In "The Culture Code - The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups" Daniel Coyle quotes a Harvard study of more than 200 companies which measured the impact of a strong culture: net income increase of 756 percent over 11 years.

Coyle says that culture is a set of living relationships working toward a shared goal. It’s not something you are, it’s something you do. Coyle suggests that what you should do is build safety, share vulnerability, and establish purpose.

Build Safety

Clear signals of "safe connections" generate bonds of belonging or identity.  "We are close, we are safe, we share a future"

Coyle quotes Alex Pentland from the MIT Human Dynamics Lab, “Modern society is an incredibly recent phenomenon. For hundred of thousands of years, we needed ways to develop cohesion because we depended so much on each other.  We used signals long before we used language, and our unconscious brains are incredibly attended to certain types of behaviors. As far as our brain is concerned, if our social system rejects us, we could die”

Pentland’s studies show team performance is driven by five measurable factors:

• Everyone in the groups talks and listens in roughly equal measure, keeping contribution short.
• Members maintain high levels of eye contract, and their conversations and gestures are energetic.
• Members communicate directly with one another, not just the team leader.
• Members carry on back-channel or side conversations within the team.
• Membership periodically break, go exploring outside the team, and bring information back to the team.

Other Tips Coyle provides to "Build Safety" include:

• Over communicate your listening (avoid interruptions)
• Spotlight your fallibility early on; especially if you are a leader (to create safety). Leaders need to actively invite input
• Embrace the messenger (of bad news)
• Preview future connectors 
• Overdo Thank-Yous (express gratitude)
• Be painstaking in the hiring process
• Eliminate bad apples
• Create safe, collision-rich spaces
• Make sure everyone has a voice
• Pick-up trash (shows humility; shows you are serving the group) 
• Capitalize on threshold moments (that signal we are together now)
• Avoid giving sandwich feedback (make it two separate processes, people either focus entirely on the positive or on the negative)
• Embrace fun

Share Vulnerability

Exchanges of vulnerability, which we naturally tend to avoid, are the pathway through which trusting cooperating is built. A series of small, humble exchanges "Anybody haven ideas?" "Tell me what you want", and "I’ll help you" - can unlock a group’s ability to perform.

Braintrust meetings at Pixar and AAR (After Action Review) by Navy Seals can be uncomfortable and candor filled: Where did we fail? What did each of us do and why did we do it?  What will we do differently next time? AARs can be raw, painful, and filled with pulses of emotion and uncertainty

Ideas from IDEO on what questions teams could ask themselves to help improve include:

• One thing that excited me about this particular opportunity is ….
• I confess, the one thing I’m not so excited about with this particular opportunity is …
• On this project, I’d really like to get better at …

Other tips Coyle offers to "Share Vulnerability" include: 

• Make sure leader is vulnerable first and often. “I screwed up” are the most important words any leader can say. Laszlo Bock, former head of People Analytics at Google, recommends that leaders ask their people three questions:
  • What is one thing that I currently do that you’d like me to continue to do?
  • What is one thing that I don’t currently do frequently enough that you think I should do more often?
  • What can I do to make you more effective?
• Overcommunicate expectations
• Deliver the negative stuff in person
• When forming new groups, focus on two critical moments: the first vulnerability and the first disagreement
• Listen like a trampoline: not just nodding, but adding insight and creating moments of mutual discovery 
  • Make the other person feel safe and supported
  • Take a helping, cooperative stance
  • Occasionally ask questions that gently and constructively challenge old assumptions 
  • Make occasional suggestion to open up alternative path.
  • In conversation, resistance the temptation to reflexively add value. Don’t immediately say “I have a similar idea” or “this is what worked for me”
• Use Candor-Generative practices like AARs and BrainTrusts
  • What were out intended results?
  • What were our actual results?
  • What caused our results?
  • What will we do the same the next time?
  • What will we do differently?
• Aim for candor, avoid brutal honesty: By aiming for candor - feedback that is smaller, more targeted, less personal, less judgmental, and equally impactful - its easier to maintain a sense of safety and belonging to the group
• Embrace the discomfort (like in AAR) 
• Align language with action (use the language that is reflective of your culture)
• Build a wall between performance review and professional development 
• Use flash mentoring
• Make the leader occasionally disappear

Establish Purpose

Successful groups use their language and their stories to over communicate why they exist (the difference they make) and how individuals contribute to that difference.

One exercise that uses this principle is mental contrasting; motivation is not a possession but rather the result of a two-part process of channeling your attention.

• Step 1) Think about a realistic goal that you’d like to achieve.  It could be anything: become skilled at a sport, rededicate yourself to a relationship, lose a few pounds, get a new job.  Spend a few second reflecting on that goal and imagining its come true.  Picture a future where you’ve achieve it.
• Step 2): Take a few seconds and picture the obstacle between you and that goal as vividly as possible.  Don’t gloss over the negatives, buy try to see them as they truly are.  For example, if you were trying to lose weight, you might picture those moments of weakness when you smell warm cookies, and you decide to eat one (or three)

So aligning motivations can change someone's performance. Similarly replacing one story for another can impact performance.  In one study, when a test randomly identified a child as having "unusual potential for intellectual growth" and those "results" are shared with their teachers; the students test scores and IQ scores increased.

Real-time signals through which team members were connected (or not) with the purposes of the work consists of five basic types:

• Framing - conceptualize the team mission
• Roles - why each role was important
• Rehearsal - teams did elaborate dry runs
• Explicit encouragement to speak up
• Active reflection

Other tips Coyle provides to "Establish Purpose" include:

• Name and rank your priorities
• Be ten times as clear about your priorities as you think you should be
• Figure out where your group aims for proficiency and where it aims for creativity
• Embrace the use of catchphrases:
  • “Create fun and a little weirdness” (Zappos),
  • “Talk less, do more” (IDEO)
  • “Work hard, be nice” (KIPP)
  • “Pound the rock” (San Antonio Spurs)
  • “Leave the jersey in a better place” (New Zealand All-Blacks)
  • “Create raves for guests” (Danny Meyer’s restaurants)
• Measure what really matters
• Use artifacts
• Focus on bar-setting behaviors

Saying from Pixar's Ed Catmull about culture include:

• Hire people smarter than you
• Fail early, fail often
• Listen to everyone’s ideas.
• Face to everyone’s ideas.
• Face toward the problems.
• B-level work is bad for your solution
• Its more important to invest in good people than in good ideas

​The second edition of Inspired is even better than the first (which I reviewed here and used to be my favorite product management book).

It is the best articulation of how to be successful in product management and how to create successful products that I have ever read. It is impossible not to run into into insights about challenges you are having or have had as a product manager when reading it. (This can be a little creepy, how does he know about all these mistakes I have made, is he a psychic?)  

Do you want to get a job as a product manager? Read and re-read Marty’s book and steal at least a few of his insights for the interview - you’ll sound like a genius.

Some of the topics that resonated for me (I’m sure there will be different ones for you):

-Product management is distinct from other essential roles: design, engineering, product marketing, and project management (Chapter 1).

-Two inconvenient truths that often cause failed product efforts are: at least half our ideas are just not going to work (customers ultimately won’t use it - which is why you need customer validation early in the process) and it takes several iterations to implement an idea so that it delivers the necessary business value (Chapter 6).

-The three overarching product development principles from Lean and Agile which help you create successful products are (Chapter 7)
     -Risks should be tackled up front, rather than at the end.
  -Products should be defined and designed collaboratively, rather than sequentially.
     -Its is all about solving problems, not implementing features.

-You need a team of missionaries, not mercenaries to create the smallest possible product that meets the needs of a specific market of customers (Chapter 8,9).

-A product manager must bring four critical contributions to their team (Chapter 10): 
    Deep knowledge 
        1) of your customer 
        2) of the data 
        3) of your business and its stakeholders 
        4) of your market and industry 

-Product managers (PMs) need product designers - not just to help make your product beautiful - but to discover the right product (Chapter 11).

-Typical product roadmaps are the root cause of most waste and failed efforts in product organizations (Chapter 22).  It is all too easy to institute processes that govern how you produce products that can bring innovation to a grinding halt.  You need to try to wean your organization off of typical product roadmaps by focusing on business outcomes, providing stakeholders visibility so that they know you are working on important items, and by eventually making high-integrity commitments when critical delivery dates are needed (Chapter 60). Part of this is managing stakeholders which includes engaging them early in the product discovery process ideally with high-fidelity prototypes (Chapter 61).

-Products should start with a product vision in which the product team falls in love with the problem, not the solution (Chapter 25).

-Strong product teams work to meet the dual and simultaneous objectives of rapid learning and discovery while building stable and solid releases in delivery.  Product discovery is used to address critical risks: (Chapter 33)
    -Will the customer buy this, or choose to use it? (value risk)
    -Can the user figure out how to use it? (usability risk)
    -Can we build it? (feasibility risk)
    -Does the solution work for our business? (business viability risk)

-PMs can’t rely on customers (or executives or stakeholders) to tell us what to build: customer doesn’t know what’s possible, and with technology products, none of us know what we really want until we actually see it (Chapter 33).

-While Amazon has a culture of “write the press release first”, Marty suggests PM should write a “happy customer letter first."  Imagine a letter sent to the CEO from a very happy and impressed customer which explains why he or she is so happy and grateful for the new product or redesign.  The customer describes how it was changed or improved his or her life.  The letter also includes an imagined congratulatory response from the CEO to the product team explaining how this has helped the business  (Chapter 36).

-Product managers need to consider the role of analytics and qualitative and quantitative value testing techniques (Chapter 54).

-What it really means for a PM to be the CEO of Product is testing business viability: listening to Marketing, Sales, Customer Success, Finance, Legal, BD, Security, etc. before building the product (Chapter 56).

-Establishing a strong product culture requires (Chapters 66-67)
    -Innovation culture: compelling product visions, strong product managers, empowered business and customer savvy teams product teams often in discovery
    -Execution culture: urgency, high-integrity commitments, accountability, collaboration, results orientation, recognition, strong delivery management, frequent release cycles 
    (and it is hard to do both)
    
    

​There are several distinct pricing models for the on-going use of a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering.  

​​​(Often there will be distinct tiers in these different models in which the cost increases as the capacity or capabilities of the offering increases.  Also there are often increasing discounts for an increasing amount of pre-committed volume; with an additional “overage” fee for when a customer surpasses that volume.)  


Per User or "Per Seat"
     Pros: Easy to calculate and allocate, encourages adoption and increased usage by users who have a license or seat.
     Cons: Discourages adoption across a company by creating a barrier (seat license) for potential infrequent users - who might later become frequent users. Slack’s per-active-user model partially addresses this by only charging for users have been active in the last two weeks (https://www.quora.com/Who-pays-for-Slack)
     Examples:  Salesforce (CRM).  Has a standard per user licensing model which increases as the number of users and the capability increase (currently from $25/month to $300/month). https://www.salesforce.com/editions-pricing/sales-cloud/
     This pricing model can sometimes vary across roles. 

Per Transaction
     Pros:  Enables adoption from the occasional to the power user which helps make the offering ubiquitous across the client's organization significantly increasing its value and impact. (This is SAP Concur's pricing model and its adoption is often aided by it being the only way an employee can be reimbursed for their expenses. Opinions are my own, but I work for SAP Concur).
     Cons: For some high price per transaction offerings, the lack of an all-you-can-eat model can limit usage for a given user or on a given project. 
     Examples: Concur https://www.concur.com/en-us/small-business/expense.
     Note: A variation of this per-number-of-transactions model is a per-$-of-transaction model.  For example it seems that Zuora, a subscription billing company (so helps actualize pricing models), bases their model on the amount of subscription revenue the customer has on Zuroa's platform. https://www.quora.com/Does-anyone-know-the-cost-to-use-a-solution-like-Zuora
https://www.mckfastgrowthtech.com/time-rethink-per-user-pricing-enterprise-saas/

Per User or Per Transaction Freemium (free is often ad-supported) 
    Pros: Enables easy adoption
    Cons: Must have compelling enough capabilities so that users will adopt the free version; but still significant enough differentiation that users will upgrade to the paid version. 
    Examples: Slack:  https://slack.com/pricing.  While Slack has a standard per user model, they also have a free version "for small teams wanting to try out Slack for an unlimited period of time.” So Slack doesn't limit time, but it does limit storage (and other premium capabilities) in the free version. 

Per Project
     Based on the value of the project (construction management) or portfolio (financial assets under management) that is benefiting from the offering.
      Pros: Encourages viral adoption for all users and third party partners across a project (leading to familiarity and possible adoption on future projects). The benefits of this type of model is that it encourages interactivity and adoption with all the participants involved; both within the subscribing company and by other third parties (often subcontractors).  
     Cons: This all-or-nothing approach makes it unsuitable for use on a small portion of a given project; and makes it difficult for the gradual increased adoption across an entire project. 
    Examples: Some financial services SaaS products and some construction management products such as Aconex, a construction project management tool. Aconex drives adoption of their  “project wide solutions" by including "unlimited access to training and support resources for every organization you work with.”  (From certain sources it seems that Aconex contends with the cons of this model by offering an enterprise model for companies that adopt their tool across many projects and a per user pricing model when the tool is just used for a small portion of a project). 
https://project-management.com/aconex-software-review/
https://www.aconex.com/pricing
https://www.eurekareport.com.au/articles/138999/aconex-xero-construction-sector

Per Resource Used (or Pay-as-You-Go): 
    This is more common in the rent-a-resource world of PaaS/IaaS where providers will charge based on resource usage; example per CPU or per GB storage.
   Example: AWS (https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/) which has per hour (and per second) pricing that can vary depending on required availability of service, "on-demand" is more expensive than "spare capacity" pricing.  

Per Outcome or % of Savings:
     While many offerings claim a hard dollar ROI, a pricing model which is based on a percentage of that return on investment (such as savings) can be compelling.
     Pros: Obviously this model aids adoption since the buyer only pays if they receive the guaranteed benefit.
     Cons: Only certain offerings have specific well-defined financial benefits such as savings. Also there are specific companies who have moved away from this models since it leads to disagreements with their customers over the specific savings achieved.
     Examples: Vat Reclaim: TaxBack https://www.taxback.com/en/corporate/vat-recovery/ and VATiT: https://www.vatit.com/en/page/vat-recovery

Per Company (Flat-rate or tiered) 
    For simple services provided by SaaS providers                  
    https://www.cobloom.com/blog/saas-pricing-models

Open Source Model
    Open sourced companies often charge for support or additional features (in which case it could be consider a type of freemium model). https://techcrunch.com/2016/02/09/the-money-in-open-source-software/
     Examples: RedHat (Linux) or Docker (containerization) 

Loss-Leader
    Some offerings are either free or sold at a considerable discount as a loss leader for other products or services that are provided by the company (such as computer hardware).


Other Notes:
   Hybrid Model: As noted by McKinsey, companies can use hybrid models that include both user and non-user metrics. https://www.mckfastgrowthtech.com/time-rethink-per-user-pricing-enterprise-saas/
   Price as a Client Buys:  Almost as bad as trying to convince a prospect that they have a problem that they should pay you to solve, trying to convince a customer to purchase your solution in a manner that doesn't align with their business and how they typically buy services is problematic. Therefore you should understand how a typical customer buys a solution like yours before you define your pricing model. 
   Pricing Strategy:  This blog posts suggests a few different models used to price a SaaS offering, but it doesn’t address the more complex question of what should your price be considering a given model.  (One simple framework is the three C’s: cost-based pricing, customer value-based pricing, and competitor-based pricing.) 
  On-Premise: SaaS pricing models are typically distinct from on-premise pricing models which are generally based on a one-time perpetual license plus an on-going service and support fee.
   Non-Profit Pricing: Many of these companies provide a free or significantly reduced pricing for non-profits which is a good cultural signal about the company.
    Setup and Training Costs:  Ideally your SaaS product is easy to “discover, try, and buy” with a quick time to value with minimal setup that can be performed by the customer. Sometimes either the complexity of the software or the topic prohibits this, so that there needs to be implementation (and possibly data migration) and/or training provided either by the SaaS company or a third party.  Often this is baked into the on-going fee, sometimes it is a distinct upfront cost. 
    Sources:  Information for this article came from sources including: 
          https://www.inturact.com/blog/the-top-10-saas-pricing-strategies
          https://www.cobloom.com/blog/saas-pricing-models
          https://www.cloudesire.com/7-best-pricing-models-for-saas-businesses/
          https://blog.kissmetrics.com/saasy-pricing-strategies/

Below are a few notes on a New York Times article “Learning How to Learn” and a book on the same topic “How We Learn.”
 
The article profiles Dr. Barbara Oakley who has written many books on this topic and has created the most popular Coursera course “Learning How to Learn.” At the end of the article there are four techniques mentioned to help you learn:
 
Focus / Don’t:  The brain needs to both focus on materials and later rest to consolidate information.
 
Take a Break:  This is why the “Pomodoro Technique” works: focus for 25 minutes followed by a break (walk, listen to a song, or anything that helps you enter a relaxed state).  
 
Practice: Specifically “chunk” or organize and group information for easier retention.
 
Know Thyself:  People learn in different ways, for example some students more quickly snap up information and some students take longer but perceive more detail along the way.
 
 
Here are a few quotes from "How We Learn: The Surprising Truth About When, Where, and Why It Happens.”
 
Distractions can aid learning.  We work more effectively when we continually alter our study routines and abandon any “dedicated” space” in favor of varied locations. Having something going on in your study environment, like music, is better than being in a quiet location.  Learning is a restless, piecemeal, subconscious, and somewhat sneaky process that occurs all the time.
 
Mix it up: Our brains picks-up patterns more efficiently when presented with a mixed bag of related tasks instead of when it’s force-fed just one. Writing notes by hand is one kind of activity, typing them using a keyboard is another. The same goes for studying while standing up versus sitting versus running on a tread mill.  Another way to mix it up is by interleaving, for example interleave different types of problems when studying math.
 
Spacing: People learn at least as much and retain it much longer when they distribute or space their study time than when they concentrate it. Cramming can work in a pinch but it doesn’t last. The same thing recurring on different days in different contexts, read, recited, referred to again and again, related to other things are reviews, gets well wrought into mental structure.
 
Fluency Illusions & Pretests: We forget that we forget. Fluency illusion makes you think that you knew something well because it seemed so evident at the time you studied it.  Certain study aids can help us remember right now but make us poor judges of what we need to restudy or practice again. These study aids can include: highlighting, making a study guide, and even chapter outlines provided by a teacher or textbook.  It can be harder to process materials a second time, but that is good as it helps us learn.      
     One rule of thumb is spend the first third of your time memorizing, and the remaining two third reciting from memory.  Actually getting something wrong including guessing wrong on a practice test helps you get a related questions right on the actual test.  Testing – recitation, self-examination, pretesting, call it what you like – is an enormously powerful technique capable of much more than simply measuring knowledge.  It vanquishes the fluency trap that causes so many of us to think that we’re poor test takers.
 
Percolation: Start work on large projects as soon as possible and stop when you get stuck. You are initiating percolation, not quitting.   
 
Harness Perceptual Judgement: It is ok to “know” what you are looking at (for example a style of painting) without having to explain why, at least not right away.
 
Sleep: Sleeping (even napping) after studying helps improves retention and comprehensive of what you study.  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

  (from marketo.com)
​
     As leads migrate through your marketing funnel, where is the largest drop-off (or largest drop-off compared to industry standards)? How can you optimize your sales by understanding where leads fall out of the funnel? Where should you increase (or decrease) your resources throughout the marketing and sales funnel?  
     Of course there are many ways to improve conversions through the funnel; however the most important to consider in a product focused sales strategy is to make sure your product is successfully solving an important problem for your customer.

 Networking? 
          My current favorite blog post on networking (in the Harvard Business Review) says:
                 -Don't misunderstand the peeking order
                 -Don't ask to receive before you give
                 -Don't fail to state your value proposition

     I would add:
      -They have the power, they have the job; what can I give?
          -Provide Information.  You have done some research and you have been talking to people in this field.  Everyone is trying to stay current, but no feels like they are completely up-to-date. (" ... I've been talking to execs in your market..."   "....Recently I read...")
           -Listen to their story.  Everyone has one and most people want to tell it.  Often the best favor you can provide someone is asking a few leading questions and letting them tell their story. ("... Wow, that must have been an interesting few years at ...").


     -Why are they doing this?  (Make it easy for them to help you.)
          People take networking meetings or calls often because they want to feel like they are being a good person and helping others (and so that you can maybe help them later).  So make it easy for them to help you.
          -Ask for their advice. Reiterate it back to them in your thank you note and in the note you send them after you land a new job (in which you thank them again). This reinforces that they were helpful.
          -Ask for a few (just a few) introductions.  Crosscheck your target list with their LinkedIn contacts. (Use this list of company lists to create your target list.)  LinkedIn makes this easy by providing a search box on the top of a person's contact list.  (In that search box just type "Company A OR Company B OR Company C".)
         

As I learn more about the travel technology business; I have found a few sources particularly helpful: 

     skift.com  @skift

     tnooz.com  @tnooz

     gbta.org @GlobalBTA 

     thebeat.travel   @TheBeat_travel

     phocuswright.com @PhoCusWright 

     The last two are paid content.  
     And of course: 

     tripit.com/blog/ @TripIt

     concur.com/blog @Concur


(Thanks to @dmhoffer and http://www.tripit.com/blog/2014/01/15-must-read-travel-blogs-for-2014.html)

Presenting at Dreamforce '13 as part of Founders Forum 

A hands-on session around company and product strategy which will help you make decisions on how to grow your SaaS product business, including how to:

-Measure growth and define success
-Identify common roadblocks to company growth
-Determine where to focus your efforts 
-Refine company & product portfolio strategy and trade-offs
-Assess different potential opportunities    


Thursday, 11/21/2013 10:00 AM
p.force.com/foundersforum
Click here to learn more about my session in the Dreamforce app