Week #6 - MBA 6101 - Surfing the Tsunami, Chapter 6: Level 3: Become Adept in AI

Through the course of his book, Surfing the Tsunami, Dr Todd Kelsey encourages that some familiarity with artificial intelligence and machine learning is crucial in the job market today and for the foreseeable future. At an organizational level, AI and ML are and will continue to be critical to creating and keeping a competitive edge.

Kelsey provides three options or levels of proficiency to aspire for. The beginner level, to adapt, is predominantly a passive option.  According to Kelsey, the AI/ ML beginner is learning and paying attention to how artificial intelligence and machine learning are being integrated and applied in the workspace. At this stage, while acknowledging the potential impact of AI/ ML, the adapt stage still allows for some cynical-tinted skepticism despite the “writing on the wall.”

At the intermediate/ proficiency level, the user has moved beyond adapt and embraced adoption. According to Kelsey, the adopt option is for the user that looks for a “hands on” approach to artificial intelligence tools and platforms.  Integration may include basic tools like virtual assistants (Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, or Cortana), using software that is AI-based like Salesforce’s Sales Cloud Einstein, or using a platform built on programs using Microsoft’s Azure Machine Learning or Google Cloud Machine Learning.

The third possibility is to become adept. According to Kelsey, the adept user has achieved a fluency with artificial intelligence and machine learning. The user has developed the knowledge and skills to engage directly in creating, developing, or implementing AI applications. While bridging the gap between intermediate/ proficient (adopt) and fluent (adept) may feel intimidating, Kelsey favors short steps over long leaps.

Kelsey suggests “finding ways to simplify the process of learning about AI” and above all, to find ways of learning that are “fun and interesting.” For example, novice learners can find inspiration on sites like YouTube. Videos, especially those that focus on application rather than abstraction, are accessible, convenient first steps.

Another method for users looking to move from adopt to adept (and beyond) are games. Educational games are effective tools that can be used to teach a diverse audience of learners a range of concepts across many subjects including data science, artificial intelligence, and coding. Games/ sites like CodinGame, SQL Murder Mystery, and Grid Garden and Flexbox Defense are aimed at introducing beginners to coding through gamification. 

Videos and games provide a reasonably thorough introduction to artificial intelligence, data science, and coding, there are sites and apps that offer a more “traditional” online experience to learning.  Kelsey notes the advantages of a structured, community-based, mentor/ instructor led approach to learning as the most helpful, but suggests offerings from sites like Coursera, DataCamp, and Khan Academy as simple ways to get started and, importantly, to “maintain momentum.”    

There are many different paths that lead towards fluency in artificial intelligence. Ultimately, according to Kelsey, “it comes down to trying a path” and making learning a habit. 

Week #6 – MBA 6101 – Guerrilla Marketing, Chapter 6: Selecting the Most Lethal Marketing Methods

In Selecting the Most Lethal Marketing Methods, the sixth chapter of Guerilla Marketing: Easy and Inexpensive Strategies for Making Big Profits From Your Small Business, Levinson introduces several effective tools and strategies to consider as part of the guerilla marketer’s arsenal.

According to Levinson, all marketing tools and strategies have the potential to be “lethal” when in the capable hands of a “pro.”  Mediums like newspapers, magazines, and

television (include cable and satellite TV) offer broad dissemination but at a premium. Mail, including e-mail and post/ direct mail, provide selective dissemination but are most effective with follow-up mailings and telemarketing.  While time-consuming, Levinson regards canvassing as especially effective because it includes personal contact.  Like mail, canvassing is most effective when it includes supplementary marketing like “mass-marketing methods.”

While not necessarily effective as standalone marketing tools, outdoor signs and billboards are suitable as supplements to reinforce other marketing efforts.  Likewise, advertising specialties (less formally known as swag) like t-shirts, baseball caps, pens, and notepads can be used to “remind people of your [organization’s] existence.” 

Levinson suggests trade shows as a “terrific shot in the sales curve.” Trade shows are a unique opportunity for marketers to connect with customers that already have a purchasing mindset geared towards the subject of the show or exhibition. Like trade shows, managing strong public or community relations provides opportunities for direct contact with potential customers and indirectly through publicity. 

While there are many different types of marketing methods, guerrilla marketers must be mindful of their audience.  It’s critical to tailor your methods to be “read, seen, or heard by your target audience.” As for duration, Levinson recommends campaign activities to range from one to five weeks, mixing short, medium, and long events. 

For the guerrilla marketer, the more tactics and strategies that are employed, the more adept and proficient the user, the more ample the war chest. Levinson provides three simple guidelines to consider when executing a marketing strategy:

1. Be aware of all the marketing weapons available

2. Use as many or as few of the marketing weapons available, but keep track of which weapons are working and which are not

3. Stop using the weapons that are not working and redouble your efforts with the weapons that are working.

According to Levinson, a successful marketing campaign relies on fusing the “the right marketing message with the right marketing media.” 

 

Week #6 - MBA 6101 - Ascend Your Start-Up, Chapter 6: Align Strategy with Process and Measurement Camp

In Align Strategy with Process and Measurement Camp of Ascend Your Start-Up, Helen Yu discusses implementing methods that match strategy to execution and creating metrics to gauge success.  For the organization to succeed, it's important that priorities are aligned and cross-functional accountability is established. 

Decision #17: How will you apply your strengths to your weaknesses to find your superpower?

Yu recommends finding ways to use an organization’s strengths to overcome weaknesses.  Gauging your organization’s attributes and finding a unique strength is critical to establishing a competitive advantage.  A good start is considering categories like your organization’s offering, sales, engineering, business vertical, brand, customer, vision, service, and leadership.  According to Yu, finding and leveraging that unique strength is a “measurable process” that leads to important “engagements with customers and partners.”

Decision #18: How will you fill the process disconnect?

According to Yu, a “data-driven decision-making process” is crucial to driving growth.  The first step towards establishing accountability is creating internal, cross-team cooperation with well-defined processes.

Decision #19: How will you fill the measurement disconnect?

Yu suggests several metrics to assess how well the organization is functioning.  Metrics and indicators extracted from financials, sales, marketing, customer success, services, training, support, product, and human resources can be used as a barometer for how congruent strategy is to execution.   

To better orient strategy to execution, Yu offers considering compensation and employee incentives.  For example, ensure that compensation and incentives are rewarding the proper behavior.  Yu also suggests considering metrics like net promoter score (NPS), customer satisfaction scores (CSAT), and customer offerings such as through the service level agreement (SLA) as a litmus test for customer fulfilment.  While this data is helpful, it’s important that it’s distilled and shared across the organization to meaningfully direct strategy and execution.     

Decision #20: How will you measure the company as a customer-centric company?

For Yu, the first step towards understanding an organization’s commitment to customers is having a foundational, underlying comprehension of your customer.  This includes tangible aspects of the whys, whats, and hows of the customer’s integration of your solution and prospective chances like “upsell and cross-sell opportunities.” It’s also important to have an understanding of the customer’s internal and external environment including a knowledge of the customer’s strengths and weaknesses, and potential threats and opportunities. 

Measuring customer-centricity also extends to the internal employee experience.  According to Yu, it’s pivotal to acknowledge and understand high- and low-level relationships between your organization and your customer’s organization.  It’s also important to understand how your organization’s employees feel about their role.  Yu notes that imbuing employees with a sense of “[empowerment]” and “[trust]” is crucial to creating a positive customer experience.        

Decision #21: What does your summit look like now?

While start-ups face many challenges, for Yu, the “need to prioritize and accomplish operational must-dos with fewer resources and a limited budget” is the most difficult hurdle to overcome.  However, to be successful, it’s important to be able to reassess and reevaluate, acclimatize and adapt, as your organization faces internal or external change.    

Week #5 - MBA 6101 - Don't Be Evil

What I have read of Frances Haugen’s testimony is alarming.  But, what’s most troubling for me, is that I’m not at all surprised.  In hindsight, at the time, Haugen’s disclosures barely registered.  This was not FB’s first scandal that centered around the misuse (abuse) of end user data— Beacon in 2008, a FTC investigation into FB violating its own privacy agreements between 2009 and 2014, and the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018. 

I use LinkedIn, Reddit, and Twitter.  I was never a particularly heavy FB user to being with.  I would post semi-regularly, comment here and there, and hit that “like” button when the urge struck.  But even an infrequent scrolling binge would leave me feeling the cognitive equivalent of eating a party-sized bag of Cheetos downed with a Super Big Gulp of Pepsi— a coagulated caked on mess of corn meal, fillers, and orange “cheese” flavoring that couldn’t be washed off, compelled to eat more, inevitably succumbing to nausea, a headache, and regret.     

I view Twitter as FB light.  I primarily follow artists, bands, actors, podcasters and authors.  My first follow was Bob Newhart.  I follow local and national news feeds and a handful of UFO groups.  I rarely tweet, but when I do, it’s usually abuse directed at my cable company.  Despite my innocuous follows, my feed is full of… trash.  It has become aggravating to the point that I will likely delete my Twitter account ahead of this year’s midterm elections.          

I love tech.  I had my first “modern” computer when I was 14 (1994, it was a Gateway).  I dialed up onto the “information superhighway” a year later.  I remember a TA in college introducing me to Google.  I had a Gmail account when it was still in Beta and by invitation only.   I don’t think tech is inherently evil or harmful.  But, I am skeptical.  I’m convinced that FB listens or (at least listened) and no one (no one) can convince me otherwise.  I have not had a FB created app on my phone in years.  I will not use Instagram, Messenger, or WhatsApp. 

A quote I frequently come across when reading criticisms of tech is “if something is free, you are the product.” No matter how well-intentioned Congress’s efforts are to minimize the misuse of end users’ data by social media platforms, as long as the end users are the product, Big Tech will be incentivized to find ways to exploit their users.

 

Week #5 – MBA 6101 – Guerrilla Marketing, Chapter 5: Developing Truly Creative Marketing

In Developing Truly Creative Marketing, Chapter 5 of Guerilla Marketing; Easy and Inexpensive Strategies for Making Big Profits FromYour Small Business, Levinson provides a simple tenet to guide an effective marketing strategy: “marketing is not creative unless it sells the offering.”

According to Levinson, a successful guerrilla marketing strategy begins with a basic “creative message.” The creative message has three basic elements— the purpose of the message, the benefits that will be emphasized to achieve the message’s purpose, and the brand’s personality.

To guarantee that the marketing plan will be successful, Levinson supplies a seven-step outline:

1. Find the inherent drama within your offering.

The inherent drama of the organization’s offering are the appealing or compelling reasons why potential customers would consider your product or service.

2. Translate that inherent drama into a meaningful benefit.

This step of the marketing plan focuses on the benefit of your product or service, not the features of the product or service. While the offering may have several benefits, it’s important to narrow the focus to three or less. 

3. State your benefits in as believable a way as possible.

For Levinson, it’s critically important to overcome the it’s just marketing audience mindset and convince potential customers that your offering is genuine, not hyperbolic or inflated. 

4. Get people’s attention

According to Levinson, “people do not pay attention to advertising; they pay attention only to things that interest them.”  Levinson states that it’s crucial for a marketer to draw the attention of a potential customer and hold their interest.   

5. Motivate your audience to get involved

This step of the marketing plan is the call to action. It should stimulate your potential customer to take the next step, whether it’s visiting a website or visiting a store.

6. Be sure you are communicating clearly

According to Levinson, the goal of the message should be “zero ambiguity.” The meaning of your message must be translatable for your offering’s entire audience.

7. Measure your finished advertisement, commercial, letter, website, and/ or brochure against your creative strategy

This stage requires the guerrilla marketer to take a wide view of the marketing strategy. If the “blueprint” falls short of meeting the strategy, according to Levinson, it’s time to “scrap it and start again.”

Levinson states that, “creativity comes from knowledge.”  Guerrilla marketing demands that you be more ingenious than your rivals to support a competitive edge.
It’s paramount that your marketing strategy is more creative, intelligent, clear, consistent, and perhaps most importantly, better planned than your competition.   To improve creativity, its especially important to have total comprehension of the organization and their product or service.  It’s also important to be astute, to develop a perception of the world beyond your organization including the “economy, current events, and the trends of the time.”  Along with enhancing the creative input into your marketing, this positions the guerrilla marketer to be more flexible and adaptable in their approach, and well-tuned to the real world.

Week #5 – MBA 6101 – Surfing the Tsunami, Chapter 5: Level 2: Adopt AI

According to Level 2: Adopt AI, the fifth chapter of Todd Kelsey’s Surfing the Tsunami, adopting artificial intelligence is the next logical rung for those that have adapted to AI.  Adopting artificial intelligence involves incorporating “AI-related tools and platforms” as an initial step towards “managing” artificial intelligence. 

The alternative is to “ignore, resist, [and ultimately] reject AI.”  Even from a realist’s standpoint, Kelsey argues, the integration of AI is crucial to achieving and maintaining a competitive edge for the organization and the individual.  From a long-term perspective, ignoring, resisting, or rejecting the role of artificial intelligence is untenable and unsustainable for an organization.  For the individual, a bearish outlook on AI and could be the “difference between employment and unemployment.” 

Artificial intelligence can be viewed, reasonably, as a potential threat.  For example, as automation has evolved and taken on different roles in the workspace, jobs have been eliminated.  However, automation has the potential to create new employment opportunities.  For example, as Kelsey cites in Surfing the Tsunami, it is practical to assume that critical roles will need to be created to manage the implementation and application of artificial intelligence and machine learning in the workspace.   

It's difficult to precisely forecast market demand for AI professionals.  However, based on the ubiquity of technology and how quickly new technological innovations come, it's reasonable to speculate that artificial intelligence and machine learning will mushroom as their applicability becomes more sophisticated.   

Week #5 – MBA 6101 – Ascend Your Start-Up, Chapter 5: Acclimate to the Voice of the Customer Camp.

In Acclimate to the Voice of the Customer Camp, the fifth chapter of Ascend Your Start-Up, Helen Yu explains the importance of “acclimating to the voice of the customer” as a strategy to “drive growth” and “[differentiate] your brand.”  For Yu, this is an opportunity to view your start-up from the outside in, and an opportunity to revalidate and realign your strategy with your execution.

In this chapter, Yu offers four micro-decisions aimed at understanding your relationship with your customer and understanding and overcoming the “customer voice disconnect.”

Decision #13:  Is your company as customer-centric as your marketing content says it is?

Yu recommends five competencies for driving the customer experience and ensuring that your organization is truly “customer-centric.”  These competencies include treating customers as tangible,

valuable asset, aligning the organization towards driving the customer experience, actively listening to customers, providing a reliable and predictable customer experience, and fostering a “culture of accountability” around the customer experience. 

Decision #14: How will you get to know your customer? 

Yu advocates for planning out the “customer journey” in a way that provides insight into the expectations of the customer, ways to better engage your customer, how to address relationship short-comings, and how to ensure positive outcomes. She offers a six-step “customer journey framework” that parallels the stages that customers progress through that includes evaluating and investing (value discovery), deploying and adopting (value realization), and expanding and advocating (value optimization).  The ultimate goal of the framework is to develop a framework to help orient your organization’s strategy with the customer’s strategy thereby creating a “consistent, reliable customer experience.”

Yu also suggests developing “customer rooms,” a framework aimed at developing a comprehensive understanding of the customer’s expectations.  Like mapping the customer journey, the customer room is designed to drive customer engagement through the maturation of the organization/ customer relationship.  The customer room includes the implementation stage (onboarding), adoption maturity (adoption), opportunity to upsell (expansion), and customer references (advocacy). 
Included with developing a deep understanding of the customer’s expectations, the customer room also assists with bridging potential gaps between cross-functional teams and building a greater sense of accountability for the customer experience. 

Decision #15:  Are you willing to step back in order to move forward and acclimate to the voice of your customer?

Yu points out that a hurdle in building a successful customer experience is not taking time to “[pause, listening, learning, or reflect]” While this micro-decision requires taking a step back, the long-term benefits include a broader understanding of how to meet the customer’s needs and expectations.  For the entrepreneur, this step is a chance to adjust and dial-in the organization’s approach. 

Decision #16: How will you define your customer experience?

According to Yu, incorporating the customer experience should be the top “differentiator” between your organization and the competition and the top “driver“ for organizational growth.  As such, argues Yu, “customer experience is…[the] leading indicator for success.” 

Many organizations can make overtures asserting customer-centricity.  However, authentic commitment to the customer experience requires more than “lofty claims.” Instead, a truly customer-centric experience demands a thorough organizational commitment towards optimizing customer value and putting the customer first.