why doing an eMBA is so irrational

Marketing on stereoids

I admit, marketing isn't an easy game... it is a game about vision, market and customer intelligence, segmentation, Cluetrain, business models, way-to-market architectures and pricing. And that is the easy part. Yesterday, I read that Apple has already sold one million iPads in just one month. This is what marketeers would call a "ticket to heaven" but then again, not every company is Apple and Apple is of course not an everyday company. Throughout its history, the company has been in the business of market making: the first personal PC, the design PC (iMac), the iPod (userfriendly MP3 player), iTunes (Online music store), the iPhone (the cell phone 2.0) and now the iPad (Funky tablet PC meets iPhone). And of course, when you are the first to enter the market, you can do it with a bang although I must be honest and say that others (Napster, Nokia and Microsoft) had already tried this years ago either miserably failed or launched their products when the market was not ready for it. So what is the game then? It's finding your cash cow and milking it, it is looking for operational efficiency to lower your production costs and increase your profit margins but mostly it is about finding new markets and being the first to launch your product. That's what we learned in this month's marketing module.

To begin with, we had a brilliant teacher (Prof. Dr. Rudy Moenaert) who taught us the ins and outs of marketing during the first part of the course. There was a nice intermezzo by the way from Steven van Belleghem who was presenting his new book"the conversation manager" and the art of starting up brand conversations by means of social media. The second part of the course consisted of playing the markstrat game - a simulation game where you are in charge of positioning your product (close to the customer) and conquering new markets. There were four teams and my partners in crime were Mr. VC, Donald Trump and Furrycoat. For two days we had to come up with strategies to defend our market space, launch new products, find out what our competitors were doing, digest enormous amounts of data and market research...basically we were body doubling the marketing department. How to be the winner in your segment is one thing but what we found out is that market making is where the big money is to be found. Being the first to enter the market gives you an enormous competitive advantage and puts you in a monopoly position. New markets are not price-sensitive because price reference and comparison effects are non-existing. This means that - whatever price you put on your product or service - there will always be a group of innovators and early adopters that will want to buy your product.
In the end, marketing is about bringing consistency in the organization: defining you ambition in terms of a "Big Hairy Audacious Goal" means that you align products and services, your business model and customer value proposition, your ABC segmentation, sales force and marketing efforts and bundle this into a unique proposition around one or more competitive advantages: Product/service, price, customer process and image (the so called CODA framework). That's the game of marketing and if you're not willing to go through the pain of putting effort in this, well there will be no gain. That's what we found out during the markstrat game and that's why we should congratulate Zappos, Miss Moneypenny, Mr. Oiseau, Boyscout and Beckham with winning the game and applying the ground-rule of marketing : don't  get even, get everything.

Why Should Anyone Be Led by You?

With this rhetorical question, we're concluding our two modules on managing people and organisations. For the question, all credits go to Robert Goffee and Gareth Jones who wrote an entire book about authentic leadership.  And leadership was the theme of the day: we had a passionate lecture by Robert A. Burgelman  on strategic leadership, got feedback from our leadership effectiveness analysis a.k.a. the 360 feedback, learned about situational leadership and analysed what it takes to become a high performance organisation.  But what about servant leadership, connected leadership, creative leadership or other types of leadership?  Are we natural born leaders or can you be taught to become a leader?  Are all people at the top leaders or do you also have leaders at the lower part of the food chain?  There are roughly 105 million results when you google leadership so you can imagine that there is a lot to say about the topic.
Personally, I believe that leadership is all about execution and getting things done.  Like someone recently said to me, an idea is worth nothing as long as it is not put into practice.  You can be a visionary and a strategic thinker but if you cannot convince people to follow you, it's gonna be a lonely ride out there.  So before you can lead others you have to learn to lead yourself.   That's why - throughout our journey - we have a personal coach who helps us to set a vision, define our personal goals and lay the stepping stones towards our destiny.  He learns us to deal with our weaknesses and differentiate ourselves from the crowd.  But is leadership then about being rational about oneself?

Well, not exactly - because intuition is the missing ingredient to make the magic work.  Intuition is what makes leaders go astray and boldly go where no one has ever gone before. It is that sensing part that makes the difference between being a manager and being a leader. Or like Goffee and Jones put it:
(...) leadership, it should be noted, is not about results per se. While many of the leaders we have studied and use as examples do in fact post superior financial returns, the focus (...) has been on leaders who excel at inspiring people—in capturing hearts, minds, and souls. So if you ever want anyone to be lead by you, then authenticity is the way forward it seems.