The Power of Process

Blair discusses what they mean by having a process, how to develop it, what to avoid, and how your process at its highest level can be turned into valuable IP.

Links

“Secrets Behind the Killer Proposal”

“Alternative Forms of Reassurance”

Transcript

David C. Baker: Blair, we are back to recording. For a few weeks, I kind of forgot what I did for a living. What was your last name again? It's Blair something. This is a fascinating episode. I'm a little nervous mainly about you, because-

Blair Enns: Go on.

David: -what's new? We did an episode that was satire, I guess, and got in some trouble because some people didn't realize it was satire. I'm thinking, "Well, okay, if you were a little confused at the beginning, when we suggest that you randomly staple $100 bills between the pages of the proposal, if you don't know that's satire, then you deserve what's coming to you." My fear is that you are on some sort of a farewell apology tour where you're going to take everything we talked about in there, which is about 54 freaking things, and then we're going to do 54 freaking episodes where you set everybody right. You're starting out with process. Is there any truth to this rumor?

Blair: Guilty as charged.

David: Well, this is not going to work for me, okay?

Blair: How about just this one?

David: Just this one. That's okay because we kind of skewered process in that one, didn't we?

Blair: We skewered a bunch of things in that one. The episode was called Secrets of the Killer Proposal or something like that. I had COVID during that recording. I don't remember it.

David: Oh, that's such a lame--

[chuckling]

Blair: For those who haven't listened to that episode, I feel for the people who've only listened to that episode.

David: I don't.

Blair: They either think this is a comedy podcast or they don't. They think we're serious. Some long-time listeners, not a lot, but a few, thought we were serious. I remember when I said to you, "I've got this idea. Let's do this send-up. Let's just completely mock, take the piss, as they say in the UK, about the agency proposal process, and let's just do this complete spoof, send-up, satire, whatever it is." You said, "Oh, this is a great idea. When are we going to let people in on the joke?" I said, "Here's the best part. We're not. They'll figure it out."

David: Well, and against my better judgment, I let you do that. Let the record reflect.

Blair: That was the most fun I've ever had doing a podcast.

David: I had fun, too, but I couldn't believe we got through the whole thing. We never did a double-take, anything. There was very little editing.

Blair: No, we have missed our calling.

David: I know. We could make fun of people for a living if we wanted to do that.

Blair: Maybe we should do a second podcast that's totally spoof.

David: I want to do one about what should be on your website. That's the one I want to do.

Blair: Oh, there's so much we can do. Okay. We need to deliver some meat here, David. The meatiest part of the meat. Just back to that episode, there were lines in there telling people to actually bribe people they were submitting proposals to. Scientifically proven that funny photos are funnier than unfunny photos.

David: Weigh the proposal?

Blair: I've listened to it three or four times and I think, "Okay. Whatever." You either enjoyed it, or we've cost you a lot of money, and you're welcome.

David: If we had just done it, we would have been fine, but you and I led people along. That was our mistake. When people were questioning some of the advice, we just played right along, and so I think people have a legitimate gripe in being angry with us. Today, we're talking about process or process from the north. We're not redoing every topic we skewered but I love this topic. I just think there's so much to talk about here. I'm frequently, in fact, I did it twice yesterday in conversations with clients, I said, "Have you heard about process frame case studies? You should do a search on that. Blair's written on that," just because it's been so influential in my own thinking.

Blair: Thanks. The truth is, I've written very little on it. It's one of those proprietary things that I have not put out into the public domain very much. I think we didn't do an episode specifically on it but we did do an episode on alternative forms of reassurance. That's where this power of process comes in. I talked about it a little bit, but there's not much out there. Those are a few cards that I've kept quite close to my chest, so there's not a lot to be found on it, but I do believe that that is really powerful.

David: Take us from the least legitimate process up to a more sophisticated perspective. Ladder up.

Blair: What do we mean by process? I'll keep using the Canadian pronunciation and David will keep using the American pronunciation. What do we mean by process when we say, "We have a process"? In the spoof episode, I was making fun of the fact that most firms have a slide in their deck where they talk about their proprietary process. It's usually a four-step process and the first step usually starts with D. There's another line that should have given it away. You said, "Do you think more steps is better?" I said, "Five, but not six." I said, "Because it's really hard to find six words that start with the same letter."

[laughter]

David: We're never going to get through this topic, because we're going to keep laughing about that episode.

Blair: Okay. I was making fun of the four-step process, but why I wanted to come back and correct this is I didn't want people to get the impression that I think, nor do you think, that having a defined process is not important. It's actually really important, but you have to understand how it's valuable and therefore, when it should be used. We can talk about how to develop it. We'll also talk about some of the caveats. You're asking what do we mean when we say we have a process? From the simplest version to the more complex, I guess if that's the spectrum, the first expression of a process is what do we mean is we've simply codified how we work.

We have solved similar types of problems enough times that we've seen some patterns. You talk a lot about pattern recognition, and I quote you on that most weeks, but it's not just patterns and observations. It's patterns and execution. We execute, we execute, we execute. We do something a few times. We start to iterate. We start to find efficient ways to do it. We find some innovative ways to do it, then we get more efficient, et cetera. Simply codifying how we work. That's the lowest expression of this idea. Then, when we go up from there, what's the next level or the higher expression of what it means to have a process is we've refined it to the point where it's proprietary to us.

Everybody's process usually follows a model of four steps. In my model, they don't start with D, but it's diagnose, prescribe, apply, and reapply. A medical analogy. We can come back to that. Everybody has a way of understanding the problem, coming up with a strategy, initial application of that strategy, and then ongoing reapplication if necessary. Once you codify, you write it down, you start to follow it, you realize, "We can improve this." You start to improve it. At some point, when you iterate enough, you will have something that is fairly unique to you. Now, you have the next level, which is a proprietary process.

From there, you should be able to easily explain in conversation what your process is without actually applying it to your client's businesses. You should be able to walk people through your process orally. The next level is you should be able to talk about it in concrete terms. You should be able to walk through the process while explaining what it means to your client's business. You should be able to make it relatable specifically to this situation. The next level after that is communicate it visually. You should be able to draw it out. Then, you build case studies around it. The highest expression of what it means to have a process is you've codified this thing that's unique to you and it, in and of itself, is valuable IP.

David: I don't know where I should best insert this question, but as I listen to these levels and I think about the clients where I know their situation well, and then I step back and say, "Where are they in this process?" I don't know where it fits exactly in these little six layers that you've talked about, but what strikes me is that they hire employees and they very seldom have to teach these employees how they solve problems.

They pick it up just through osmosis, but it's not big enough or a significant portion of how they work that they feel like, "We don't dare turn this employee loose until they learn how we see problems and how we solve them." I don't know what to do with that, but it's interesting that it demonstrates the dearth of real process at firms. What is it about creative firms, the firms that are listening to this mainly, that makes that so much more likely? That there's less process.

Blair: I believe it is more common in a creative firm. A creative firm is typically a customized services firm where they see every client as unique. That's a good thing. Most creative firms should be fully customized services where they do see every client's situation as unique. Therefore, you wouldn't have as much codified as a productized services firm. I remember my first agency job. I was 22. I was an account coordinator, I think my title was. I was fairly fresh out of school. I was immediately handed a bunch of clients and said, "Go to it." There was no methodology whatsoever. There was no training.

This was a full-service marketing and communication firm. It was a PR firm that bought an ad agency. There was no training of any kind. There were internal processes, how do you write a job order? or whatever the hell we used to call them, how you fill out timesheets, but there was no model. There was no codified process for how we diagnosed the client's problem, prescribed what a strategy looked like or how we implemented it. It was fully dependent on the quality of the individual and the intuition and the experience of the individual. I was 22 years old with no experience and bad intuition.

David: You probably heard of this, but there was an early process. Now, the world has changed a lot. It's 35 years, but in 1990, the Young & Rubicam, the Y&R people, put out something called the Traveling Creative Workshop. It's been out of print for years, but you can buy it all over the place on eBay and Amazon. It is a fascinating look into that process where a firm said, "Listen, we're growing like crazy. We can hire people. They want to work here, but if they're going to be good, they're going to have to understand our process."

Blair: I worked for Young & Rubicam in the 1990s. I'd never heard of this.

David: Oh yes. It's called the Traveling Creative Workshop. I used to teach through it. They didn't use it?

Blair: I wasn't in the creative department. I was account manager. Huh. Okay. I think you were asking, or just pointing to the issue of there's not a lot of process in a creative firm. It's because creatives, as people, seek freedom. They seek variety. They come at problems from a divergent model, thinking all over the place. They resist being hemmed in. The first example of that is positioning.

The idea of they don't want to be hemmed into just solving these types of problems for these types of people. Another version of that problem of not wanting to be hemmed in is freedom to do things however we want to do them the next time. There is something to that, but I come at process mostly from the point of view of how it's helpful to you in the sale. It's really disconcerting to the client when you cannot explain to them how you're going to create value for them.

David: Yes. Boy, that just resonates completely. Even if you don't use the process entirely, once they are a client, not being able to explain that just seems like, whoa, the confidence level just dropped.

Blair: Early in the buying cycle, a client is looking for inspiration. I've talked about this before. They're overweighting in their minds the positive benefits of change, of hiring a firm like yours to help them create some value. They're excited about the possibilities. They're looking for emotional stimulus. They're easily excited, et cetera, but as they get closer to buying, the dynamics flip. Now, they underweight the positives of what might happen and they overweight the consequences, the cost, the potential for failure, and they're very nervous. I talk about a nervous late-stage client or prospect.

Those nervous late-stage prospects, we talked about this in the Alternative Forms of Reassurance episode, they tend to ask late in the sale a lot of how questions. How are you going to do this? They ask how not because they necessarily have the capacity to judge the effectiveness of your technique, but they just want to know you've done this before, you do it all the time, you have a bomb-proof way of doing it. These how questions are really important. They're almost traps like, "How's this discovery session going to work?" You say, "We'll come to your office for half a day, a day and we'll just ask a bunch of questions."

That says to me you're making this up as you go along. It's like, and I may have used this metaphor before, you're about to go in for surgery and you say to the surgeon, "How's this going to work?" He says, "Well, surgery's an organic process. I'm going to cut you open and figure it out once I'm in there." That is terrifying. That's what your client's asking. How are you going to operate on my brand? My business? Your response is usually some version of, "Eh, it's an organic process. I'm going to cut you open and I'll figure it out once I'm in there."

David: I'll bet you there's some agency out there right now that says, "Our process is to do it differently every time." The last patient lived but, I don't know, I still want to experiment.

Blair: Imagine that's on your surgeon's website. We do it differently every time.

[laughter]

David: Oh, we're having too much fun again here.

Blair: There is a lot of power in process. It is a tool of reassurance. It's used late. Creatives intuit that process is important because they always talk about it at some point. Usually, it's bullshit, right?

David: Yes.

Blair: You and I, between us, I don't know how many pitch decks, I don't know how many proposals we've seen over what? like 45 years of combined experience where it's like, "Oh, here's the four-step process." "Let me see the last proposal that you submitted before this one." "Oh, it's a different four-step process." "I recognize this one. You got this from a Ted Talk, didn't you?" Then the Ted talk went out of fashion. Oh, this is Seth Godin's latest book, right?

David: Yes. Right. Oh, Neuro. That's a good one to add.

Blair: I wanted to do a whole section on neuro. We'll get to neuro. We will get to neuro.

David: Your point is there's a lot of power in process. It makes sense. We ought to be talking about process, but we ought to be doing it at certain times and in certain ways, and it ought to be true to some degree.

Blair: Yes. We use it late as a tool of reassurance to calm people down and let them know, "Hey, we've done this before. Here's how it's going to work. Don't worry. We're going to cut you here, we're going to reset this, we're going to get you this sedative, et cetera. You're going to wake up, you're going to feel fine, and in this narrow range of time, this is what's going to happen." That's reassuring, not because we, the patient, or you listener, your clients understand it, it's just like, "Okay. You sound like you've done this before." That's what it is.

David: One question here. Do you follow the prospect's lead? You only talk about process to the extent that you think they want you to? Or do you try to talk about it regardless?

Blair: This is a great question. In a minute, we're going to talk about where does process come from and how do you develop it. If I skip ahead to one of the caveats, once you do develop, you start to codify this, you're going to fall in love with it, you're going to talk about it too early. What's interesting, especially when you take process frame case studies, which are simply your case studies that are framed by this process that you claim to use. It's a form of proof that you actually follow this process.

When you develop process frame case studies, we're always cautioning people, "You're going to fall in love with them. You're going to lose them early." They're also tools of inspiration that are useful early, these process frame case studies, but they're way more powerful if you save them late. They're tools of reassurance that are effective at mopping up bias or more.

It's like bridge or whatever trump-based card game you might play. You're often saving your trump card for the end when you want to take out everybody else's aces. Even though this tool might have some power early on, it might be somewhat valuable to you to talk about process early or even put it on your website, that's an example of talking about it early, it's actually more powerful if you save it for later.

David: Right. It's almost like a game. They've been asking you tougher and tougher questions and you're answering them and then they think, "All right. I'll get him with this next one." "Talk about your process," and then you blow them away with all the right answers to it.

Blair: Yes. If you use it early, that moment is still going to arrive when you need to sop up doubt. There's buyer's remorse that sets in before people buy. You've just used the best card in your hand. You want to hold on to process until later.

David: Let's say I'm buying the argument, which I think people are at this point, where does process come from? If I want to do this deeper and a little bit more seriously, what do I do?

Blair: Take that four-step model that I use that's the medical analogy of diagnose, prescribe, apply, reapply and just think about how do we do this? How do we go about diagnosing? How do we go about prescribing? Another set of language for that is what does strategy mean and look like to us? What is the first application of that therapy in the medical metaphor or strategy in our world look like? If we get hired for ongoing reimplementation, what is that, what I call, re-application phase, the fourth phase of re-application look like? How do we do each of those phases?

Just note how you do it now, write it down, use it as a guide, keep iterating, and keep updating the guide that you've written. That's the easiest way to do this, is just to start by writing it down. You've talked before about the value of having somebody follow you around, maybe an intern, maybe somebody new in the firm. Just note how you and how senior people in the firm do things.

This idea of an observer, a third party observer, who will just take notes, you would say to them, "Try to infer our process from what you witness over the next week or two weeks or month or whatever it is." You don't want them to come back and say, "Well, I see no process." That's not an acceptable answer. You will probably be surprised by what these people write down. That might be your starting point, then you iterate from there.

David: Yes, because you say the same thing so often that you're used to hearing them, and they don't strike you as odd, but you have fallen into some sort of a process. I tweeted just today I noticed today I have a very specific process of drying off after a shower. Don't worry. I'm not going to go there. Left arm, right arm, chest, and so on. If I lose track, then it messes me up. I feel like I ought to get back in the shower. Now, this might be another problem with me, but you do fall into a pattern that works for you. It's so common that you just don't even think about it, so it takes an outside observer to pick it up sometimes.

Blair: Yes. That is a great example. A shower might sound silly, but we all have those things. The longer you live, the more you develop these routines that you're not even aware of. The first way to think about this is just have somebody observe the routine and write it down. If they write something down that's wrong or you can immediately see an area for improvement, then you make that improvement. You have people begin to follow it and then as they're using this codified process, as simple as it is, have them update it. That's the simplest version but process or a way of working is best when it falls out of an overarching point of view.

In some of the positioning episodes we've done, we've talked about the importance of perspective or point of view or ideology. If you have an ideology on how you do what you do, my ideology is right there in the name of the business, Win Without Pitching, out of that ideology should fall a working methodology. That becomes the third leg of the positioning stool. That's like, what do you believe? and your codified method for bringing that belief or perspective to bear on your client's businesses.

David: If this isn't resonating, it could be that you actually have a lot more process than you are aware. Something we just talked about a minute ago. It could also be that there's not as much similarity between your engagements as there should be because your positioning is all over the place. There's a direct tie between your ability to have a codified process and the similarity of the client opportunities that you get from time to time.

Blair: Yes, even if you're a broadly positioned, let's say you're a creative consultant, I just chose that term as the broadest possible positioning, you need a creative brain to solve whatever business or personal challenge you're working on, I'm your person. You would still have codified a methodology for how you think about and begin to solve your client's problems.

Maybe not so much codified on the execution side, maybe, but you couldn't take on a number of different creative consultant engagements and then not look back, if you were truly paying attention, and spot the patterns the way you've spotted the patterns about how you dry off in the shower. It's just going to happen. You will develop the patterns no matter how creative and averse to routine you are. You will develop patterns.

David: We signal the importance of our engagements by the degree to which we have a process. If things are really, really important like flying an airliner or shutting down a nuclear power plant or checking out of a campground with a big RV or whatever it is, where there are consequences for getting it wrong--

Blair: All three things that you've done. Flown an airplane, checked out of a campground with an RV and shut down a nuclear power plant. I'm not sure about the third one.

David: Only one of those is not true but if it's really important, you have a process for it. If you don't have a process, you are subtly communicating that we're special people. I don't want to go back to all the arguments for process to just make this point. Now, this has never happened in the history of 2Bobs, but we have convinced every person listening that they need to do more with process. What do you want to warn them about here?

Blair: The warnings, the first one which we talked about in the Killer Proposal episode and we made fun of, is the four Ds. It's okay for your process to start with the same letter.

David: David, David, David, David? I like four Ds.

Blair: My joke is discover, design, deliver, doh, we should have done it differently. Don't use four Ds because fully 50% of the firms on the planet have a four-step process that starts with four Ds for reasons I don't fully understand. Don't use four Ds. That's one warning. The second warning you alluded to earlier is the use of neuro. This one gets me.

David: You're imbalanced about this.

Blair: I have issued a worldwide ban on the use of the word neuro in any of your marketing, any of your process, any of your description of what you do unless you are a PhD neurologist. I've encountered probably a dozen firms who claim to do neuromarketing or to have a neuro thing. I'm not a neurologist. I'm not a doctor. I didn't graduate from university. I was academically expelled after one year. I don't know anything about neurology. That's not true. I actually know more than the average person.

David: Yes. [laughs] You are just digging a deeper and deeper hole. Come on. I'm enjoying this. Go ahead.

Blair: I've had family members with neurological afflictions so I've done a lot of reading, not just of books, but of medical journals on the topic, so I know a tiny little bit about this. I know enough to know that when somebody says neuro something and then starts to describe their process, I can almost identify which one book they read. It's like, okay, because you know the difference between the functions of the amygdala and the neocortex, does not make you a neuromarketer. It makes you a high school graduate.

David: Do you feel better? You've been a little unhinged in the last 30 seconds.

Blair: You know the chimp brain, the alligator brain, the dinosaur brain, the fight and flight versus, really good use of the word that isn't a word, cognating-

David: You want to be my neuroscientist and you don't even know the word.

Blair: [laughs] -on something. That's what most people mean when they talk about neuro whatever. I spent more time talking about this than I wanted to, but clearly, I needed to get that off my chest.

David: Next warning, next warning, moving on from neuro.

Blair: Next warning. No four Ds, no neuro unless you are a neurologist. If you are a neurologist, what the hell are you doing running a marketing firm?

[laughter]

Blair: Now, I'm done. All right. Some other warnings, like I've said already, as soon as you develop a process, and the more you codify it, and the more it feels proprietary to you, the more you will fall in love with it. You're going to use it too early in the sales process, like we've already talked about it. You're going to talk about it too long like you've split a fucking atom, and you're going to put it into your proposal. All of these things are bad. You talk about process late, you write it up on one page, it's even better if you can draw it out, and you use it in a conversation.

There's a visual. You can reference the visual and you could talk about it when you sense it can be in the closing conversation. It can be at the end of the value conversation. Use it late in the sale when you sense that the client is getting nervous about things. That's the moment when you say, "All right. Let's talk about how this is going to work if we work together. We do this all the time. We have a model for how we're doing it. I want to share it with you. I want you to be able to see yourself in it." That's the language.

Again, you're going to fall in love with it. It's just a phase that you go through. You won't recognize it immediately, and then maybe one day, you'll realize, "Oh yes. We're spending a little bit too much time on this." You're going to fall in love with it, you're going to use it too early, you're going to want to put it on your website, you're going to want to put it in your proposal, you're going to want to talk about it too long. Those are the caveats or the warnings.

David: The highest level, when you were going back through those, you start at this and then you go to this, and the highest level was the IP level. What percentage of firms do you think have real IP around their process? Not many, right?

Blair: Yes. I want to turn the question back on you because you've done a lot more work in this area than I have. What do you see?

David: Oh, maybe a dozen.

Blair: That's not very many. Let's talk what is intellectual property? It's protectable. It's like you could trademark it, you can copyright it, you can patent it, et cetera. It stands alone. You develop it for your own use, and you look at it and go, "This is actually really valuable." You start to think, "We could license this to our competitors." If you're thinking about selling the firm, you're thinking, "If I'm going to sell this IP, I want to get more for it." Maybe you put it into a separate legal entity.

David: Yes, license it to the buyer. A lot of people, me included, who think they have IP, don't. We jump on this too soon, being too impressed with what we're doing. I think that's natural. In my world, I have four pieces of IP. If I can work as hard as possible, apply every brain cell and it takes me-- I can't do more than one every five years of constant work. Of all the firms I've looked at, probably a dozen have really good IP, and I'm super impressed. I think 100 have the potential to go deeper with it.

Blair: You develop IP because you codify the process, you iterate, you make it unique. IP almost always comes out of a point of view, I think. We didn't talk about this, but a point of view sometimes falls out of a working process. It's implied in there, but you've never articulated it. You realize, "Oh, the reason we measure these things, the reason we do things this way is because we believe this." Those things can work together. You have this point of view. In my business, it's you should be able to win without pitching, without giving your thinking away for free. How do you do that?

I can explain that in a few words. I can explain that in a few thousand words but implied in that is a model. You develop a model that's unique to you. IPs almost always involve a diagnostic phase, where you take this process of codifying how you get the basic information that you need to understand the client's situation so you can prescribe a solution. Because your point of view on this is somewhat unique, you're collecting data that others in your space are not, and then you get better and better at making decisions with that data. You start to roll up data from numerous clients. You can benchmark them against each other. Now we're getting into IP territory.

David: You highlighted something that I want to draw attention to in that. I can't imagine, I've never seen any real IP that doesn't have some math in it, some data. It also is going to have some unique linguistic characteristic to it that's not just marketing-driven, but it's real. One of the easiest ways for me to think about IP is that if it's real IP, you could train somebody to apply it who is not the same expert level that you are. They're smart enough, they're articulate, they're educated but they don't have experience in this space and they could apply this IP and come up with answers instead of--

What we do instead is we just throw really smart people at problems and we just assume they're going to figure it out before they hit the ground. We throw them out of airplanes. It's like, "Okay. Invent a parachute, buddy." That's what this whole industry is. When we hire somebody and throw them out of a plane, we wonder why it's splat. Well, we're not giving them the process of how to invent something. That's one of the biggest differentiator for me. If it takes you to interpret the thing rather than a new employee, then it ain't IP.

Blair: Just that point of all of what we've talked about on the subject of process just from codifying how you do what you do now, to developing something that's unique to you, to developing something that's unique, valuable and protectable in the form of IP, all of that to different levels, to different strengths allows you to push work to lower levels in the organization.

It allows you to get more leverage from junior people because, to your point, you're not relying on the individual genius of these highly experienced, very expensive people. You're codifying a lot of that genius, wrapping it up in math and data, and putting the junior people in a position where they can go get that data and have the algorithm, to use the term kind of broadly, come up with the key insights.

David: As people are listening, there are some don'ts you want to stay away from but really, I hope mainly you just leave this really inspired to dig deeper on the process side and then you'll figure out how to use it right. Come back and listen to this episode again about where, and when, and how not to and all that stuff, but mainly, it should be inspirational. You should go deeper with what you're doing. I think this has been a great episode. Thank you, Blair.

Blair: Thanks, David. I feel like we've fulfilled our moral obligation to do a real topic. Now I think we should record Secrets of the Killer Website.

David: Okay. That's coming up. Thanks.