Production as strategy

Production as strategy.
And other contradictions of making modern brands.
May 20, 2011

2640 Lyndale Avenue South
Minneapolis Minnesota 55408

T +1 612 279 1400
F +1 612 279 1401

www.zeusjones.com

Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.

Modern brands are defined by what they do.

Classic model
of a brand.
Built for a mass-media

world.


Modern brand
model. CORE
BELIEF
Built for a world driven by

experiences and

interactions.


Established 2007 to build modern brands.
We combine strategy, design and digital expertise. Many of us came from the digital side.


Zeus Jones Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.
Zeus Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age
of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief,
it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was
the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the
winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing
before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going
direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the
present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its
being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of
comparison only.

A tale of two cities.
Charles Dickens writing about London and Paris in 1775.

A good description of Zeus Jones in 2009.


Go to BP

Peruse the
department

Closing a hole in
the sales cycle. Choose items
to try on
Sales often delayed or lost

in the dressing room due to

need for approval.

Try on clothes


Go to BP

Do more research

Peruse the
department

Closing a hole in Look at photos and
consider outfits
the sales cycle. Choose items
to try on Purchase
Sales often delayed or lost clothes

in the dressing room due to
Share photos
need for approval.

Try on clothes

Take PB Photos

Adjust outfits


It was our best project of 2009.


It was our best project of 2009.
It was our worst project of 2009.


What consumed most of our attention.
And what ultimately limited our success.

Surface background alternatives
We spent 3 weeks arguing against yellow, and then we lost.

What we should have focused on
Using the content, learning about our customers, learning about our clothes.

We invested all our effort in the least valuable part
of the experience and none in the most valuable.


Things we focused on Things we forgot about
Making it cool Making it cheaply

Making it pretty Making it fast

Stability Flexibility

Perfecting an object Perfecting a process

The customer The data

The experience The output

Building it Building upon it

Strategy is the process of making assumptions.
As the world becomes more complex your chances of being wrong increases.


Products and experiences reveal new opportunities for
usage after they're built.
That’s just one of the ways they differ from communications.


The services we love the most are always in beta


We needed a modern approach to production that:
Allows more consistent opportunities for feedback, new ideas, innovation, and iterative progress
Documents ideas, discussions and decisions and makes them available to everyone.


Traditional
Project
Management
Based on Fredrick Taylor's

"Scientific Management"

written in 1911

Used to scope out

systematic projects that

require up-front planning.


Traditional project
management framework.
Predictability and systematic, linear development

Deterministic, reductionist approach that rely on task
breakdown

Stable requirements, analysis and stable design

Compliance as a means of project control

Individual resources as interchangeable cogs in the
machine.


Problems with traditional project management methods.
• Creates a false sense of security that projects are being managed by exhaustive planning, measuring, and controlling.

• Adds unnecessary upfront cost and time for planning which in the end will be tested and changed throughout the project.

• Requires detailed, rigid proposals that are developed at the beginning of a project are written at a point in the project with
the most uncertainty.

• Does not see participants as skilled and valuable stakeholders in the execution of the project.

• Change is seen as a result of poor planning which leads to the perception that the project is failing.


Average percentage of developed functionality
actually used when a traditional, linear approach
Traditional project to requirements definition is taken on a
"launched" information technology project:
management creates
inefficiencies. Always 7

Fixed price bids/contracts are bad ideas for both
Often 13
Design/Development companies and the client.
Clients think they are reducing their financial risk
with a fixed bid, but the reality is that it forces them Sometimes 16

into a position where their money is almost always
wasted (see figure below). For developers, it almost Rarely 19
always motivates them to reduce the delivered quality
in order to make it within budget and/or time.
Never 45

Source: Chaos Report v3. Standish Group. Copyright 2005-2006 Scott W. Ambler

See, it was a production problem.


Agile project
management.
Evolved from the agile

software development

manifesto in 2001 and the

fields of human interaction

management and business

process management.


Agile project management
frameworks.
Flexibility and dynamic, cyclical development -
Launch with less, evaluate and revise

Focus on Guiding Vision

Change management and communication

Collaboration as a means of project improvement

Employees as skilled and valuable stakeholders


Projects should and will change during execution.
We manage the change to improve the project.


A fundamental change in how we organize and work.
• A view of organizations as fluid, adaptive systems composed of intelligent living beings

• A recognition of the limits of external control in establishing order, and of the role of intelligent control that employs self-
organization as a means of establishing order

• An overall problem solving approach that is humanistic

• It regards employees as skilled and valuable stakeholders in the management of a team instead of cogs in a machine

• It relies on the collective ability of autonomous teams as the basic problem solving mechanism.

Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011. (2003-2008). Agile Project Management. Retrieved February 9, 2010 , from CC Pace Web site: http://www.ccpace.com/Resources/documents/AgileProjectManagement.pdf

It limits up-front planning to a minimum
based on an assumption of unpredictability, and
instead stresses adaptability to changing conditions.


Turns out it was a strategy problem after all.


We needed a modern approach to strategy.
One that limits the number of up-front assumptions made prior to developing a solution.
One that marries strategic development with product development.


One that reacts to new opportunities as they
become available and uses them to solve business
and marketing problems.


Google even
more.
“Help us re-think how we

list our products.”


We started by asking ourselves what can be done?
Rather than asking what could be done?


Design as strategy: audit of product pages.
Many product pages have an API that show what people are doing with the product.

The things people do with products are more interesting
and more descriptive than the products themselves.
Strategy emerged from design.


A cultural dashboard
New opportunities emerged from production.


Production as strategy.
We made it in 3 weeks, so we only built the things that were quick and easy to build.


Things we focused on Things we didn’t
Making it cheaply Making it cool

Making it fast Making it pretty

Flexibility Stability

The output The experience

The data The customer

Perfecting a process Perfecting an object

Building upon it Building it


Execution became a strategic conversation
which made it less subjective and less arbitrary.


Production as strategy
frameworks.
Turns client and agency into collaborators, outcomes
are purposefully unclear therefore no side can claim
to have the answer.

No separation between “thinking teams” and “making
teams,” thinking doesn’t end.

Projects improve as they progress.

Creates a situation where there are often too many
opportunities rather than too few.


A fundamental change in how strategists work.
• Need to get your hands dirty, can’t remove yourself from the actual making of things.

• Focus on behavioral pivot points rather than mental pivot points.

• Build strategy from the ground up rather than from the top down.

• Be more aware of what you don’t know that what you do know.


A fundamental change in how producers work.
• Think about change as an opportunity instead of something that derails the plan

• Create more opportunities for check-ins and collaboration

• Develop plans based on duration and resources vs. hours


Develop strategic processes, not strategic plans,
whose minimum outcomes will meet your objectives.
But which also have the potential to deliver far more.


Strategic starting points.
1. What’s the desired outcome in order to solve the problem?

2. What needs to happen first in order to achieve our outcome?

3. What can be built quickly to enable that?

4. How can building it deliver enough business value that the problem becomes easier to solve?


GMI Connect
Help to create a culture of

cross-team and cross

division collaboration at

General Mills


Collaborative workspaces

Identifying people
to collaborate with
Rich conversations

Collaboration
worksheet
Collaboration activities

Meeting spaces Case study library

Q&A platform
Virtual whiteboards


Hard to Accomplish IRL

Collaborative workspaces

Identifying people
to collaborate with
Rich conversations

Collaboration
worksheet
Hard to Build Easy to Build
Collaboration activities

relative to development
Meeting spaces Case study library
difficulty.

Q&A platform
Virtual whiteboards

Easy to Accomplish IRL


General Mills Connect
Creating a culture of collaboration in the company.

Connect strategy has been driven by user need and
user observation.


Case Study: Senior Management Conference
• Used like twitter to post questions / feedback before & during conference

• Presented on displays around campus for “virtual attendance”

• 1000+ attendance

• Increased attendance, new interactions, new connections

• Allowed people to search for conversations after the event

Traditional strategy Modern strategy
Theoretical Practical

Mental models Tangible products

Prediction Observation

Testing backwards Testing forwards

Monolithic Iterative

Results oriented Guided by a vision

Reductionist Expansionist


Traditional
strategy builds
traditional
brands.
Strategy for a predictable,

focused outcome.


Modern
strategy builds
modern brands. CORE
BELIEF
Strategy guided by a vision

and designed to create

complex and surprising

experiences.


Modern brands connect in a more human way.
Production as strategy is a more human way to build brands.

Thank you!
Questions and workshop.

2640 Lyndale Avenue South
Minneapolis Minnesota 55408

T +1 612 279 1400
F +1 612 279 1401

www.zeusjones.com


Production as strategy

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