The Zen of High Tech Marketing	<< Back
By Michael K. Tanner, Managing Director, The Chasm Group Consider the following three scenes: Scene 1: a conversation between the CEO of a small private company and its VP of Engineering. The CEO asks the VP about why a particular major account has been having support issues with the company's products. In response, the VP launches into a detailed account of the customer situation, the specific technical problems, why the issue isn't as bad as it seems how the team could allow such an issue to be released and what the technology options are for going forward. By all accounts, the response is thorough, accurate, informed and fact-based. The CEO then says to the VP of Engineering, "Jack, I'm impressed. The problem is that I'm not really sure what you said." At that moment, the VP of sales chimes in: "and I don't even remember the question!" Scene 2: Consider John. He is one of the brightest most competent executives that you could ever run into. You might even describe him as "scary-smart." His mental processing power is so acute that he can out-negotiate just about anyone, and can master the details better than anyone. Fortunately, he has great charisma, because when he leaves meetings the white-board is generally filled with un-intelligible words and half-complete diagrams. After he leaves someone on his staff says excitedly, "wow, what a great idea! John is unbelievable-… but what exactly did he say?" Scene 3: You have just visited a company to review its business plan. You've spent the better part of a day listening to the executive team describe their products, technology and direction. You've seen a presentation and a product overview, resplendent with architectural diagrams, market pie charts, trends, long term vision statements, et. al. only to discover at the end of the day that the product does not yet exist! The voice-over always referred to products in the present tense, so up until then, you naturally believed they were available right now. Of course, PowerPoint being the software architecture design tool of choice, you were not overly surprised. The three scenes above each came from my own personal memory banks. Each of these vignettes point to two of the most important characteristics that executives in the technology sector can have: 1. The number one skill required for success in the technology business is the ability to think and communicate in abstractions while retaining the knowledge of the details in your head - at the same time. 2. Facts and logical argument are the ante-up to perform in any business and you need them to play the game effectively. But passion trumps facts. Facts can be learned. Passion is something different. Thinking in Patterns or Abstractions If you think about it, one of the major requirements for succeeding is to have a keen ability to deal with not just the details, but with abstractions of details. This skill is keenly important in the high tech business both because the complexity great, and the details change almost daily. Even the most complex set of technologies and issues can be held, stored, managed and understood by the majority of us 'detail-impaired" humans when abstracted. But those same issues are either unmanageable or unintelligible when described completely because there are just too many permutations to understand. It's a natural phenomenon for us to lose the ability to abstract as we become more knowledgeable. We live in a world where just understanding the products we sell requires so much concentration and attention to detail that in some ways, we can actually become more impaired as we get smarter because we lose the ability to abstract up to a level that can be digested by others. I know that as a consultant I have had to learn how to reach the point of information maturity fairly quickly by abstracting situations into patterns. But I've also discovered that as I learn a client's technology, products and history, my ability to communicate and function can actually go down, not up, if not thoughtfully culled. As the old saying goes, when you get too immersed in trees it just gets really hard to see the forest. As teams get deeply involved with the details they have to guard against the natural tendency to loose their ability to abstract to a level where decisions can be made quickly. The problem is not being "too smart." Far too many decisions are made in a rush to judgment with out facts. But the other side of the coin is lacking the ability to abstract. Sales and marketing managers have to be particularly mindful with this. Just go to a trade-show booth and ask a salesperson what their company does. You'll often get a 2 minute dialog about product capabilities, bandwidth, programming languages and the like. But you will rarely get a direct one or two sentence abstraction that can be quickly understood. I often find myself impressed at trade-show booths, but like characters in my little vignettes, I didn't really understand what was said. Sometimes I've even forgotten the question. Development and IT managers have a similar issue. When Sue Smith, the VP of HR calls Herb, the IT guy because her email doesn't work, how often does Herb spend time telling Sue all the reasons her system didn't work? He tells Sue that the list-sever failed and that the IP address was inconsistent. Although Sue checked-out a long time before the end of the conversation, she generally says something like "thank you for sharing" as Herb leaves her office. Since most people are wired to have difficulty remembering telephone numbers with more than seven digits, why should we expect the majority of our customers and even employees to understand all the complexities of our own domain? Operating at the wrong abstraction level either inside or outside of the company is like trying to design a machine where there are no standard sizes of nuts and bolts, or like ordering a steak in a restaurant where the chef has to go out and kill the steer each and every time. It's just too much detail. You may feel that you've communicated effectively and openly, but chances are you've lost your audience. At the executive team level, this ability to abstract was inferred by James Collins and Porras in their book "Built to Last" when they pointed out that successful teams have the ability to hold two strategies in their head at the same time. The first strategy is the long-term vision for where the company will go. The second is the short term reality of what must be done immediately. Some teams have a great vision but fail in short term execution. Some are great operators but lack the vision and passion. The truly excellent have this strange capability to manage to both. Passion Passion (pash'on) n. Intense emotional excitement, as rage, enthusiasm, lust, etc. While the characteristic of abstraction deals with handling and communicating facts, the second characteristic is all about emotion. It's the difference between the politician who is characterized as a 'competent technocrat' and the one that wins the election. Passion is that strange element that overlaps with charisma, defined not by looks or clothing (certainly in the high-tech business), but a strange combination of openness in personality, competence, willingness to take risk, and personal enthusiasm. Passion shows up in the manager who is obviously enjoying what he or she does; the person who constructively argues and takes a stand but knows when to join the team. Passion is the executive who laughs at his or herself regularly. It's the tech executive who went public in the bubble and made enough to retire several times over, but who continues to drive a new, struggling company because he just can't stand to loose. Over my years I've noticed that passion always trumps facts. Given two competent executives interviewing for a job, given equal skills the one who is passionate about the business will get the job. In a world where products are increasingly difficult to differentiate and where sales training has become a science it is likely that your sales competition will have a great product and will be quite competent. But given equality everywhere else, the most passionate salesperson will likely get the business. Almost like no other place on earth, passion shows up at the doorsteps of the venture capital industry. Those who have never presented to a VC firm often believe that VCs are high-flying risk-takers. But keep in mind that most of the money to be invested comes from limited partners, not the general partners. Their incomes come, at least at a very attractive base level, from management fees. They aren't mortgaging their primary residence and filling up their credit cards. In my own personal experience, Venture Capitalists are actually some of the most conservative folks I know. Because of this tendency for risk-avoidance, VCs often lower risk by working only with folks they know, or folks known by folks they know. Lead investors are great at rigorous analysis and diligence and often market this ability as a differentiator. But the scary truth is that early-stage markets are un-predictable and early-stage business plans are largely exercises in consensual hallucination. The even scarier truth for all of us is that there are lots and lots of smart people in our businesses that would like a piece of it. They know the details and are "scary-smart," so, even intelligence and raw capability may not be a differentiator. Communicating well at the right level of abstraction can certainly help persuade and keep you in the game. But all else being equal, when the venture partners refer to an "A" team versus a "B" team, they are referring to an intangible. The pedigree and experience may get the entrepreneurs through the door, but in my own experience it is often passion that wins the day, and passion that creates the emotion, as opposed to cold-hard-facts, that drive most venture investments. Mike Tanner is a Managing Director at the Chasm Group, where he provides advisory and consulting services in the areas of new venture development, market development strategy, operational planning, portfolio investment strategy and market positioning. Mike holds board seats for Apexion and Savi Technology, and sits on the advisory boards of Entivity and Unicru. He can be reached for comment at: mtanner@chasmgroup.com
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