This week we continued our reading of Drucker on
Marketing by William A. Cohen. This book is perhaps one the best academic
required books I have read outside of an English class. This book is good so
far I really wish our department, that is a marketing department, would read it
and learn from it. Everyone would really benefit this book, and it certainty
has more to offer than the book we had to read last summer about humans and how
we need to embrace our inner animal instincts… it was as bad as it sounds.
So why
am I slightly cult-ishy in love with this book so far when it has only been
five chapters. Well besides all the “Oh my God this is my Life” moments that
this book produced last week and this week, there is also this amazing list
that was composed this week on the principles of leaders. The list is on page
41 and the list is
1.
Maintain absolute integrity
2.
Know your stuff
3.
Declare your expectations
4.
Show uncommon commitment
5.
Expect positive results
6.
Take care of your people
7.
Put duty before self
8.
Get out in front
The one principle that a leader can absolutely NOT violate
is that of integrity. This I absolutely agree with. I can look at this list and
think of leaders who I have admired and although some may have been missing a
few of these principles, but they all had integrity. So then I decided to think
about a list of leaders who have been for the lack of a better term “bad”
leaders, and they all seemed to violate at least two principles and the
principle that was violated in all of them was that of integrity. I even
thought about leaders that I had admired and eventually ended up considering
them less than satisfactory and the moment they made the switch in my book was
when they no longer maintained integrity. My current “big boss” is good
academic example of this list. This leader was someone that many of us would of
followed without hesitation or questioning. However, over time this leader has
violated these principles, and each time one is violated faith and willingness
is lost. The leader does not put themselves on the front line. This honestly is
okay in my opinion because I very much doubt they would be able to handle it,
but other people in the department find this annoying. However, the principles
that been violated that I take issues with is that they do not take care of
their own people, does not expect positive results, does not know their stuff
when it comes to events, has a hard time declaring expectations, and has
violated their integrity. We have all take our turn being under the bus because
our bigger boss needs someone to take the fall other than themselves, or stand
up for us. Also, as of recently it seems that our leader has the impression
that we are not good at our job which is frustrating as their recommendations
are exactly what we are doing. Our leader has also recently lost their integrity
as there are several moments where we feel they are lying to us. The lies
themselves do not even hurt as much as it is the idea we are not worthy of the
truth. It has created a sense of distrust among some of us. Luckily, though our
middle manager has most of these principles so the blow is lessened, and we
still have someone who we can proudly stand behind and follow.
Something else we discussed this week was the marketing
planning process. The steps in the marketing planning process are:
1.
Collect data
2.
Analyze Data
3.
Develop objectives, strategies, programs
4.
Develop financial documents
5.
Negotiate final plan
6.
Measure progress toward objectives
7.
Audit
The company that I work for, we see this marketing planning
process with our main product that our company puts out. In fact one of the
pressures on my department is to make up for the money and resources that have
been lost because our main product was not able to reach its objectives. Then
the pressure is on for us to bring in more revenue. However, with our product
the only objectives that have been communicated are that of increasing customer
service, and charging everyone. However, there has been zero quantifiable
objectives that have been expressed so it is hard for us to measure progress.
We do have a new program to help us bring in more revenue. However, it has
produced little results and many of us on the front line question if the new
program is a good fit for our department as it seems the program is meant for a
larger business with more resources in our industry than our company has or
will even have for the foreseeable future. Which is a shame as it is a great
program that we wish we could utilize. Also, the only final plan that seems to
have been communicated to us is to charge everyone. I will say that we do have
an audit on every department every year. However, that appears to be to make sure
we are following policies verse that measuring our success against objectives
that were set. So it appears with my company that it seems to focus on the
marketing planning process with its main product but not with its other
products.
So the last thing I will talk about is that of the program
we have for our marketing class. It runs simulations of marketing decisions
that we make so we could see what the possible results could be. So it helps
bridge that gap of book and real life practice that academic classes need.
After all, theory is only so good until you get out there and practice. Our assignment
this week was to login and play around with it a little bit and sees what would
happen. So I logged on and was trying to figure out to play around with it, and
the numbers. I could not figure it out. The only thing that I could click on
the page was a big “Enter Decision” button. Which of course I did not want to
hit, I wanted to edit and not enter my decision that I had not made. After a
while I hit the button in a throw my hands up in the air moment, and boom
suddenly I could edit. So I played around a bit of the numbers on the sales
force page. I found I could change all the numbers and after I hit submit be
able to see how those decisions related to my budget and the amount of money I
had left. This was pretty cool.
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