Sherpa: What skill sets are the hardest to find?
Harry: Hard-to-find functional skills include campaign analytics and "expeditionary marketing" skills – knowing how to research and identify rabid subcultures that will respond favorably to a company’s value proposition. Before launching a campaign, the best expeditionary marketers will want to know ...
- How do the target customers think?
- How do they buy?
- Is there a built-in bias to the way they make decisions?
- What do they fear?
- What makes them mad?
- What are their top three daily frustrations? And so on.
It's all about learning enough about your customer to be able to arouse their emotions. If you can't do that, you're toast.
The “soft” personality traits include humility, dealing with ambiguity, and team building.
Sherpa: What does humility have to do with marketing?
Harry: Marketing requires humility because while change is inevitable -- growth is optional. It's a choice. Marketing is about growth, and meaningful growth requires the expansion of one's comfort zone: If you want your company to push the envelope, then you need to hire marketers who aren't afraid to push the envelope. They can't fear failure.
Sherpa: Are humble people less fearful?
Harry: Yes. Their egos are smaller, so they care less about the opinions of others. It gives them a better perspective on their successes and failures.
But beyond not fearing a bruised ego, humble people are selfless, and that orientation allows them to serve others. They are hard-wired to nurture. That's why humility is one of the most lethal competitive weapons in business today. "High touch" is really just a state of mind -- but it's got to be a top-down thing.
Fans of "servant leadership" believe that the best way to spread organizational humility is through personal humility. Servant leadership requires a heroic, self-sacrificing predisposition towards doing the hardest, dirtiest, unglamorous, anonymous work in the company. If you are humble, then no job is beneath you. Great companies are built on the back of this mentality.
Sherpa: Can you give me an example?
Harry: Sure. When I graduated from business school, I interviewed with the Waffle House -- an outstanding company run by a bunch of blue-collar Harvard MBAs. I say that as a supreme complement. Anyway, the standing rule at Waffle House is that everyone in the company has to work in one of their restaurants a minimum of 20 hours each year.
It was like like, "Got a fancy MBA?? Us too! Now grab a toilet brush and get to work!" All of their interviews and tests were designed to weed out people who were not above the dirty work, because you can't always train that mentality.
Waffle House is the kind of company that's loaded with humble, charitable, can-do people who are hard on the issues and soft on the people. These are the same executives who are not afraid to take a hard, honest look at their marketing strategies and abandon the initiatives and channels that aren't working -- and "double down" on the ones that are, regardless of who came up with the idea.
More Q&A tomorrow. For previously posted portions of my interview with MarketingSherpa, please click here.
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Q: Need the number of a recruiter who "gets it?"
A: Download Harry's contact info for future reference.
Great article. What I find interesting is that those with the ability to fill the "servant leader" role are often over looked for positions in which they would actually do quite well.
Posted by: Carly Lesser | 2005.09.07 at 17:48
What an insightful article! We could all learn a lot from your Sherpa. ;-) In particular the "change is inevitable--growth is optional" quotation. How true that is in all facets of life, whether it be business or personal! When I gave motivational speeches, I very often quoted the definition of insanity--doing the same thing and expecting different results. A good marketing expert should indeed push *just* beyond your comfort zone. I know that mine did. :-)
Posted by: Heidi Miller | 2005.08.25 at 16:35