City of Paris

This past Sunday was the first day of the Year of the Tiger. I thought I’d dust off my Sun Tzu strategy books in honor of the occasion and share some of the well-quoted principles that seem relevant to management issues today—particularly concerning people and motivation.

• People make things happen. And so business enterprises must be centered on people, and business leaders’ preoccupation is to mobilize the workforce to take action by motivating them. Central to this is the notion that when you have an empowered workforce, your opponents will defeat themselves—meaning that your team will be so strong that success will come naturally.
• Timing is everything. This begins with an inner calm, a focus and sense of purpose, which is conducive to a deliberate assessment of the surroundings and the patience to wait for the opportunity to take action, such as striking when competition least expects it, or knowing when to temper an overzealous team or energize a deflated one.
• Go with the flow. Just as the ancient military strategists stopped at a body of water and studied the ebb and flow to come up with a game plan, today’s managers need to harness the forces driving workers and customers to achieve behavioral changes with the least effort. And knowing yourself as well as you know your competition is the key to survival.

There are lots of reference sources on this celebrated ancient Chinese general, including Wikipedia pages. Sun Tzu’s Art of War is available for download for free. Or you can get relatively inexpensive bound volumes.

I was catching up with an old friend and telling her about my clients on the East Coast, in the Midwest and in Southern California. Then I explained how I work with my team—none of whom “reports” to work at my office. When I read the Financial Times interview with Professor Lynda Gratton of London Business School, who talked about the future of work, it all came together for me. Mine is a consultant’s view. People in the corporate environment no doubt will experience it in other dimensions and with different nuances.

Post-geographic. There was a time when only road warriors crisscrossed the country and perhaps the world to conduct business. Now, as the Internet makes more and more communication options open to more of us, working across geographic regions is accessible to anyone with a computer and optionally a phone. Now, global teams can collaborate easily on a day-to-day basis, adding that much more efficiency to the workplace.

Cross-cultural. I like being able to touch base with my colleagues in Europe in the morning and switch to speaking Chinese in the evening. Living in California gives me the flexibility to do all of this without working extraordinary hours. It opens up a broader array of resources and talents I can tap into, as well as business opportunities, not to mention the rewards of variety and intellectual challenge.

Multidisciplinary. If we can transcend geography and time zones, surely we can begin to reach beyond our comfort zones. Marketing communication professionals are accustomed to working with strategic and creative disciplines. We have been good at tapping into research, media, medical and scientific resources. Now, we can and should begin to tap into specialties such as behavioral sciences and refine our approaches to influencing perception and adherence.

A balancing act. The Blackberry makes it difficult for us to duck emails, especially when they are coming in a steady stream from different time zones. For me, it means disciplining myself to carve out downtime, so that I can stay fresh and effective. Likewise, cyber contacts cannot replace the face-to-face interactions and personal relationships that are the basis for trust and collaboration, not to mention just “getting on the same page.” Good thing I do like travel.

Always integrated. I think flourishing in this new environment is about weaving together different cultures, disciplines and perspectives. That’s where we can derive synergy and generate fresh ideas. Otherwise, we’d simply be working longer hours in more places, and that would be a pity.

The dawn of the new millennium doesn’t feel like that long ago. Remember the days when the Y2K bug was our primary concern? A look at the lists of “10 best” and “10 most” of the year—or the decade—is telling of our times and the choices we face.

On energy, Financial Times posed two lists of questions to consider:
Top 10 energy questions for 2010 - Hydrocarbons edition
Top 10 questions for 2010 - Climate change and clean tech edition

For a quick recap, here is a comic strip to take us through the history of finance of the past decade.

Where do we begin on healthcare? For those of us who are still undecided, here are 10 reasons to support the healthcare reform bills.

Or vote on the healthcare deal of the year.

Everyone is writing about social media. Here are two that may interest healthcare marketers. Top 50 Twitter Topics of the Year and the Top Viral Videos of 2009.

And finally, lest we forget: Top 10 Worst Humanitarian Crises.

Consolidation, cost cutting and product pruning seem to be a way of life in publishing these days. Witness the recent decision by Condé Nast to discontinue Gourmet magazine. And thus it was refreshing to read about Bloomberg’s strategy for BusinessWeek, which Bloomberg acquired from McGraw-Hill recently. Instead of the expected bundling and special package pricing for advertisers, Bloomberg plans to beef up BusinessWeek’s editorial and possibly increase the price, which according to Advertising Age is $35 annually, compared to $106 for The Economist. I’ve long since switched over from BusinessWeek and Fortune to The Economist, despite the higher price, precisely because of the editorial. And I’ve made a decision to discontinue my Wall Street Journal subscription once it expires, as Financial Times offers me a global perspective and better-quality writing worth the premium price. Ironically, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) just passed USA Today in circulation, reaching 2.2 million compared to USA Today’s 1.88 million. I don’t want to be a snob, for I enjoy USA Today once in a while, especially when I’m overseas and hungry for news from home. But the very fact that WSJ is being compared to USA Today speaks to the problem. As WSJ tries to appeal to a broader audience with the likes of scandals and lifestyle-related editorial, its management seems to have adopted the strategy of expanding its circulation by picking up higher-income households in general, possibly at the risk of losing some serious business readers.

I think there are lessons here for healthcare marketers, especially those of us who operate within the business-to-business model (e.g., clinical diagnostics, medical devices). Although price is part of the buying decision, businesspeople are more likely to look closely at value (e.g., productivity gains with a more reliable though more expensive product). So, first of all, lowering the price is not the only path to business in a down (though perhaps recovering?) economy. By the same token, packaging deals without true added value won’t do it either. Buyers see through that quickly and, if not, a more thorough business analysis by the bean counters will reveal where the true value is. Lastly, why not take a bold step and take advantage of lower costs to improve products, so you’ll end up with a better product to sell, perhaps at higher prices?

Belatedly, I finished reading Chris Anderson’s somewhat controversial Free and his friendly volley with Malcolm Gladwell. Actually, it was Gladwell’s review that prompted me to buy the book (even though one can download it for free—but I don’t like reading on screen and I like supporting my local bookseller, Kepler’s). Free is well written and engaging, and offers many new ways to look at economics and business. While I can’t say I am sold on all of Anderson’s bold assertions, I did come away with two concepts that I can put into practice. The first is the idea of the reputation or attention economy—Anderson even uses this concept to value Facebook at $1.8 billion. So our “friends,” “followers,” “connections” etc. are reputation currency we are acquiring, unit by unit, that we can trade in one day to help us land that prized appointment, assignment, partnership or contract, based on which we will be duly rewarded by units that are anything but free. And this idea of reputation currency applies equally to our personal as well as our product brands. Here’s another tangible example. Recently, a highly respected consultant to the clinical diagnostics industry, The Dark Report, started a new service http://www.darkdaily.com/ where companies can post white papers on their site, for a fee, to reach senior executives who have been loyal subscribers to The Dark Report and its now famed Executive War College. Downloads by the executives are, of course, free.

My second take-away is that, whether or not we completely understand and/or buy into this new “free” economy, Anderson is right about “free” being an inevitable force of gravity, at least for now. So, for those of us who are not economists and who cannot or do not want to get to the bottom of why things like YouTube or Google searches should or should not be free, we can take Anderson’s advice. We can take advantage of what’s free and build businesses around this “free” economy as it stands today. Why not post educational videos on YouTube? Why not use social media to engage customers and, even more important, get to know them by listening to them? Why not use the dazzling array of free services and tools to bootstrap a new business venture? After all, most of us would rather be at the receiving end of “free.”

For the latest updates, see Using ‘Free’ to Turn a Profit and the debate about the value of content in Sacrifices made in hunt for new model.

The annual meeting of the American Association of Clinical Chemistry (AACC), held in Chicago last week, is arguably the biggest annual gathering of laboratory diagnostics practitioners and vendors. As I attended the symposia and various presentations at exhibit booths, I couldn’t help but notice the focus on quality and, even more so, the cost of patient care and how laboratory diagnostics can help drive costs down. In particular, cost savings enabled by automation and information technology was a much-repeated theme as laboratory managers from hospitals reeled off statistics about how they are able to get better results to doctors faster and with fewer personnel. What is interesting is that there seems little resistance to this labor reduction, and managers can talk about attrition with little concern about people losing their jobs. The reason: a continuing shortage of qualified laboratory personnel.

The fact that laboratory medicine is able to drive labor costs down (and improve quality and service) is of course a direct result of technological advancements. Just as important is the fact that this industry does not have to contend with the consequences of job losses faced by the manufacturing sector—the auto industry being a prime example—where gains in productivity are often seen as a threat to livelihood. On the other hand, I cannot help but wonder about the reason for the lack of trained personnel. Surely, lack of incentive must be one, and I am reminded, once again, that laboratory medicine is surely one of the most undervalued components of healthcare, and that when it comes to healthcare costs, laboratory medicine gets a disproportionate amount of scrutiny as compared to imaging or therapeutics.

Perhaps this is an opportunity for an industry-academic collaboration, where IVD companies can team up with their customers in the medical centers to quantify the value of clinical diagnostics in healthcare.