10 Jan

Creating a Powerful CxO Personal Brand, and its Corporate benefits

By TWB_ In Communication, Leadership, Strategic Marketing /   No Comments

A personal brand is not a new concept but for a CxO personal branding is not just about them, it is what it means to their companies. The value that your company derives from your personal brand may be the critical differentiator in a marketplace where companies compete for customers, investors, and employees.

How a CxO brand benefits your company

A powerful personal CxO brand can have tremendous corporate benefits because, 

  • A great CxO brand increases Company Credibility to customers: Credibility and trust have always played key roles in shaping business success but for a company, it is not easy to be seen as trustworthy — such a reputation is earned over years. However, if a high-level executive has a trustworthy, credible and believable personal brand, then their company is also seen as trustworthy, credible and believable. Anyone remembering Lee Iacocca being the face of Chrysler in its worst days knows that the trust to buy Chrysler came from him. Conversely, the loss of credibility of Travis Kalanick was leading to the loss of credibility of Uber.

 

  • A great CxO brand makes PR more Effective: Companies need all the competitive advantage they can get. A CxO’s distinct, authoritative personal brand gets easier traction than the company spokesperson. For instance, if your company needs facetime in front of the press it is easier to get a few columns in a magazine or for the magazine to profile the CxO, rather than for the magazine to profile the company. A CxO armed with a compelling personal brand — is the best pitch a company has — not just to customers but to media as well.

 

Building a powerful CxO brand

So it must be understood that both the CxO and the company are engaged in creating the CxO’s personal brand, right? Wrong. Corporate marketing and communication functions don’t always focus on individuals but rather on products and services and it is a big mistake — as we’ve seen above. Creating a powerful personal brand is also not trivial. It requires a deep dive into the individual’s attributes and competitive positioning to bring out the key differentiators, and regular communication to keep the brand relevant. It takes patience, time and smarts. Here are some attributes of a great CxO brand:

 

  • The CxO Brand is not a job description: Often, personal branding looks like a representation of one’s accomplishments and talent. Mostly it comes out as a job role, which it is not. When it is a job role it becomes interchangeable and dispensable. Some great personal branding can be seen in the case of Nandan Nilekani where he has become synonymous with character & predictable growth at Infosys to the point being brought back from retirement.

 

  • The CxO Brand is self-defined and rooted in real attributes: A CxO brand should be built around unique attributes and around the CxO’s personality. Is he/her a people person? Analytical? Brilliant? Insightful? To be effective CxOs need to have a rich, fully-realized concept of their own identity and the best way is to be genuine and authentic. People can see right through disingenuous communication and it is easy to manage an authentic personal brand on a daily basis.

 

  • The CxO Brand is not that of a Specialist: A deep dive into a specific domain is often boring for the employees you lead, interchangeable with another CxO and not inspiring. CxOs are generalists, they are multi-talented, multi-skilled, and open to many types of challenges. They stand out not because they do a few things well, but because they can do many things well.

 

  • The CxO brand should tell a story: If your personal brand isn’t telling a story there is nothing unique and personalized about it. You and your company are still vulnerable because you’re interchangeable. The most effective personal branding strategy is to build a true narrative around who you are, your life experiences and what you wish to influence.

 

  • The CxO brand has consistency and depth: Being consistent means to demonstrate consistency across your communication, gravitas, and appearance. Each of the aspects that your brand highlights have to be backed by tremendous depth of vision, knowledge, and content — consistently. Small inconsistencies can derail personal brand effectiveness.

 

  • A CxO personal brand is a lifelong project: A personal brand is a lifelong project that constantly evolves and changes. So be prepared to invest your time in the long run to build your brand.

Conclusion

A CxO personal brand can be a major force that works in favor of your company. Not enough companies know how to truly leverage the personal brands of their CxOs and not enough CxOs realize that a personal brand doesn’t just impact them at an individual level but impacts entire companies. It is imperative that the CxO take the time and effort to create a respected personal brand that bristles with authenticity and authority and is seen as an industry voice.

Rakesh Shukla, Chief Executive & Founder, TWB_ I The Agency for Technology Brands I www.twb.in

Rakesh Shukla, TWB_ CEO

Tech Entrepreneur, TEDx speaker & Philanthropist, Rakesh Shukla is a BTech-MBA & CEO of the world leader in communications for technology businesses with a worldwide Fortune 500 customer base. Rakesh is a speaker on Leadership, Strategic Marketing, Strategic Communications, creating world-class bootstrapped Startups & resurgence in business. He lives with 800 rescued dogs, has no work-life balance and will not have it any other way! Rakesh has been featured in 100+ interviews on the BBC, CNN, Al-Jazeera, CNN-IBN, NDTV, India’s national dailies etc.

Want to create a powerful Personal CxO brand?

  • TWB_ is the voice of many Technolgy CxO and provides a detailed analysis of how to brand, provides long term content support and digital presence to these CxO’s.
  • TWB_ makes complex technical and business ideas of technology leaders across the world easily understood by their stakeholders. Over forty Fortune 500 technology majors in Information Technology, Defense & Aerospace, Engineering, Energy & Life Sciences in the US, India, Europe, Taiwan, China & Japan leverage TWB_ expertise.
  • Call  TWB_ Bangalore 96860 59020 | Houston (832)689-6456 | Tel Aviv +972.544.603.612 or mail shift@twb.in
  • Get more TWB_ insights on the TWB_ Blog | LinkedIn | Medium  | SlideShare
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Market & Competitive Intelligence I TWB_
27 Dec

Market Intelligence for Startups 101

By TWB_ In Leadership, Product Strategy, Strategic Marketing /   No Comments

Market intelligence can be the difference between success & failure of a startup. Market intelligence is mission critical in that it enables you to understand your competitors, customers, and other business environment factors. Most entrepreneurs do not fully appreciate the importance of market intelligence or approach it as a strategic business function though. 

For the most part, entrepreneurs think Market Intelligence is what large companies with their big desks of people churning numbers from a variety of sources including paid reports and open sources. A lot of startups, therefore, rely on gut feel and seat of the pants driving and the VC inputs – to shape and design their products, map out competition and gauge the response of the market they wish to disrupt. But it is not, and it should not be the exclusive preserve of large tech companies.

What does Market Intelligence answer for a startup?

Market intelligence is a good start point to gather evidence for the assumptions of your business. Evidence comes in the form of both qualitative and quantitative information, collected from primary and secondary research that mitigates risk and guides investment. This doesn’t occur only in large companies with a large budget. As an entrepreneur, your investment decisions are even more critical for your success because they may be based on critical cash flows.

What differentiates the custom Market Intelligence TWB_ provides? We focus on creating ‘actionable insights’ married to your strategy rather than more data on your desk.

Market Intelligence can help identify opportunities and monitor market threats. You can create a feedback loop of learning and action involving customers, competition and your marketing action. You can lower the risk of new products or services that you plan to introduce.  Some of what you can answer is,

  • Where, how and who are you going to sell to? That includes geography, pricing models etc.
  • What kind of business models exists? What is the size of each?
  • What are your potential and addressable market? What do you substitute and solve?
  • Are you really disruptive? What are you replacing?
  • Who are your direct competitors? Do they have a diversified portfolio? What is your competitive advantage?
  • How are you going to position yourself? How will you move with market plays
  • Do you compare product/technology claims?
  • What are your weaknesses and strengths in capabilities, USP’s, value & quality, financials, cashflow, people?
  • What is the regulatory environment?

TWB_ Market Intelligence synthesis

What is special about TWB_?

In one word ‘insights’ rather than more data. TWB_ does not just produce data points, rather,

  • Synthesizes research findings & develop insights
  • Uses a perceptual map to build your brand story
  • Defines market segmentation and explain its benefits
  • Conjoint analysis to compute the relative importance of product features
  • Compare various brands and attributes using a perceptual map
  • and lastly, bring a full portfolio of strategic branding and marketing content to help execute your plan

Market intelligence is critical and core process and TWB_ is the partner to produce reliable market intelligence that you factor into your strategic decision making. Market intelligence is an essential tool for viewing the marketplace and making investment decisions and TWB_ has been doing that for the largest telecommunication, life sciences, semiconductor and others for years. It is from that experience we know that it does not have to be a captive function, nor does it have to be standard off the shelf reports. Market Intelligence can be custom, agile, incremental to your needs and focused on actionables rather than data given your positioning and growth trajectory.

Rakesh Shukla, Chief Executive & Founder, TWB_ I The Agency for Technology Brands I www.twb.in

Rakesh Shukla, TWB_ CEO

Tech Entrepreneur, TEDx speaker & Philanthropist, Rakesh Shukla is a BTech-MBA & CEO of the world leader in communications for technology businesses with a worldwide Fortune 500 customer base. Rakesh is a speaker on Leadership, Strategic Marketing, Strategic Communications, creating world-class bootstrapped Startups & resurgence in business. He lives with 800 rescued dogs, has no work-life balance and will not have it any other way! Rakesh has been featured in 100+ interviews on the BBC, CNN, Al-Jazeera, CNN-IBN, NDTV, India’s national dailies etc.

Are you wanting to have real Market Intelligence to help make decisions?

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Rakesh Shukla on Agile HR
21 Dec

Agile HR: Employee management by walking around

By TWB_ In HR Communication, Internal Communications, Leadership /   No Comments

Before talking about agile HR let’s circle back to earlier TWB_ writing on HR engagements — both on Internal communication and Employee focused communication.  It is clear that the role and expectation of the HR function is changing and so is the need and method of communication. But there are 2 major factors in understanding employee issues and engaging with them (a) A large part of the communication in an office is non-official and happens through informal channels – mostly not something HR participates in and in many cases discourages (b) In many organizations the relationship with HR itself is almost adversarial especially if communication and engagement has focussed not on problem-solving but management and policy messaging.

It turns out that the turn of the century theory of Management by Walking Around may be the solution for a 2020 problem – since it addresses both participation & opening informal channels, as well as creates an open empathetic approach to employee engagement.

1980s redux

In 1982, management consultants Tom Peters and Robert H. Waterman proposed the concept in their book In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best Run Companies. In the book, Peters and Waterman examined successful companies, realizing a common nominator for the most successful. They noticed that good managers tend to communicate a lot better with their team. And they do that in informal ways, like just hanging around in the office and chatting with their team, rather than having formal interaction sessions in their cabins or boardrooms. Sam Walton, for instance, was a great exponent of this practice. He idea gained further attention when William Hewlett and David Packard, the founders of Hewlett Packard, mentioned the theory to be part of the “HP Way”. Peters and Waterman noticed these managers were more aware of the operations and in general, had better ability to solve problems. Peters went on to write a book A Passion for Excellence in which he continued to assert the style as the core element of excellent leadership.

The emphasis is on the word walking as an unplanned movement within a workplace, rather than a plan where employees expect a visit from managers at more systematic, pre-approved or scheduled times.

The idea of this practice is to listen. You must also respond to ideas or problems voiced and take effective action about them. The expected benefit is that by random sampling of events or employee discussions, it is more likely to facilitate improvements to the morale, sense of organizational purpose, productivity and total quality management of the organization. This is compared to remaining in a specific office area and waiting for employees, or the delivery of status reports, to arrive there, as events warrant in the workplace.

The HR takeaway

While it applies to the business world in general, and indeed legendary CEOs from Steve Jobs to Jack Welch have been proponents of it, it has a special significance in HR of today’s tech environment. The core is a 3-step process:

  1. To have HR management walking around in an unstructured and unplanned manner amongst the employees with the objective to understand how they are performing, what is keeping them back, what policies enable them to do their best, which ones hinder performance and be the management’s 1st stop to better understand the issues, ideas, and concerns of the teams.
  2. Then formally collate this and share the findings with management – in a structured way and with recommendations on what will improve the on-the-ground situation. Remember this is not a ‘telling on employees’ session.
  3. Ensuring management can act on the findings and in time such that the employees establish correlation.

The HR Checklist of Management by Walking Around

  1. Time is unstructured, the purpose is not: Don’t aimlessly walk around saying ‘Hi’ — the key motivation is to strike up conversations directly related to the work and on personal issues. The focus is on learning from these spontaneous and non-planned interactions.
  2. Manage your day: It is easy to realize that the day is over – so you must create a system to engage on a regular basis.
  3. Don’t single out people or teams: Many a time there is direct organizational feedback on specific teams or people, but do not single them out. You must interact across teams. Remember you are not here to take stories back to management but to understand issues. Employees should not feel this is a management bait to get information about certain issues or people.
  4. Extroverted & Introverted: People are of all kinds. Some talk easily some don’t, but you can’t pick favorites in listening to opinions.
  5. Focus on learning about the employee and their opinion: Your objective is to gather information beneficial in making decisions and resolving problems. Make sure you have written down you insite immediately and are able to cross reference with other employees if the feedback is about a team or organization.
  6. Build employee confidence: As an HR leader, you must be good at reading subtle signs of people. Employees must trust you and the interaction must be honest with you.
  7. Communicate the company’s values: Use the interaction to strengthen the employee’s understanding of the company’s values and vision.
  8. Understand people personally: People respond to work on what is happening in their private lives. So you also want to understand personal lives, to strengthen employee motivation.
  9. Be willing to act: If a team member needs urgent help, you must be willing to lead by example and provide support on the spot. The method has a sense of urgency to it and it isn’t about “looking into it”, but getting problems fixed quickly. Remember in business and in HR, people buy people.
  10. Don’t overstep your time: The nature of the style can cause a disturbance, as you are effectively stepping in on someone’s scheduled workday to take time to talk about things in an unorganized manner. If you do it too often, the subordinates’ ability to perform at work might suffer.
  11. Seek neutral spaces: Ensure that the conversations take place in neutral spaces (outside of your office) and in a relaxed environment. Over lunch is a good example or while the other person is getting a cup of coffee.
  12. Maintain a positive body language: Remember you are putting yourself and the other person in an unexpected situation. First, you need to relax. If you are casual about the situation and you treat it as an opportunity to have a chat and not a formal conversation, you can make the situation less daunting.
  13. Focus on positive recognition: You don’t want to come across as an inquisitor walking around interrogating people. One way is to positively recognize the employee as well as others who are role models in the organization. If you encourage people with positive feedback, give credit for the ideas you hear and share the success stories with everyone, you strengthen subordinates’ motivation to work hard and to share their concerns and ideas.
  14. Don’t do it because you feel obliged to:  If you are not the sort of person who can easily engage – this probably won’t work very well.
  15. Gauging the level of trust: If people don’t trust you they will think that you’re interfering or spying. Gauge the level of trust and engagement style of the employee as you engage. For instance, a team member may be happy to engage within earshot of other employees while another may not or it may be about discussing personal issues or talking about the relationship to management.
  16. Never sell people out: Even if the information shared with you is critical of policy or management, it is NOT your job to quote the employee back. Maintaining complete confidentiality is critical to any further engagement.
  17. Listen, don’t critique or argue: Give them your undivided attention. Listen and observe more than you talk. When you talk, be open and truthful. If you don’t know the answer to someone’s question, find it out afterward and follow up. If you can’t share something, say so. Speaking half-truths can break down trust. Even if you are challenged hold back from retorting. This is about them, not you.
  18. Don’t bring an entourage: This approach works best as a sequence of one-on-one conversations. Bringing aides or assistants with you will probably kill the discussion before it starts.

How is this Agile HR?

It is an effective strategy to remove the ‘management bubble’ and allow the company to have a realistic idea of what is going on. Feedback on problems and ideas is instant, resulting in faster actions. It can also enhance operational efficiency and improve employee morale and motivation. Thus creating a better understanding of the correct operational decisions that must be made.

Conclusion

Management by Walking Around can be an effective and practical way to keep up with what’s happening within your team and your organization. It can dramatically change the speed at which you gather information, the issues that impact the organization, the trust that you’ll build and the speed with which the organization can respond. It is simple to execute, does not cost anything and is a great way to build an open culture and keep the company vision in front. As people feel listened to they feel more a part of the organization and valued and employees who feel valued don’t leave.

 

Rakesh Shukla, Chief Executive & Founder, TWB_ I The Agency for Technology Brands I www.twb.in

Rakesh Shukla, TWB_ CEO

Tech Entrepreneur, TEDx speaker & Philanthropist, Rakesh Shukla is a BTech-MBA & CEO of the world leader in communications for technology businesses with a worldwide Fortune 500 customer base. Rakesh is a speaker on Leadership, Strategic Marketing, Strategic Communications, creating world-class bootstrapped Startups & resurgence in business. He lives with 800 rescued dogs, has no work-life balance and will not have it any other way! Rakesh has been featured in 100+ interviews on the BBC, CNN, Al-Jazeera, CNN-IBN, NDTV, India’s national dailies etc.

Are you looking to create or improve how HR Communicates?

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HR Employee Communication I TWB_
18 Dec

How to Super-Charge your HR Communication: Inspiring Employees to Excel

By TWB_ In Corporate Training, HR Communication, Internal Communications /   No Comments
If you are reading this you perhaps handle the Human Resources(HR) function in your company and know the strategic role it plays in the workplace culture and employee performance. You are the first touch points for employee’s issues and communication requirements. In this environment, HR communication is far too important to leave to chance. Not doing it right causes employee engagement to drop, productivity to fall and business performance to suffer.

“Companies with highly effective change management & communication are 3.5x more likely to significantly outperform their industry peers. At the same time, only 40% of employees globally are highly engaged with their job – and the rate is declining”

First on ask yourself this question – do you operate across the communication spectrum in a planned way or do you communicate reactively what the management requires?

  1. Increasing Engagement: Communication focuses on connect staff and improve their job satisfaction, productivity, and organizational success.
  2. Employee Benefits: Communication focuses on increasing awareness of healthcare programs, compensation packages and more.
  3. Internal Policy: Communication focuses on new policies and reminders on existing ones.
  4. Health and Safety: Communication focuses on informing employees about health and safety issues and ensuring compliance.
  5. Communicating Change: Communication focuses on changes within the organization and organizations business environment.
  6. Workplace Wellness: Communication focuses on improving employee health, reducing absenteeism, and driving business performance.

Typically items 1 through 4 are overserved and 5 & 6 are underserved. Overall this communication is critical but not always exciting for employees so how do you make this communication stick? First on – use your marketing/ internal/ corporate communication teams’ playbook — better still rope them in!

Designing the communication

  1. Keep it fresh: Your employees don’t want to read the same thing. Reframe the communication, highlight a different aspect if resharing. Reduce ‘message wear-out’.
  2. Measure effectiveness: How many people opened the communication, how many acted on any follow-up action – always have some follow up action 🙂
  3. Use Data: What does the data say about employees’ behaviors and preferences. Capture, analyze, use. What do they need more of? What do they want less of?
  4. Focus on User Experience: What is the response you want to invoke? Marketers design for user experience by default and you should too.
  5. Mass Personalisation: How do you make the employee feel you are talking to him/her specifically? Is your salutation personalized? Do you communicate using their demographic – aspirational – lifestyle language (like marketers do)? Where do you reach them?
  6. Bring a sense of purpose: What makes your employees tick, what are their personal aspirations and how do you connect that to the workplace? What is the emotional connection to this and the emotional investment you see?
  7. Go Mobile: In the world where that is the preferred screen – how do you talk?

HR not just helps employees get aligned to corporate goals but increasingly they influence employees’ personal finance, their health, and their future. Creating a great employee experience starts with getting the right person getting the right message at the right time.

 

Rakesh Shukla, Chief Executive & Founder, TWB_ I The Agency for Technology Brands I www.twb.in

Rakesh Shukla, TWB_ CEO

Entrepreneur, TEDx speaker & Philanthropist, Rakesh Shukla is a BTech-MBA & CEO of the world leader in communications for technology businesses with a worldwide Fortune 500 customer base. Rakesh is a speaker on Leadership, Strategic Marketing, Strategic Communications, creating world-class bootstrapped Startups & resurgence in business. He lives with 800 rescued dogs, has no work-life balance and will not have it any other way! Rakesh has been featured in 100+ interviews on the BBC, CNN, Al-Jazeera, CNN-IBN, NDTV, India’s national dailies etc.

Are you looking to create or improve your HR Communications?

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Internal Communication with TWB_ I www.twb.in
12 Dec

Internal Communications & HR are strategic partners

By TWB_ In Internal Communications /   No Comments

Organizational goals are achieved faster and more effectively when HR and Internal Communications partner to achieve higher employee engagement and employee happiness.

Have you faced a situation where critical changes in a company, be it senior management changes or M&A news comes to your employees via social or news media rather than from internal corporate sources — such as Human Resources (HR) or a corporate announcement? When it happens you surely know the adverse impact on employee trust & commitment. There is a tremendous body of research that points to the relationship between organizational success and employee involvement and open and effective communication with employees.

While there is a cost of failed communication and an incentive to manage communications the question is who should do the messaging? Should it rest with HR which is most concerned with employee needs, or should it rest with Internal Communications who are professional communicators? Both HR and Internal Communications are about influencing & persuading employees but they go about it differently —  it’s HR’s job to formulate policies and the communication professional to brand the message.

The need to partner

The role of HR communication is centered on what a business needs to achieve and why an employee would be motivated to achieve it. However, the HR subject-matter itself can be complex, wrapped in policy and difficult to communicate – let alone inspire a workforce. Internal Communication, on the other hand, focuses on employee engagement and how communication is created, managed and optimized and is a complex process that demands a unique set of skills. More often than not Internal communication professionals have a strong PR and communications background. It is imperative that specialists be hired for each role, but they work together for organizational goals. 

Internal Communication & HR 

  • A strategic relationship with HR: To begin with, most HR knowledge and information is kept confidential and on a need to know basis. In such a culture not just what to communicate but how to communicate is critical – which is not the core skill of HR staff members. Some organizations consider Internal communication an HR function but it is a strategic relationship.
  • Communication is strategic: With an empowered Internal Communication team one great advantage is it not only communicates the HR message to the employees but carries the employee message and perspective into advertising, branding and public relations. This further gets weaved into communications with areas like finance, marketing and CxO messaging.
  • Outside in-view for employee needs: The HR organization ‘is’ the employee engagement process and therefore a lot of communication needs and responses are assumed or implicit, something that the communications specialists are not likely to do. HR and Communications bring different perspectives.
  • Specialists understand branding: Internal branding is as important as external branding and professional communicators are trained to weave a branding & language depending on whether the message is going to employees or some other including current customers, prospective customers, shareholders, regulators, legislators, media and the external community.

Working effectively together

There are several ways HR and Internal Communications can build a strategic partnership, including

  • Empathy in communication: HR often has a very intimate & personal understanding of people, their motivations and goals which allows communication to touch their feelings and include their points of view.
  • Active listening: HR engages in a lot of active listening and being included in some of this engagement can make a tremendous difference to the communication that goes out to employees.
  • Trusted communication: Having an honest feedback mechanism between the HR, Internal Communications and employees is the best way to create a trusted communication channel, create high employee branding and minimize information gaps.
  • Common Intent: Dovetailing communication strategies and intent allows both HR and Internal Communication to focus on corporate goals and minimize duplicated effort.

Organizational goals are achieved faster and more effectively when HR and Internal Communications work as complementary departments to achieve higher employee engagement and employee happiness.

Rakesh Shukla, Chief Executive & Founder, TWB_ I The Agency for Technology Brands I www.twb.in

Rakesh Shukla, TWB_ CEO

Entrepreneur, TEDx speaker & Philanthropist, Rakesh Shukla is a BTech-MBA & CEO of the world leader in communications for technology businesses with a worldwide Fortune 500 customer base. Rakesh is a speaker on Leadership, Strategic Marketing, Strategic Communications, creating world-class bootstrapped Startups & resurgence in business. He lives with 800 rescued dogs, has no work-life balance and will not have it any other way! Rakesh has been featured in 100+ interviews on the BBC, CNN, Al-Jazeera, CNN-IBN, NDTV, India’s national dailies etc.

Are you looking to create or improve your Internal Communications?

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Convert SMEs to Brand Ambassadors
30 Aug

How do you make your SMEs your Brand Ambassadors?

By TWB_ In Corporate Training, Strategic Marketing /   No Comments

Transition your tech savvy but media-shy SMEs into your brand ambassadors & industry stalwarts.

In the words of Peter Drucker ‘no matter what other roles you have in a company, you always have a sales role’.

Pretty much any company out there wants to engage more effectively with its stakeholders – internal and external  -customers included. In an increasingly engaged world with the amount of information that is available to your customers from your competition – how do you stand out? Is it a struggle to find people within the company that will engage for you? Are you struggling with this ball falling between marketing, sales, product management and other functions?

What if your SMEs were the best Authors & Presenters?

They are the ones who live with it, create it, troubleshoot it. But they also articulate it the least, and perhaps the least well because that has never been an expectation. What if the same SMEs wrote world-class content and were suave presenters?

It is NOT that difficult to help change your SME’s into confident communicators across mediums such as public speaking, presentations, and meetings, e-mails, or authoring high-quality papers and reports. And publishing and engaging with PR, Media and the industry.

How does TWB_ help make this transition?

TWB broadly provides two kinds of interventions:

  • A range of corporate trainings that allow for SMEs to write & present technical ideas in the form of content and language that is suitable for business audiences. This ranges from research papers, white papers, blog posts, op-ed pieces etc. They also learn to engage in inclusive conversations across these interactions.
  • A range of authoring services where we research and produce most of the technically tough content. These services support a range of professionals from SMEs to CEO’s. All are meant to articulate your position and proposition effectively.

Get TWB_ to make this transition. Your business will never be the same again because the people who understand your tech the best will now articulate it the best as well. It has a direct revenue impact.

Looking for a Strategic Marketing partner to create market wins?

  • TWB_ is the world leader in creating & publishing ‘deep content’ – that is Whitepapers, Position papers, and tech evangelism;  ‘engaging content’ – that is blogs, social media posts, explainer videos etc (1-2 minute); and training on how to. TWB_ is the leader in communicating technology. Any Technology. Any audience. Any platform.
  • Strategic Marketing, Branding & Positioning from TWB_ helps Fortune500 and startups win in the marketplace. Call  TWB_ Bangalore 96860 59020 | Houston (832)689-6456 | Tel Aviv +972.544.603.612 or mail shift@twb.in
  • Get more TWB_ insights on the TWB_ Blog | LinkedIn | Medium  | SlideShare
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Worlds best whitepapers come from TWB_
20 Aug

How to write & publish the best whitepapers in the world?

By TWB_ In Strategic Marketing /   No Comments

Writing whitepapers is a pain, isn’t it? Your best brains — who should be writing them just don’t have the inclination. Besides even with the best ideas it requires methodical authoring and weeks of research, editing, layout design to make a top quality whitepaper. It is a system that has to work flawlessly several times a month!

Why write whitepapers at all?

Complex technical ideas that you wish to communicate to architects and CTO’s can’t really be communicated any other way. Whitepapers are a key part of the ‘deep content’ that customers look for to understand your take on a technology they are considering. Whitepapers are an essential tool in establishing credibility and generating leads.

How to author & publish the world’s best whitepapers?

You need to address several challenges – which department will author the paper? For instance, the marketing department may not always understand the deep tech. Or the product engineering may not be best to author in the first place because of language and representation? Then who will ensure research and cross-reference and the layouts and editing are of the highest quality?

It so happens that we have the process of creating the best whitepapers. So much so that chances are the whitepapers that your team downloaded for your choice of technology partners, servers, software, cloud computing infrastructure, security pretty much any large decision — came from TWB_. We write the best whitepapers for the Fortune 500 & for startups.

TWB_ is the Agency for Technology Brands

Looking for a Strategic Marketing partner to create market wins?

  • TWB_ is the world leader in creating & publishing ‘deep content’ – that is Whitepapers, Position papers, and tech evangelism;  ‘engaging content’ – that is blogs, social media posts, explainer videos etc (1-2 minute); and training on how to. TWB_ is the leader in communicating technology. Any Technology. Any audience. Any platform.
  • Strategic Marketing, Branding & Positioning from TWB_ helps Fortune500 and startups win in the marketplace. Call  TWB_ Bangalore 96860 59020 | Houston (832)689-6456 | Tel Aviv +972.544.603.612 or mail shift@twb.in
  • Get more TWB_ insights on the TWB_ Blog | LinkedIn | Medium  | SlideShare
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Technology Manager in Leadership Roles - by Rakesh Shukla, Chief Executive and Founder, TWB_
01 Jan

Moving Technical Managers to Management Roles: Leadership Transformations by TWB_

By TWB_ In Communication, Corporate Training, Leadership /  9 No Comments

Technical Managers moving into Management roles is a script that plays out every day in large tech companies. Managers with the best technical expertise and ability to reach performance goals consistently are the first consideration for senior management roles. It is clearly an expectation from managers that they are promoted to management, the management thinks it is great because it represents continuity and that deep understanding of technologies, products and systems. Until it hits everyone.

The new management candidate gets increasingly frustrated because they spend little time using their technical skills and instead on  “people problems,” navigating office politics, and coordinating.  Such a transition hits hard because there is a no clear fit of existing skills to new professional demands and there is no quick way to acquire them. In this article, we’ll explore how the HR/ Management of the company, the Tech-manager can make the transition. This transition can occur from early to mid-career roles, and again from mid-career to management. Here’s what each of the participants in this situation should need to consider to get Technical Managers to move into Management roles:

The HR/ Management checklist to promoting Technical/ Functional Managers

Making this transition to Mangement roles gets harder as the candidate gains years and experience — so the first thing to consider is transitions that come earlier in career say in the middle management level.  To begin with, how do you determine that functional/technical manager is a good candidate for a management role? To begin with they should have demonstrated these skills:

 

  1. Great Communication & People skills: (S)He has strong great writing, oratorial and presentation skills as well as people skills.
  2. Willingness to suspend ego gratification:  to concentrate on helping others succeed: Management is about ensuring success at an organisational level and is not about pursuing personal success or fulfilment as much as it is one’s colleagues and co-workers.
  3. Strong ‘hard skills’: They need to not only have great organizational, project management, and budgeting skills management requires being able to task-switch among them. It also requires overall inputs into detailed deliverables, and to manage — people, time, technology and money — in getting things done.
  4. Strong strategic thinking bias: They need to have a deep understanding of how the technology works to help businesses and organizations meet their goals and objectives. This requires an understanding of the risks and rewards that technology presents, and how to produce the best returns on customers’ investments and activities.
  5. Ability to manage communications in both directions: Success depends on understanding the needs of those above and below them in the organizational chart. Stakeholders are on both sides with management the incumbent has to communicate to both sets carrying expectations, instructions but most of corporate goals and actions to produce the most positive outcomes possible.

The Technical/ Functional Managers checklist to Management position

If you are a technical or functional manager moving into a management position you need to prepare yourself these 2 fundamental shifts:

  1. The first is your mindset has to change — Your technical knowledge is only limited help in your new management role as you now have to focus on the skills and successes that involves multiple functions and teams.
  2. The second is that your identity in the company will change –Being a superstar in your functional role will not save you from starting at the beginning again, and you need to be prepared for this “identity demotion.”

Here are some steps you can take to make your transition into a management role smooth

  1. Solving Strategic Problems: You need to translate problem-solving into a management context. Problems will require multiple functions within the company and other industry players etc to solve. Reading on cutting-edge business thinking can allow you to think & engage on a broader front.
  2. Build a cross-functional understanding: Technical Managers frequently have a narrow worldview. Unless you understand and leverage the marketers, sales, operations and and others, you will struggle to move beyond your role as a technical manager.
  3. Find a mentor — Look for someone in your organization who has succeeded in a management role coming from a functional role. A mentor can help you avoid some of the mistakes that they made and help get across to the right people within the organization critical for your success.
  4. Stay away from technical work– Resist the temptation to get involved with technical projects that aren’t your responsibility.
  5. Meet with your reports and their teams —  Meeting them allows you to find out what interests and motivates them, and they have the professional environment necessary to be successful in their role. It also allows you to find out what your team expects from you.
  6. Be a good communicator —  You need to learn how to write, learning how to speak and learn how to behave as ‘management’. Emails need to be crafted with care and sensitivity. Communication needs to demonstrate your intelligence, knowledge and thoughtfulness.
  7. Dress up: Your colleagues, the industry and ecosystem you inhabit expects it. Always dress the part for the position.

Technical & functional managers from IT, finance, sales, or marketing are promoted to management because they know their job well. The problem is that they have little management experience and most organizations offer very little management assistance.  In a management role instead of focussing on macro influences, strategic issues, and “people aspect” of their new role, they continue to stay in their comfort zone — their own projects and technical skills. It is important for the organization to focus on how to make the transition smooth so the organization benefits from the deep functional understanding that the incumbent brings as well as fresh ideas and thinking.

 

Rakesh Shukla, Chief Executive & Founder, TWB_ I The Agency for Technology Brands I www.twb.in

Rakesh Shukla, TWB_

Entrepreneur, TEDx speaker, Philanthropist, Rakesh Shukla is a 1996 MBA graduate and 1993 BTech. Rakesh Shukla is the Founder & CEO of TWB_ which is the partner for technology & business content for Fortune 500 leaders worldwide. A motivational speaker he speaks on creating success from professional and personal failure. He divides time between his 2 homes in Bangalore and is called the ‘dog-father’ for being papa to the 750 rescued dogs that live with him at the VOSD Dog Sanctuary. Rakesh has featured in 100+ interviews on the BBC, CNN, Al-Jazeera, CNN-IBN, NDTV, India’s national dailies, and at TEDx talks.

 

 

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Storytelling for Business - by Rakesh Shukla, Chief Executive and Founder, TWB_
30 Dec

Great storytelling for business leadership: What makes listeners connect?

By TWB_ In Communication, Corporate Training, Leadership /  10 No Comments

How many of your management team are true leaders — those who can inspire the organization, set a vision, teach important lessons, define culture and explain what the organization. Of those who are, how many are great communicators? Turns out some of the leadership and all of the communication are learnt skills. The easiest and the most powerful communication skill is telling great stories or ‘storytelling’.

Storytelling is critical for management and leadership because very often nothing else works. Graphs will leave listeners untouched. Conversation and dialogue can be too didactic. But the same listener can be moved with a great story. Storytelling in the business context translates abstract numbers into compelling statements of a leader’s goals —  by drawing the listener(s) into the story. Though business cases are made of hard numbers, stories make them spring to life because storytelling can show causal relationships. The question, therefore, is not about telling or not but rather to tell them unwittingly and clumsily or intelligently and skillfully. Storytelling can be learned by anyone who wants to be a leader — CXOs, Senior and Middle management.

Why is storytelling important?

In a  meeting or a talk in a short time-span, a leader can communicate maybe only 1 or 2 powerful ideas. Storytelling, however, allows for multi-layered complex ideas to be told since they are not sequential but interwoven. It is this association that and sharing of complex ideas that can allow leaders to – spark change, transmitting values, share knowledge and lead people into the future.

Leaders establish credibility through telling stories. The audience can feel and respond immediately and deeply. Stories can communicate complex ideas, break status quo, generate interaction & transformation. Rather than merely advocating and counter-advocating positions through constructed and business focussed meetings, talks, emails and other such communication a  story, especially a personal one, breaks through the acceptance barrier. Communication becomes empowering – even as the leader comes across as more vulnerable – yet someone who is still a leader because (s)he has persevered.  

Why is storytelling so powerful?

Storytelling draws in the listener and draws on the active, participation of individuals as against conventional management focuses on lifeless elements  – mission statements,  strategies, processes, budgets and assets. Stories make people discover a degree of coherence that is otherwise very difficult to achieve — something that has been an underlying principle of psychotherapy.

When a listener hears a story that touches him or her they feel their lives have a meaning.  This feeling eventually vaporises and the listener inevitably falls back into an everyday pattern — but with the difference that a radical shift in their lives have taken place and their motivation and behavior are primed for change.

What makes a good story and a good story-teller?

First and foremost the story needs to be personal and it needs to imply values. People make deep associations with leaders that have the courage to tell a strong personal story, and where the story implies certain values. The second is that the audience associates with people with a ‘consistent’ self‐image. For a leader, it is important to have a clear view of a personal life‐story that is aligned that is the thrust what you want the audience to see.

The leader tells a story to show people who they are. Their identity as an individual doesn’t lie in their roles, it is in the one‐of‐a‐kind person they have become as a result of the experiences they’ve had. The leader must tell stories interactively and model it on a conversation — that creates a relationship between the leader and the listener that is symmetrical — such that the listener could speak next. It is this feeling with the listener of being in an open conversation that the leader is vulnerable that the listener is drawn ‘into’ the story.

Types of storytelling

  • Style: The leader should tell the story as if it were being told to a single individual. The story should be kept simple, focused and clear with no alternate points of view. 
  • Don’t argue the truth: The leader should offer listeners an unobstructed view of the truth and listeners will see it and recognize it for what it is — that any reasonable person would have to agree.
  • Practice ease: Only 7% of the meaning of a communication came from the content of the words spoken 93% comes from nonverbal communication. The leader should seem spontaneous. They should choose the shape of the story and stick to it. Practice ease. 

Points of action

The story needs to have an end in mind — what do you want the listener to do when the story is over? These could include:

  • Sparking action: The story describes how a successful change was implemented in the past, but allows listeners to imagine how it might work in their situation. Communicating who they are – provides audience‐engaging drama and reveals some strength and vulnerability from the leaders past.
  • Transmitting values: The leader uses believable characters and situations and ensures the story is consistent about values and actions.  This feels familiar to the audience and will prompt discussion about why they can’t follow the same values/ action too!
  • Sharing knowledge: Leaders focus on problems and shows, in some detail, how they were corrected and why the solution worked and solicits alternative – and possibly better – solutions.
  • Leading people into the future: The leader evokes the future they want to create without providing excessive detail that will prove to be wrong.

No matter how compelling the numbers of sheets, charts or infographics if they require people to act in unfamiliar ways that is unlikely to happen. But effective storytelling often does. Storytelling can inspire people to act in unfamiliar ways. And remember storytelling not only gets the message across effectively, its incremental cost is zero. 

 

Rakesh Shukla, Chief Executive & Founder, TWB_ I The Agency for Technology Brands I www.twb.in

Rakesh Shukla, TWB_

Entrepreneur, TEDx speaker, Philanthropist, Rakesh Shukla is a 1996 MBA graduate and 1993 BTech. Rakesh Shukla is the Founder & CEO of TWB_ which is the partner for technology & business content for Fortune 500 leaders worldwide. A motivational speaker he speaks on creating success from professional and personal failure. He divides time between his 2 homes in Bangalore and is called the ‘dog-father’ for being papa to the 750 rescued dogs that live with him at the VOSD Dog Sanctuary. Rakesh has featured in 100+ interviews on the BBC, CNN, Al-Jazeera, CNN-IBN, NDTV, India’s national dailies, and at TEDx talks.

 

 

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The Essential of Branding for Technology - by Rakesh Shukla, Chief Executive and Founder, TWB_
29 Dec

Essentials of Technology Branding: Branding for High-Tech (Part I of 5) by Rakesh Shukla

By TWB_ In Communication, Content, Corporate Training, Marketing Content, Strategic Marketing /  8 No Comments

A high-tech company’s brand is not the product name, not the logo, not the tagline, nor brand colours. All these are associated with the brand – but they do not form the brand itself.  It is the name of its business. In this part 1 of 5 parts, we examine what are the drivers & characteristics of high-tech branding, how the models for FMCG branding don’t work for high-tech and what does. 

TWB_ works with the worlds leading high-tech companies, whose solution is so brilliant that significant business growth has been achieved through inbound marketing. The company and its marketing believe that if a new technology is as good as it says it is then the product can sell by itself. In the short term it may be true but in the long term, it leaves the company vulnerable to attack. The fence is the brand. 

Strong brands are forged out of an emotional connection with customers. Branding forces marketing to ask what is the number one emotion each time the customer engages with the brand. Customers experience through when they read your blog, visit your website, retweet a tweet, visit a store, call customer care or watch a product video. Building a brand, therefore, forces the company to revisit what it really is, because as we’ll see, brands are promises that deliver an experience.

Why do you need branding?

High-tech companies tend to forgo a true branding strategy in place of focusing on improving the technology on offer chiefly delivering additional features. The fast-changing pace of technology means that, although the solution might very well be the best on the market today, tomorrow, another company could bring out something that’s even better – and there is an infinite release cycle to catch up. Brand building is a strategy that looks to the long-term, with the ultimate purpose of gaining a sustainable competitive advantage, here’s how:

Branding creates differentiation

In a world of marketing plagiarism, branding is what demonstrates a company’s competitive advantage by highlighting the company’s purpose. A brand is the identity of a company. And identity is everything. Without branding, there is no differentiation.

Branding is a cushion

For a technology business to maintain its altitude over the long-term,  branding is just as important – perhaps even more important – than the technology itself. Branding – which is the branding of the company as opposed to the actual product – is what give the business a chance of long-term growth and survival.

Branding lowers perceived risk, but highlights innovation

High-Tech industries live in high uncertainty environments. Uncertainty is both about innovation (disruptive products and competitors) and markets (how quickly will the market shift?). Customers, strangely, live in a paradox — innovation is seen as a great motivator to choose a product but anything that is too disruptive and discontinuous is easy to reject, on the other hand.

  • Scepticism is inherent to innovation because new technologies tend to suffer from a liability of newness, that is, they do not have a history of past performance. Consequence there is uncertainty about technology being immature and unstable. A powerful brand can straddle this and communicate the promise.
  • Innovative products elevate perceived risk because consumer familiarity and experience is limited. The perceived risk of a new product purchase may exceed the individual’s acceptable level of risk affecting even if they are early adopters and the financial risk is with the company. Again brands provide a continuity of ‘experience’ even in times of change for both early and late adopters. 

Brands forge company identities & relationships

Brands can create growing base of employees after founders and early employees get outnumbered by new hires. Brands accelerate the depth of an ecosystem of partners. Powerful brands help attract and keep customers. It can also be a strong foundation from which to launch new products, improve relationships with channel partners, foster good communication among employees within and across business functions, and help a company better focus its resources.

Bridging the Technology-Branding gap

But if brands work so well, why don’t more high-tech companies brand more effectively? It’s because Tech managers assume that brands and brand images are relevant only when purchase decisions are “irrational” or “emotional” and seen to be the case appropriate for detergents, automobiles, and fashion. However, the evidence is totally on the contrary on performance data of markets populated by highly sophisticated and experienced customers. High ticket high-tech purchase decision as made on much the same beliefs and decision-making processes. So how do we bridge the gap and create world-class technology brands?

Product-Centric thinking: Why Tech-Managers stall branding

Most technically trained managers won’t  easily buy the idea that their businesses should be focused on brands. The first stop in having effective brand management is well your management.  Here’s why:

  1. “Why does a great tech company need brand management?” The bias is simply because managers who have grown up through the technical side of the business do not truly understand what good brand management involves and what it can do for their company. Most tech-managers think of marketing as selling, and branding as an advertising campaign or a slogan for them these are both costly and difficult to assess. For most tech-managers, the idea of developing and maintaining a strong brand simply does not resonate.
  2. “That’s what marketing does, doesn’t it?” Without C level or even Business or Product Management commitment brand management is mostly left to the marketing or sales departments. So it’s not central to the technical direction of the company. A brand remains a  logo, a trademark, a slogan, or a campaign — and marketing is supposed to handle those things.
  3. While the tech-managers don’t understand marketing, the marketing managers don’t understand technology.

The market share myth of Product-Centric thinking 

Product-Centric thinking is when managers in high-tech companies think that high-tech products and services will succeed as long as they perform as promised. A good product will satisfy customers’ needs, and develop a large install base.

  • Product-centric thinking is dangerous because customers do not necessarily experience a company’s promise of value just because its products enjoy wide acceptance.
  • Technology Managers are taught to think that market success depends primarily on the price-performance ratio and a product’s success is ensured once a large installed base is secured. It is assumed there is a customer lock in as switching costs pose a barrier to buying from other suppliers. However, monopoly power built on an overwhelming market share is not, in the end, a promise of value.

Short term – vs – Long term planning

High technology companies struggle between what they perceive as a choice: short-term product marketing versus long term brand building. Mature technology companies strike a balance as they understand the competitive advantages derived from powerful brands. Others dilute or forego branding in favor of more tactical technology evolution, new product feature sets, increased flexibility or improved price-performance. This short term focus results in a product marketing emphasis, which renders the marketing spend and message obsolete as the technology continually advances.

What then should a brand be?

A brand is the way in which customers perceive this personality. A tech company’s brand is the way in which users experience the product and service at all levels. It is the brand to which customers stay loyal to in a market where there are plenty of other similar solutions. In later parts, we’ll examine the framework of creating a technology brand and how a company develops a ‘promise of value’ for its customers.

 

Rakesh Shukla, Chief Executive & Founder, TWB_ I The Agency for Technology Brands I www.twb.in

Rakesh Shukla, TWB_

Entrepreneur, TEDx speaker, Philanthropist, Rakesh Shukla is a 1996 MBA graduate and 1993 BTech. Rakesh Shukla is the Founder & CEO of TWB_ which is the partner for technology & business content for Fortune 500 leaders worldwide. A motivational speaker he speaks on creating success from professional and personal failure. He divides time between his 2 homes in Bangalore and is called the ‘dog-father’ for being papa to the 750 rescued dogs that live with him at the VOSD Dog Sanctuary. Rakesh has featured in 100+ interviews on the BBC, CNN, Al-Jazeera, CNN-IBN, NDTV, India’s national dailies, and at TEDx talks.

 

Are you looking to create or improve your technology brand?

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