One of the top characteristics I look for in candidates is coachability.  It’s next to curiosity and analytical thinking on my list of what makes people successful.  

I used to think of coachability as openness to feedback.  And coaching as a cheerleadingly-oriented management style.  But true coaching is the skillset I’ve worked the hardest to learn in the past year, and true coachability is much more than just openness.  I believe it to be a secret power of successful teams.

To expand the idea of coachability past “openness,” the type of coachability I look for is that of a focused desire to perpetually improve, based on seeking, accepting, and applying external feedback iteratively.  It comes in equal parts from the coached and the coach.  It’s more Socratic than not.  It’s requires more vulnerability than other types of interaction.  And it’s kinda magic.

At its core, I think coaching is about teaching a person to fish.  That is, the simplest coaching is just asking, “What do you think?”  When someone brings me a problem, if I’m in coach mode (more about that in a minute) that’s my go-to first question.  Or, “Where are you stuck?” or “What have you observed so far?”  Because coaching is absolutely useless if the person being coached isn’t bought in.  

Tom Brady is not Tom Brady because Bill Belichick prescribed to him how to solve problems.  Tom Brady and Bill Belichick had a partnership where they each had an insatiable desire to get better, and they respected each other’s expertise to get there.

So the first piece of coachability is openness to it.  After that, though, I think the next piece of it is trust.  I have a lot to say about trust – probably a whole post’s worth at least – but in this context, I need to trust that my coach is completely invested in seeing me get better.  Trust is not easy, and trusting someone requires relinquishing some amount of control, and of surrendering some ego.

Now, say I’m open to being coached (I want to get better using this method), and I trust my coach.  The next component I need to be coachable is a desire to “participate in my own rescue.” That is, I’m the most responsible for my own success, even if my coach wants nothing more than to see me succeed.  Which, believe me, we whole-heartedly do.

Coaching is not prescriptive advice – it’s not “When you present, use fewer slides,” (although that’s almost universally good advice).  It’s “How can you better adapt this material to your audience?”  It’s not, “Your projects are always late, so I’m assigning a project manager to you,” it’s “Given your track record of missing deadlines, what can you try this time that could be more effective?”

Ultimately, the person being coached is seeking to get further on their own over time.  Being coachable means being both introspective and mindful. 

I said earlier that a lot of this is true, “if I’m in coach mode.”  A leader is not always coaching.  There are assignments that people are not ready for, vision that needs to be shared, tactical feedback to give, emergency situations, deadlines, and just plain old bad days.  There are plenty of good reasons not to coach every situation.   

But.  I don’t think there is ever a good reason to choose to add people to a team who are not coachable.  Not every day, not every situation, but generally, I only want people on my team who, every month, every quarter, are more invested than not in working harder to get better than doing anything else.  

For further reading, my manager suggested I read The Tao of Coaching, which I now recommend to you.

I’m a huge crossword puzzle aficionada.  On a typical week, I do the Saturday puzzle in the New York Times, the puzzles on Brendan Emmett Quigley’s site, the AVCX puzzle (which has recently expanded), the Inkubator puzzle, and the Hub crosswords.)

We’ll get into my sudoku, Wordle, and Spelling Bee obsessions some other day.

On New Year’s Day, 31A was clued as, “Start of many a Google search.” 

I penciled in “HOW.”

Nope, a few minutes later (OK, like thirty frustrating minutes later I realized that wouldn’t work – it needed to start with a “W”. 

“WHY,” I wrote, after erasing “HOW.”

I thought about how funny it was that my gut reaction was “HOW.”  I use Google to figure out how to do things: how to fix a dishwasher, how to choose a rug, how to sell a car, how to start a campfire.  But apparently, lots of other people use Google for WHY things are; autofill showed me ‘why is the sky blue’, ‘why is russia invading ukraine’, ‘why is my eye twitching’.   

Which, like my recent observations about bakers and chefs, made me think about the composition of a good team. Teams need some people who think about “WHY” we’re seeing a certain outcome, and then you need other people who want to focus on “HOW” to execute. It’s rare that the same individual is really good at both of those things, but I’ve never seen a great team that doesn’t have a mix of both kinds of people 

“Ask good questions” is my dad’s most durable piece of advice. And you need people who can ask different kinds of questions. WHY is this campaign underperforming? WHY is the conversion rate increasing? WHY don’t we sell more services. And also HOW do we get stakeholder alignment?  HOW do we run an experiment on home page messaging?  HOW do we get more feedback from customers?

Recruiting and hiring is a skill, and it’s hard, and it’s rewarding as all get out.  But building a team – it’s taking hiring and adding massive amounts of context to the process to take the existing team into account.  No small feat.

PS: I’d be lying if said that the crossword story ended there.  “WHO” ended up being the actual answer to 31A.

I like cooking, and most weeks I try to cook dinner a few times.  The more strategic my job has gotten, the more comparative satisfaction I get at the end of a workday from being in the kitchen and creating something that has a quick payoff. 

I tolerate baking. Every once in a while I’ll make banana bread, muffins, Nigella’s granola bars, or Mark Bittman’s onion pan bread.  But baking makes me nervous. You follow the directions, then you give up control – you have to trust that it is going to bake as planned, and you don’t have many ways to alter things once it starts baking.

Not so with cooking. With cooking, you can baste, salt, cover, uncover, add liquid, stir, skim fat, thicken with cornstarch, separate into a 2nd pan, dish, or bowl, and make numerous other adjustments.  Much lower-risk, much more control, and, for me, a much better track record in coming out good.

When I was in college, I noticed that people wrote papers in one of these two ways – some wrote papers all the way through, then went back to adjust what was necessary.  Others couldn’t let a single word be wrong as they went, so when they finished once through, the paper was done.  I was the former.

And at work I see a similar bifurcation. Some people like to tinker constantly with projects (the chefs), while others “set it and forget it.”  Take the example of a Google Ads implementation.  Chefs tinker with keywords daily, and get more feedback sooner.  Bakers let experiments run for longer and see more extensive results that are probably sturdier. Chefs are more agile, and bakers more strategic.

Gourmet restaurants have both, and increasingly I’m thinking good marketing teams do too.  Too many chefs, and you can miss the big picture.  Too many bakers, and you aren’t reacting quickly enough.

There are certain characteristics I look for in every candidate I interview: curiosity, passion, and coachability, to name a few.  And as my team has gotten bigger, I’ve also looked for particular skillsets that would complement those that my team members have.  For example, in the past few years I’ve actively sought out people who had a good grasp of core marketing tactics, and people who were good at execution, when I thought my team was short on those capabilities.

This baker/chef characteristic seems like a good thing to keep an eye on if I’m going to have a James Beard Award-winning marketing team.

A few years ago, I wrote about the one word that changes how I answer every question.  Well, that is SO 2015.  I have a new favorite phrase now: “How should I think about XYZ?“

As a child, my father said the same thing to me before school every day: “Ask good questions.” That is, to this day, one of his only pieces of advice.  (“Do what you think is right,” is another one, as is one passed down from his father, “Don’t waste time on crudite at a cocktail hour”).

But back to “Ask good questions.”

As I’ve progressed through my career, themes of independence and decision-making have continued to express themselves.  Not going to a leader with a problem without also suggesting a solution; managing up; thinking big; being proactive.  These are time-worn adages that have served me well.  But they aren’t prescriptive.  How do you do these things?

When I’m in a crunch or a panic, it is my instinct to default to a “safe” question.

• What do you want me to do?
• How should I handle this?

This is a terrible instinct.  

It demonstrates to the person I’m talking to that I want them to take on more of the hard work of solving the problem.  And it suggests that I don’t have an opinion.  

Most often when I examine this instinct, it’s coming from a place of fear.  (Incidentally, a great source of bad instincts.  If you are ever short on bad instincts, look there.)  I know what I want to do, but I’m afraid of the impact, or of others’ opinions of my decisions. 

When I can adjust this to “How should I think about xyz,” and even add some color about my fear, I enable the other person to do a better job of coaching me.  Here are two examples:

• Typical: Dwight is not delivering at the level we expect from him.  How should I handle this?
• Better: Dwight is not delivering at the level we expect from him.  How should I think about structuring feedback most effectively. 
• Even Better: Dwight is not delivering at the level we expect from him.  I’m worried he will react poorly to this feedback and cause a cultural issue on my team.  How should I think about structuring feedback most effectively. 

• Typical: You just cut my budget in half.  Which programs should I drop?
• Better: You just cut my budget in half.  How should I think about prioritizing my program spend?
• Even Better: You just cut my budget in half.  I’m worried that the programs I can still run won’t be enough to meet all our goals.  How should I think about prioritizing my program spend? 

Coachability is one of the most important characteristics we can display to signal growth potential.  Inviting others to coach us is next level.

I’m building a new product marketing team at Mendix, and I’ve hired my first several team members.  They’re talented.  They’re hardworking.  They’re curious.  They’re fun.  They’re technical.  They’re awesome.  We’re going to be the world’s best ever product marketing team. Just one thing, none of these people are not product marketers.

I mentioned this the other day to a colleague, who asked, “why are you doing that?”  

The answer flew out of my mouth before I could think: “Because I need people who speak Customer.”

This team includes people from product management, expert services, sales engineering, and a former customer-side architect.  They haven’t joined the team knowing what a launch plan looks like, how to brief an analyst, or how to write a compelling messaging brief.  But each one of them already knows how to talk to potential customers in a way that resonates.  And if product marketing isn’t about that, what’s the point?

I’m not saying product marketing is easy – it’s not. I just think it’s orders of magnitude harder to teach someone who’s never had the exposure to customers to create content that resonates with them, than it is to teach people who have internalized customer voice and pain how to channel that into compelling marketing.

Product marketing has changed dramatically since I started years ago. Success isn’t measured by number of assets created, amount of time spent on a launch plan, or even happiness quotient of sales teams.  Success in product marketing is about moving the needle on things as macro as global market direction, as micro as customer acquisition, and everything in between.  

Look, I may have buried the lede here, but the truth is that product marketing is the center of the universe.  It’s a critical part of the engine that’s driving the growth of the company.  It sits in the intersection of product strategy, product launch, messaging, competitive positioning, and sales. 

And some of the best product marketers aren’t career product marketers at all.

My kids are learning to share and to play together.  The other day, Big (5) wandered over to Little (3) and asked if she could also play with their magnet toys that he was actively using. They were spread out on the ground and he was trying to build something. The conversation went like this:

Big: Can I play too?

Little: Sure!

Big: What can I do?

Little: 

Little had no idea how to answer that question.  And it wasn’t because he didn’t want to share. It was because he didn’t know what he was doing yet – he didn’t know how to delegate because he didn’t know what he was building yet.  He wanted to give Big a job, but he didn’t want to give her the honor/responsibility of figuring out what they would build together.

I think it’s really important as a leader to understand what I’m doing before I delegate. This is relating to the rock fetch post I wrote a while ago – how sometimes you don’t know what you’re asking someone to bring back until you see what their first specimen looks like.

Delegation is related, but different. If you’re going to trust someone to do part of a task for you, I think you do need to know what you’re goal is before you can delegate.

Over the past few years, predictions around the demise of retail have reached a fever pitch.

As a consumer, I’ve switched much of my shopping from brick and mortar to online – I’m a rabid customer of Amazon (Prime of course), and barely visit Target anymore.  We’ve started using Instacart more often in favor of a trip to the supermarket.  And twice this month I used Drizly for alcohol delivery. This is the First World, people.

But I guess I didn’t realize how bad retail was until a few trips to the mall I made recently.  I was looking for placemats.  I started at TJ Maxx, where I knew right where they were.  They had five of one kind that I liked, but I needed six. That’s par for the course for TJ Maxx, so I wasn’t too disappointed.

Next I tried Macy’s. There was a sign near the door that said, “This Macy’s has Women’s clothing and Children’s clothing.  For Menswear and Housewares, visit our other store located in this mall.  OK, except there was no map, no indication where the other store was, and nobody to ask. I mean, can you imagine going to a website and having it say, “For Menswear and Housewares, visit our other URL.”

Finally I tried Sears. Disaster. No signs, nobody to ask, and I gave up when I got to Washing Machines.

On a more recent and equally disappointing shopping trip, I was looking for black sandals.  I went to DSW, only to find that the majority of the shoes on display were available only in size 5 and size 9 or 10.  C’mon man!

I get it. Retail is dying, so stores can’t afford to hire as many employees, so the quality of service goes down.  But this is a vicious cycle. This lack of service means that I won’t shop retail again for a long time.  I will order multiple items from Amazon and Zappos and return what I don’t want. So much for going green.

I think what will happen is that retail will bifurcate to the super high-end (like Gucci, Louis Vutton, and Prada) and the super low-end (Walmart and Target).  The midrange will disappear.

It makes me wonder whether there’s a viable model similar to the old Best or Service Merchandise stores.  These were stores popular (at least in NJ) in the ’80’s. There’d be one of each item in a showroom, then you’d go to a salesperson, tell them what you wanted, and it would be waiting for you at checkout.

What if I could go to the mall, see and touch merchandise, then have it arrive in my house using 2-day Prime shipping in the right color, shape, and size. I still might do what retail wants me to do – that is, leave with more than I came in for, but I’d be assured it’s the right stuff.  There’s no way return rates wouldn’t drastically plummet with a system like this compared to today’s online model.

So come on, retail, keep it together.

We did a marketing program a few weeks back that was, by all accounts, very successful.  We got a great ROI with immediate sales opportunities, and an excellent set of leads in our core target market with which to build our database.

The only problem?  I have no idea why it worked.

It wasn’t that different from things we’ve done in the past. We marketed to a similar audience, with similar messaging, over similar media.

The thing about marketing is that at some point, it needs to become repeatable.  At some point, it can’t just be about finding something that works and getting excited, it has to be about finding something that works, getting excited, and then figuring out how to do it again. And again. And again and again and again.

Much like you can’t trust scientific results that are not replicable, you can’t build a marketing strategy around programs that are not scalable.  There are some easy wins available early in the game, but at some point scalability becomes just as important as success, because the economics of not having scalable marketing programs don’t work anymore.

So I’m off to analyze the project more completely.  Was our follow-up better?  Did we market on a different day of the week?  Was the offer worded differently?  The CTA color different?  Or has something changed externally in the market that is driving a different response to the same offer?

Because until I know the answer – know why this was successful so I can execute it again – I can’t truly call it a success.

I’ve read somewhere that Starbucks updates each store every five years, and does a more complete facelift for each store every ten years. I used to think this was for cosmetic reasons. However, with the introduction of pre-ordering drinks from the mobile app, I’ve changed my mind – redesigning stores is necessary for this sea change in how we buy coffee.

If you’re not familiar with ordering Starbucks on your mobile app, it’s pretty simple. You can choose any Starbucks drink or food item, customize however you’d like, choose your local store, pay on your phone, and then go to the store. Your drink is waiting for you on the bar when you arrive!

It’s nice because it’s fast, there’s no waiting for a barista to prepare your drink, and if you happen to like a half-caf, skim, no whip, three pump white chocolate mocha with a caramel drizzle, well then you skirt the shame of needing to order that out loud in front of other humans.

The latest estimate I found was that 7% of orders were mobile orders last September, but in some locations up to 20% are mobile at peak time.  I’d bet you a Frappuccino that number has gone up.

This has created two interrelated problems at Starbucks stores. One, the stores are currently staffed and managed to handle multiple people walking in and ordering drinks. With increasingly more people using mobile ordering, I’ve noticed several times when there are one or more cashiers waiting for customers to arrive, while the barista(s) are behind on drink orders, since so many are coming in through the mobile app.

The other problem is one of store layout. This is why Starbucks’ policy of updating stores every few years will be crucial to this working out. The thing about walking into a Starbucks is that most of them are designed with a lot of thought put into the experience of walking in. It’s clear where to go to order, it’s clear what direction the line goes in, it’s easy to browse merchandise while you’re waiting (which is good for Starbucks, I’m sure), and then it’s clear where to go to wait for your drink.

Now, however, many customers are coming into stores to pick up drinks they’ve already ordered. It’s not always obvious how to wend one’s way through the tables to get to the bar. It’s not always obvious who to talk to for your drink. There’s not always enough space at the bar for the proper number of people to wait for their drinks. There’s not always enough counter space to store the drinks that are ready.  And while you’re waiting for your drink, you can’t easily browse merchandise.

The square footage of stores is probably not the problem here, but the layout is. It’ll be fun to see what the newest Starbucks stores look like that are designed to optimize for mobile ordering rather than an exclusive in-store experience.