June 19. San Francisco. Atelier Laurent Studio.

It was a gathering of contrarians, a few hundred radicals hand-selected to come together to mash it up inside an inspiring art studio. These weren’t painters or sculptors. These were protagonists in the business world, protestors of the status quo – demonstrators, if you will, of a better way to build and run organizations. This was a gathering of change agents who drive new agendas all over the world – in big organizations and small, established ones and newbie’s. This event was called the MIX Mashup. Its stories can be found here.

As you’ve read many times before, I’m a believer in – and practitioner of – the power of transformation.  Done well it has the ability to rise above the noise, stand out amidst the clutter, and drive market growth while accelerating through opportunities that enable higher levels of sustainable value. A transformation agenda does this by providing the belief system and operating framework that aligns an organization around one agenda, integrates product, sales and marketing around one point of view, and speeds decisions and action around one overarching objective. Attending the MIX Mashup was as comfortable as a homecoming for me.

Author Gary Hamel, co-founder of MIX and co-host of the event, urged the audience to “be more aspirational”, to “be more angry”. He urged attendees to define thoughts and actions based on what you want versus what you’ve been.  He’s right, of course. Just look at what budget planning looks like at most organizations. It’s a derivative of last year’s plan and last year’s results.

What is in the way of a better, more meaningful future?

Without being too obtuse, the Nobel Prize winning author, William Faulkner, who wrote of life in the segregated southern part of America, captured it well. The south was mired in a case of what Faulkner called, “Was. Is.”, meaning the south was stuck because its past was always present. “Was. Is.” Is that why so many organizations are going nowhere fast? Is that why so many can’t align around a future-focused agenda? Is ‘the gravitational pull of the past’, to quote a lovely turn of phrase by Geoffrey Moore the drag on what can be? I firmly believe it is. “Was. Is.” should be more like, ‘Was isn’t relevant any more’.

How can you think and act differently?

Be like a challenger brand. Take nothing for granted. Challenge conventional wisdom. Challenge the status quo. Start with the end in mind. Figure out what you want then handle things that are in the way. Challenge the dominance of the Big Dogs and their grip on how things are. Challenge the primal forces that conspire to keep things comfortable and tidy and as it’s always been.

How do you inspire others to be help power transformation?

I have my phrases. Gary Hamel, Geoffrey Moore, and others have theirs. But the best rallying cry of all just might be a bumper sticker I saw one day. It certainly works in this context.

What is your experience with transformation? What do you think of transformation? What exactly is transformation? My research tells me that transformation means different things to different people in different roles.

For some of you, perhaps in functional positions, transformation is consultant speak for change that is often uncomfortable. You know this kind of change. It’s strategically unclear, politically charged, and haphazard in execution. Good luck with that.

For others in non-management roles, transformation is one of the words ‘management’ hides behind when driving down costs and/or driving up profits. You’ve seen this, too. “As part of our efforts to transform (insert company name) into a more competitive entity, it is necessary to immediately cut non-essential operating costs and reduce redundancy in our work force.” Right.

For others in executive management, transformation is seen as the way to break through the status quo with a powerful strategic agenda focused on achieving an organization’s fullest potential. This is the camp I fall into. This is where sustainable value and momentum get created.

Transformation is a radical departure from the ‘same old, same old’ ways of the past with a smart, powerful, and aggressive way forward. This kind of transformation positions an organization as vital to the interests of its top customers. It powers through what held it back by mobilizing and activating a belief system that creates a wave of palpable momentum that displaces the drag of inertia.

This is the kind of transformation I believe in and practice. It works best when it’s a CEO-led agenda that requires the alignment of the entire organization, especially the cornerstone units of product, sales, and marketing. [Read Align for Success]

Where has transformation made all the difference? Where has transformation worked? I can talk about three for whom I had direct influence — Red Hat, PTC, and Platform Computing. What’s interesting is each transformation started from a very different place. I was CMO at both Red Hat and PTC; and I worked with Platform through 21 Weeks.

• Red Hat. Red Hat was a media darling with a huge perceived potential, but in reality it was a small, low margin business. Despite a record-breaking IPO and follow-on offering, Red Hat lost a lot of money on only $8 million in revenue in 1999. That’s when Red Hat’s executive team began an aggressive transformation agenda that forever shifted the company from an interesting, developer-centric Linux operating system company to the enterprise leader of the more significant open source software movement. Red Hat passed the $1 billion revenue mark this past year.

• PTC was a very large and successful company that achieved $1 billion in revenue in only 12 years, but by 2001 it significantly lost its way and starting sinking fast on all levels. PTC’s Board of Directors instituted an aggressive transformation agenda in late 2001 that helped reshape this formerly great end-user applications software company to become the clear leader of the higher value, enterprise space of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM). It began its transformation during the very difficult economic times following 9/11. Today it’s the clear leader of PLM, and the second largest independent software company in the world. [Read Noise]

• Platform Computing was a profitable $75 million leader of high performance computing, but its Founder/CEO had the confidence that it could play with the big boys in the much bigger and much noisier market of cloud computing. In 2009, Platform put in place a CEO-led transformation agenda intended to shift from being the comfortable leader of a niche market space to becoming the leading provider of private cloud management software. In less than two years, Platform grew at double-digit rates, won kudos for its new cloud products, and attracted the interests of major industry players like IBM, which acquired Platform in late 2011. [Read IBM Acquires Platform Computing. Whatever.]

There are many examples of successful transformations. Apple is clearly one. Ford is another. I have insights into some cool transformative work being done by challengers in hot categories like IT Automation, Big Data, and Video, but that’s another post.

What is your experience with transformation? What stories can you share?

Thomas Butta

Infographic by Dennis Michael Dimos

A value roadmap can provide a number of sustainable benefits inside the company that invests in the effort.

1. The capabilities section of the value roadmap showcases the gaps between what the roadmap says is needed and what the company can actually provide. The gap analysis showcases exactly where the company needs to improve its own capabilities in terms of people, process, solutions, and services.
2. The gap analysis becomes a decision tree for what, when and how a company needs to fill the gaps. It sets up decisions that need to be made regarding
   1. Priorities
   2. Timing
   3. Investments
   4. Methodology – build, buy or partner
3. The effort to develop the value roadmap can motivate a company. Let’s face it. The work is highly strategic. It’s about creating an innovative yet functional form of intellectual property that can help catapult the company to category leadership. It represents a significant value opportunity, and everyone involved knows it.
4. The roadmap team is a reflection of how powerful a company can be when it aligns its critical assets. The construction of a value roadmap requires the active participation of a cross-functional team from Product Management, Sales, Services, and Marketing. Input in = input out. Smart, committed people supported by executive sponsors will produce a really good result.
5. The roadmap identifies what each department needs to do
   1. Product Management needs to fill gaps in the product portfolio while continually improving existing products that are core to what’s needed
   2. Services can elevate its game from simply supporting customers to strategically guiding customers through a new consulting practice
   3. Marketing must leverage the thought leadership value of the roadmap, first with influencers like analysts and the media, then as a vehicle to drive higher value engagements with customers and prospects
   4. Sales needs to be trained on how to leverage the roadmap content in two ways: to create a new narrative with current customers; and to be able to have a credible conversation with senior executives who heretofore have eluded the company’s reach
6. The content of the roadmap can be repurposed into other thought leadership forms, such as keynote addresses, Point-of-View booklets, executive seminars, workshops, articles, and the like. For one company, we even formed a partnership with a top business school to create an executive education series off of the content of the roadmap. We received money (nice), valuable input (good), access to executives (really good), and the pedigree of partnering with a leading institution (invaluable).

As you have seen in these posts, a value roadmap is a highly worthy endeavor for those companies looking to lead a changing or emerging category. It has clear and sustainable benefits within the marketplace and within the company doing it.

But, it’s not easy. Not in the least. To be successful you have to be willing to commit to the hard work of doing it properly. Here are some tips.

– You have to stay firm with a skeptical sales force used to selling from demos

– You have to test the content of the roadmap as it’s forming with real customers in real sales situations as often as you can

– And, you have to be willing to take to heart what one of my executive partners in one of these efforts said when he admonished a Services team for not fully committing to the roadmap as it was forming. He said, “Get with the (expletive) program! If you’re not on the roadmap you’re off strategy!!!”

That was … and very much is … the point. A value roadmap is the strategy that can make all the difference. It has for the many companies with whom I’ve done this. It certainly did for the company and executive in the above story. Now, 10 years later, the company is leveraging version 6 of their roadmap as the clear leader of their market space. And that passionate executive is the CEO/President of the company!

Thomas Butta

The act of going from where you are to a higher, more valuable level is often expressed in a number of funny ways: Breaking through. Getting to a new level. Making big strides. But, the one I like best is taking a leap.

Taking a leap captures the emotion in doing something dramatically different. It’s exhilarating, but it’s also a bit scary.

To make a bold move you have to get out of your comfort zone. You have to get beyond the status quo. Which means you have to get off the current path even if that path has attractive upswings.

Most organizations operate off of an ‘S’ curve, which has soft highs and lows. The idea is to have higher highs than low lows. But, taking a leap, requires you to leap to a whole new S curve.

In honor of today, I urge all of you dissatisfied with the status quo or frustrated with slow and steady to take a leap. It may be scary, but it’s the only way to transform your organization and yourself.

Thomas Butta

Originally posted on Huffington Post Business 1/25/12.

Do you remember the popular book, Dress for Success? It sold millions of copies based on a simple concept:  If you want to get ahead you need to look the part. And that starts with what you wear. Wardrobes were updated everywhere.

Dress for Success was itself a resounding success because it nailed the fundamentals. Its basic premise made sense — appearances matter. And, it was easy to execute.

So, the individual had a playbook, albeit one book in the broader scheme of things, on how to increase their odds of success. Cool.

What about the organization? Is there an equivalent playbook for driving success for the organization as a whole? Is there something fundamental that can be executed across the organization that would also accelerate momentum, value and sustainable success? I would argue, yes, but it’s not what graces most reading lists.

Certainly, there is good thinking about the effectiveness of culture, the importance of community, and the benefits of branding. There are also new ideas about more efficient organizational  structures and models. All are worth investigating and deploying.

But, none of this work gets to the root cause of why organizations are not as successful as they can be. Organizations are not achieving their full potential because organizations do not align for success. For all the talk of one corporate culture, one community, and one brand, we continue to see departments operating within their own agendas, goals and motivations. And while some success is being achieved as a result of innovative products, smart selling, and brilliant marketing, an organization will not be as successful as it can be without integrating all three of those fundamental behaviors.

So, how can organizations align for success?

1. Integrate the three most important operating departments — product, sales/service and marketing — around a powerful and compelling positioning platform
2. Construct a roadmap that shows your customers the way to create and capture value in your market space
3. Align the company behind the value roadmap. Everyone should be trained on its content. A value roadmap is thought leadership at its best, especially for an industry space that is forming or shifting. Customers at all levels will value the thinking
4. Equally, align the company behind the competencies needed to realize those value-creation paths either through its own IP, products and services or with the addition of partnerships that complete the portfolio
5. Manage your people, process and technology to support what you’re telling your customers they need to be competent at. The competency part of value roadmap can serve as the blueprint for what your company needs to be good at and a framework for decision making
6. Publish and promote the heck out of the value roadmap. When you own the customer path to value you become the de facto industry leader

Sure, this kind of work is a lot more difficult that simply replacing your wardrobe, but I’d argue many companies don’t do much more than that anyway. What exactly is a new marketing campaign, product demo or a sales person, but a new suit anyway?

My next post will go into greater depth on value roadmaps.

Addendum: If this topic piques your interest, you might want to check out two earlier posts.

1) This post is about which department should lead the integration/transformation effort. Read Making Transformation Happen.

2) This post is a case study on a company that leveraged a value roadmap as the foundation of its transformation to lead a new category. Read Noise.

Writers Note: This post is about what’s possible for those of you facing an opportunity to accelerate your organization to a higher level of value. It showcases a company that had the courage to challenge the status quo and heavy-duty competition. The story is longer than normal, but it’s a compelling case study that needs room to unfold.

Did you catch the news of IBM’s latest software acquisition a few weeks ago? Business as usual for Big Blue? Certainly. But, who and what is Platform Computing? Click here to find out.

We had the same questions in late 2009 when 21 Weeks was retained by Platform Computing, Inc. to help position and package Platform as a credible enterprise software player in cloud and big data against behemoths like IBM, HP, EMC and VMware.

For 17 years, Platform Computing was a well-respected leader in the niche field of high-performance computing (also known as technical computing). Its clients were companies who relied on large, mission-critical applications, like models used in financial services, discrete manufacturing, and oil & gas. Platform not only helped such companies maximize application run time, but Platform helped them optimize infrastructure costs as well. Before cloud, such infrastructure configurations were known as clusters or grids.

Platform was successful because its software had at its core a highly intelligent algorithm that optimized the balance between effectiveness and efficiency, run-time and cost, performance and capacity. The smart algorithm enabled Platform to achieve levels of optimization that far exceed other software companies. And because Platform’s open architecture worked equally well on any operating system or infrastructure configuration,  it helped its clients avoid vendor lock-in, the unspoken cost of doing business with the dominant players.

That was all well and good, but Platform’s year-over-year growth slowed considerably by 2009 as its niche market of high performance computing matured. So, Platform plotted its  move to the much larger and faster-growing enterprise software markets for cloud and big data. Platform’s expertise and experience were a good fit, and the markets provided the opportunity for geometric growth.

That was the plan, but the move came with significant risk. Platform would be expanding outside its big fish/small pond comfort zone to arguably the hottest segments of enterprise computing — markets dominated by iconic brands and enormous companies with marketing departments larger than the whole of Platform.

How did Platform transform from a relatively unknown company to become a credible player in the enterprise software markets for cloud and big data?

How did Platform achieve year-over-year double-digit growth?

How did this niche company from Toronto become important enough to be acquired by IBM, one of the most powerful companies in the world?

It did so in two ways:

1. Platform made the smart decision not to focus on the broad-based cloud market, but rather on the emerging space of private cloud favored by enterprises running large, mission-critical applications. Not only did this space closely resemble Platform’s roots in high-performance computing, but it was an area that was still forming. The same held true for big data. Focus gave Platform the the chance to compete.
2. Platform embraced a classic challenger brand stance. It established a compelling positioning platform around a provocative point of view. To Platform cloud — and whatever they call that which inevitably comes after cloud (like big data) — is simply an iteration of what came before cloud, like clusters and grids. To Platform the fundamentals of managing applications in cloud and big data computing environments are the same as running applications in clusters or grids environments. It all comes down to optimizing an application’s run time and minimizing infrastructure costs. Nowhere was this more true than in the emerging areas of private cloud and big data where critical applications and big enterprises played.

A simple, but bold refrain became Platform’s provocative point of view, positioning platform, and rallying cry: Clusters, Grids, Clouds, Whatever.

Everything flowed from that compelling, challenger positioning platform:

• The opportunity for growth

— The move beyond technical IT to corporate IT brought with it the chance for double-digit growth versus single-digit growth in the maturing technical IT market

• The acquisition of talent with enterprise computing and market formation experience

— New talent was enticed and secured for  product management and marketing, sales, business development, and corporate marketing

• Clarity of market sector

— Cloud had correlation to Platform’s roots, but private cloud had highly credible      relevance and no clear market leader. The same was true with big data. Focus increased Platform’s odds of success.

• Internal alignment

— The positioning platform provided a clear framework for internal decisions and    actions: Product development (best performing software for clusters, grids, cloud and whatever came next like big data); sales (cross-sell existing relationships with technical IT to get to corporate IT; attract new, enterprise customers); marketing (win over analyst and media influencers; drive awareness, interest & adoption)

• Brand Identity

— A change in identity is an effective way to get people to look at you in a fresh, new way. Platform’s new identity not only demonstrated exactly what it did, but it did so in a memorable way thereby achieving two strategic goals with one effort

• Messaging

— Platform lived the role of the challenger brand by being provocative and embracing bold in speeches, booth displays, advertising, webinars, its website, etc.

• Analyst  Relations

— Industry analysts are critical influencers to buyers, which is why Platform set out to become the advocate for private cloud, for example

• Recognition

— Leaders need to be recognized as leaders so Platform worked important industry and trade media to win and promote Platform’s technical credibility and prowess

• Thought Leadership

— Emerging markets are often led by the company that owns the customer problem so a series of Point-of-View booklets were created and marketed

• Sales Training

— Selling into the enterprise is where the best software selling machines operate. Platform needed a new kind of sales executive and a different mode of selling — from  feature/function focused to one that was value-oriented

• Partnerships

— Rarely does a company achieve rapid growth in a new market sector on its own. Hand to hand combat (i.e., selling to one prospect at a time) doesn’t scale. Finding one-to-many distribution opportunities is an effective match to direct sales

In two years, Platform achieved what it set out to do. It grew at double digit rates. It attracted new talent. It won over new important enterprise relationships. It generated credibility with customers, analysts and the media for its newest products.  It got noticed.

Could Platform have made it big if it continued on an independent path? It’s hard to say. But, Platform certainly transformed itself from a niche market, technical computing expert into a credible player in the hottest categories in enterprise computing today — important enough that IBM wanted to buy the company.

Platform’s Founder and CEO, Songnian Zou, summed it up this way in his post-acquisition blog. “Platform Computing as a standalone company may come to an end, but the journey continues to clusters, grids, clouds or whatever comes next.”

Will you be ready when you have that rare opportunity to transform your organization into a more valuable entity?  Will you be ready? Or will your attitude be one of … “whatever”?

From Ben Horowitz’s Blog:

You would never know
If you could ever be
If you never try
You would never see
—Lupe Fiasco, All Black Everything

A year ago I wrote about a very special entrepreneur, Christian Gheorghe, who escaped Communist Romania, migrated to America, and—after starting here with $27 as a limo driver and construction worker—eventually became a computer scientist and an entrepreneur. I indicated that just as he broke from an oppressive, totalitarian regime, he planned to free his customers from the oppression of enterprise software. Today Christian announces his new company Tidemark and I finally get to tell you how he will redefine and reinvent enterprise performance management and, more broadly, data analytics.

As we enter the age of the cloud/mobile platform, Tidemark provides a compelling example of why future applications will be far superior to the current generation. By properly using the bursting capabilities of the cloud, Tidemark benchmarks out at 1,000 times the performance of current solutions, which sometimes take 6 or 7 days to consolidate financials across a business. By using the iPad as the primary user interface target, Tidemark is highly accessible to business people and not just data analysts.

Both of these advances turn out to be critically important. If it takes a week to consolidate financial statements, then any scenario planning will be stale by a minimum of one week. In today’s real-time business environment, that’s ridiculous and certainly uncompetitive. Anybody who has been in business for any length of time knows that the data represents a portion, but not all of the business. In the same way that a map is not the terrain, the spreadsheet is not the business. As a result, having data analysts analyze data and the managers of the business attempt to make decisions on that basis is far from optimal. By making the data and its analysis directly available to the people with the knowledge, Tidemark transforms decision quality.

Beyond these platform advantages, Tidemark changes the nature of data analytics by ditching the two fundamental and problematic questions on which the existing industry is based:

• What data do I have?
• What reports do I want?

The trouble with these questions is that a) it is highly unlikely that you’ve gathered all of the relevant data in the right schema and format prior to needing it, b) businesses are not best represented in reports and c) the reports generally say very little that’s interesting about the future. As a result, companies that analyze their businesses with off-the-shelf products tend to do a far worse job than companies like Google who use data to achieve massive competitive advantage through teams of brilliant engineers.

Christian replaced these two ancient questions with far better ones:

• How does our business work?
• How do we want to measure it, understand it, and predict what will happen next?

Tidemark’s software begins by literally capturing a blueprint of the customer’s business. If you think of a business as a series of processes executed by a variety of people designed to create specific, measurable outcomes then you get the basic idea of how Tidemark defines a blueprint and aligns itself to the business. It’s a great alignment, because when you think about it, processes cover the import aspects of a business—product development process, sales process, financial planning process, etc. Tidemark enables companies to capture their process architecture and the related key performance indicators in software. Once Tidemark understands how a business works and how the company wants to measure and understand it, it can help the company forecast future results, scenario plan, and continuously improve.

For those of us who have been around this kind of software for years, Tidemark’s breakthroughs are breathtaking. It’s a product that delivers on a 30-year vision in the same way that the iPhone finally fulfilled the dream of the Newton.

Christian is the shining example of why an open and benevolent immigration policy for oppressed peoples is the right one. Before he is done, he will make thousands of U.S. businesses more competitive, employ many Americans, and lead the way for other companies to follow and improve their approach to software. And all we had to do was give him a chance.

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What exactly is inertia? Simply put inertia is everything that makes up what your organization stands for at the moment you embark on an accelerated path forward. Inertia can include any or all of the following:

* Fear of change

* Fear of the unknown

* Your organization’s culture

* Your organization’s processes

* Prior experience

* Comfort in how things were done before

* Your brand’s reputation in the marketplace

* The perception of the company within the company

I’m sure you’ve experienced what it’s like when a change program suddenly slows or stalls. For many it feels as if something grabs hold of the forward progress and pulls it backward. Some say it’s similar to running headfirst into a strong wind.

Think about it. Inertia is all about how it was. Yet, there you are trying to move away from how it was to how it needs to be. You’re committed to transcend beyond something with a lot of history and mass, and determined to morph it into something that’s relatively unknown. No wonder inertia disrupts forward progress. The laws of nature are fiercely at work.

What to do?

First, never forgot how powerful inertia can be. Recognize upfront that it will rear itself – right out of the gate and whenever cracks appear in your change program due to uncertainty, soft results, or a weak effort.

Second, be prepared. Anticipate the power of inertia by arming your change coalition as forcefully and deeply as possible. Give it the chance to succeed. Let everyone know that resistance will happen so they don’t panic. Evangelize how the future can be better than how it is. Continuously demonstrate how the competitiveness – even the vitality – of the enterprise is at stake. If you do all of this, the natural blocking force of inertia will ease enough to give you the time you need to move forward.

What exactly is inertia? Simply put inertia is everything that makes up what your organization stands for at the moment you embark on an accelerated path forward. Inertia can include any or all of the following:

• Fear of change
• Fear of the unknown
• Your organization’s culture
• Your organization’s processes
• Prior experience
• Comfort in how things were done before
• Your brand’s reputation in the marketplace
• The perception of the company within the company

I’m sure you’ve experienced what it’s like when a change program suddenly slows or stalls. For many it feels as if something grabs hold of the forward progress and pulls it backward. Some say it’s similar to running headfirst into a strong wind.

Think about it. Inertia is all about how it was. Yet, there you are trying to move away from how it was to how it needs to be. You’re committed to transcend beyond something with a lot of history and mass, and determined to morph it into something that’s relatively unknown. No wonder inertia disrupts forward progress. The laws of nature are fiercely at work.

What to do?

First, never forgot how powerful inertia can be. Recognize upfront that it will rear itself – right out of the gate and whenever cracks appear in your change program due to uncertainty, soft results, or a weak effort.

Second, be prepared. Anticipate the power of inertia by arming your change coalition as forcefully and deeply as possible. Give it the chance to succeed. Let everyone know that resistance will happen so they don’t panic. Evangelize how the future can be better than how it is. Continuously demonstrate how the competitiveness – even the vitality – of the enterprise is at stake. If you do all of this, the natural blocking force of inertia will ease enough to give you the time you need to move forward.

• Is your company in a position to accelerate? If not, what’s in the way?

• Are you positioned for value – or are you selling based on features, functions or price?

• Are you a thought leader in your market space?

• Is your competitive environment exploding in a frenzy of hype?

• Do you have a new offering that could leapfrog you into a desirable new position?

• Do you have big news that could change the face of your company?

• Do you have what it takes to challenge the big dogs? Or are you a big dog feeling the heat from challengers?

• Are you limited in your ability to reach up and over in your best customers?

• Are you seeing effective collaboration between marketing, product, and sales?

• Do you have the critical talent to push your brand promise to the next level?

• Is your company being valued fairly?  Are you at risk of becoming a commodity?

If you were to honestly answer the questions posed above, what would you learn? Is it time to change? If so, what’s stopping you?