calls to action, just really cool stuff.

And he was taken aback, because he says, “Well, I suggested we do these same things, and you didn’t want to do them.” And I laughed. I said, “Well, it’s not that I don’t want to do them.” It was a misinterpretation, right? He took it as he just got punched in the face to some extent, and the way I was interpreting it was, no. It’s not that it’s a bad idea at all. It’s a great idea. It was that I didn’t think we were ready. I was like, “We have some blocking and tackling we’ve got to get down first. And once we’ve done that, then let’s come back, and we’ll do some of that stuff.” So it’s just interesting how that plays out, right?

Jeff McKay: Is that person still working for you?

Jason Mlicki: Absolutely.

Jeff McKay: Maybe you should share his or her name with me, and I can give them a call, and maybe he’d like to work at a really cool place.

Jason Mlicki: Well, do you know one?

Jeff McKay: I want to add what you said, and I think is something I’m seeing on my teams, and in myself and clients, and then in people that just reach out to me, because they’re blog readers who I run into at events somewhere. The real key to success around taking that measured risk and the downside of being punched in the face or slapped in the wrist in a way that just doesn’t feel right for you. If you want to free up the capacity to do your number one, play above your pay grade … And this is something I learned when I was buying and negotiating contracts in my family’s business, is you have to be prepared to walk away.

And by being prepared to walk away, that means leave the firm, and knowing that you’re good enough, that you have options to go elsewhere. And when you have that confidence, and you’re not afraid of losing your job, whether that’s emotionally, or financially, reputationally, it is freeing. It’s liberating and allows you to take more risks and challenge thinking in your firm. And I don’t know that most marketers come to these interactions in that way. I know I didn’t when I was coming up through the ranks. But the more experience I got, I was like, “Hey, I can go get a job elsewhere,” so it freed me up.

And the interesting thing was I noticed when I started speaking with that confidence of being able to walk away, that people started listening to the ideas, because they had more confidence behind them. And your partners want that confidence behind them, because to some degree, they’re taking risk as well, alongside you, even though it may not feel like it. But they have reputational and financial risk within the firm if something fails. So they want to see that confidence coming from you.

Jason Mlicki: Well, you know, we could do a whole podcast on the power of options, right?

Jeff McKay: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jason Mlicki: And that’s really what you’re describing. You’re using a fairly classical negotiating strategy which is making sure that you have an alternative to the option in front of you and applying it to your daily work life, and I think that’s a great thing, so I totally agree with you. And I think that for all our listeners … I actually think about all our clients. I would want all of our clients and all of my people to have that confidence, because like you said, when you’re operating from that place of confidence, people are much more receptive to what you have to say. So yeah, I guess I’m saying in a very long-winded way, I agree.

We’ve got time for probably one more. This is the last thing that came to me, and this is something I’ve done with our people and our team for years. And I describe it as “Come with solutions.” And what I mean by that is that junior nonstrategic people come to a leader with a problem and say, “Here’s a problem we have in the firm. Here’s a problem we have in the business. Here’s a problem we have in the marketing team with the marketing firm,” or whatever their problem is, and that’s sort of the end of the conversation. It’s, “I’ve got this problem. What do I do?”
This is something I sort of lean on our team all the time is … And actually, what I really do is whenever anyone comes to me with a problem, I say, “Well, okay. What do you think I should do?” I never, ever give an answer. And after doing that enough times, then they realize, “Oh, I better come to the table with a prepared solution, or he’s not going to listen to me.”

And that’s really what I mean here, is just whenever you identify a problem that needs to be resolved, come to the leader with the solution in hand ready to be implemented, and be prepared to have that discussion about the solution. And I think that is to your point of what you just said, that’s going to raise your confidence in articulating the problem. That’s also going to raise the leader’s confidence in executing on the solution you recommend and respect for you as a professional, which is going to raise the credibility of marketing’s game from smart to stupid.

Jeff McKay: Yes, it’s mutually reinforcing in that, and it creates that virtuous cycle. And I think most high performers think the way you just described. They bring the problem and the solution or solution options to the table. I don’t think that’s limited to senior people. This is another telltale sign of a hi-po, I think, even if they’re junior. They say, “Hey, I have this problem, but I’ve already thought of a solution.” I love those conversations.

Jason Mlicki: The interesting theme to your point … A hi-po, to your point, behaves that way, but I think a lot of people don’t and could, right?

Jeff McKay: Yes.

Jason Mlicki: I think they don’t feel that they have the permission to behave that way. But if you just tell them you have permission to do that, they will.

Jeff McKay: No one will ever slap you on the wrist or punch you in the face for bringing a solution.

Jason Mlicki: Correct.

Jeff McKay: They might say, “We’ll let’s think through that solution,” but they live for that. They live for that. And if you’re a parent, you already know that.

Jason Mlicki: That’s interesting, isn’t it? That’s a really interesting thought. Have your kids ever come to you with a problem without a solution? They always have a solution already prepared. Usually they have the solution, and the problem doesn’t exist. And somewhere between childhood and first job, that’s lost. The educational system wrings it out of you.

All right, well. Why don’t you give us some closing thoughts? All of this is rooted in some of your IP, so how would you wrap this thing up? Let’s wrap this up into a pretty bow that says, “Okay, you’re stuck in the trough. You want to get to the peak. Do these four things, and then you’ll get there, or whatever, seven things.”

Jeff McKay: You just asked me to simplify the toughest job in marketing. In my experience, it probably goes something like this, and intuitively, I think I built that into the smart list. The first one of those items were categorized as strategy. And I group strategy … There’s two elements to that.

The first one is in professional services, you have to have some form of structure, because nature abhors a vacuum. If you don’t have some form of strategic marketing structure, you’re going to be order-takers, so you have to have a well-thought out structure. When I say structure, I don’t mean your marketing operations process for workflow or something like that. I mean strategic thinking about how you have strategic impact.

That’s why the second element on the smart list is ROI. It’s a structure to accomplish some end. And if you’re in a growth school marketing set, the end of strategic impact is ROI. You’re moving some big measure, and then you work backwards from there with the structure. That means things that engineer out all of this BS of PS that we know is going to happen. And I have all kinds of posts on my website. Jason, I know you have things very similar on some of those topics as well.

The second thing, and this is critical. It goes back to some of the things that you mentioned at the start, Jason. If you really want to change the conversation and get on equal footing with your partners and practice leaders and really begin to have an impact on how you market strategically, every conversation has to come back to the client. What would a client think of that? How does this benefit our client? How would our client understand that? Does our client really care about that, or is that something is navel gazing? What proof do you have that the client would really think that was important to them?

Partners and consultants, they love their clients. They want to serve their clients. Anything you can do, you just keep bringing it back to the client. Whenever there’s an impasse, whenever there’s a disagreement about approach, just bring it back to the client. And that single action will go a very long way in moving you from the stupid to the smart, but you have to have a deeper understanding of the client than the consultant or practice leader.

Jason Mlicki: Okay. Is that the totality of your list?

Jeff McKay: No, my list goes quite a bit deeper.

Jason Mlicki: Oh, thank God. I was kind of getting concerned for you. Okay. If I’m going to move forward, I’m just going to summarize some of what we talked about and try to bring it home.

The first step is really to create structure around what you’re doing, really create structure around what you’re hoping to achieve for the business. The second thing is to think and talk like a business leader, which really is about bringing everything back to the client. I would say the third thing is to take some measure of risk, so pick very strategic points where you can try something new that may succeed or may fail, and do that without permission, so ask for forgiveness if it fails, permission if it doesn’t. And then every time you surface a problem that needs to be addressed in terms of how the firm approaches their market, approaches the client experience, whatever you’re doing as a marketer, come armed with a solution. If you do those four things, you should find yourself at the apex of that smart things list in no time at all, probably like a week, right?

Jeff McKay: Probably a week.

Jason Mlicki: Yeah, maybe three days.

Jeff McKay: Yeah. As Jason Mliciki always says, I’m adding number five: always bring data.

Jason Mlicki: Oh yeah. It wouldn’t be a conversation with a marketer if you didn’t have to drag us into data and numbers. Numbers, numbers, numbers, great. That always helps. All right, man. I enjoyed the conversation. Let’s do it again some time.

Jeff McKay: All right, guys. Go move from stupid to smart. And enjoy the hardest job in the world.

Jason Mlicki: All right, man. I’ll see you, Jeff.

Jeff McKay: Bye, buddy.