If you were a fan of the band, The Police, you certainly remember the haunting song that featured the lyrics, “Every breath you take, every move you make, every step you take, I’ll be watching you.” That’s as good a way as any to explain why Big Data is such a big deal.

Everything everywhere is being captured, recorded, and stored. Every keystroke. Every communication. Every transaction. Every interaction. The opportunity to make sense of the data in order to take intelligent action is compelling for obvious reasons. You might gain a competitive edge if you are able to know more so you can do more sooner.

The truth is that’s a lot easier said than done. Despite the opportunity to gain insights and take intelligent action, Big Data is misunderstood. Which explains why there are so many views on what to do and what not to do.

In the middle of noise around Big Data is a clear voice with an enlightened view on what Big Data is all about. That voice is from a small, but smart software company in Austin, Texas called StoredIQ. StoredIQ packaged its views into a provocative, easy-to-read booklet called The Truth About Big Data. It is exactly what the title suggests. It’s about dispelling the myths and unraveling the mysteries about Big Data.

The booklet, and the ensuing Truth About Big Data Roadshow drew the attention of thousands of executives and hundreds of companies. One company that took particular notice was IBM, the technology juggernaut that has jumped all over the Big Data bandwagon.

IBM was pulled in by StoredIQ’s compelling take on the Big Data space, and impressed with the technological substance and knowhow behind StoredIQ’s bold voice. On December 19, IBM announced its intentions to acquire StoredIQ, and make the company an integral part of IBM’s Information Lifecycle Governance business unit.

The lessons here are clear:

• You’re better served if you focus your energies on owning the customer problem. Customers pay attention when you have something valuable to say. People don’t like to be sold. They like to be related to. Speaking to their problems is a great way to engage.
• Stop being part of the market noise with a sales pitch reliant solely on feature/function benefits. People don’t make decisions based on logic. They use logic to reinforce decisions instinctively made from their belly or heart.

The way to gain awareness of every step you take is to speak the customer language.

In hot, noisy, crowded market spaces, that’s a truth worth following – especially for challenger brands.

Thomas Butta 

UC4 is in a great position to rapidly accelerate through an opportunity to lead a new, important, valuable IT category. A growth investor (versus a value investor) will clearly benefit the company. UC4 created its leadership opportunity by making smart, time-tested moves. These moves are highly repeatable, and offer lessons to all.

1. Move: UC4 aggregated a number of automation tasks onto one unified IT automation platform. UC4 even named the single platform, ONE Automation.
   Lesson: Category leadership always comes from a single, unified platform not from a loose collection of point tools. This holds true for all major software categories, and is even true in other industries.
2. Move: UC4 needed to lead a category important enough to be seen as strategic. IT Process Automation is that category. UC4 built the business case to prove that automating processes is more effective than automating tasks. Chasing tasks, argued UC4, is about efficiency whereas driving process automation across the board is a way to create top and bottom line value.
   Lesson: Category development is key if you can pull it off. Categories happen through the combination of efforts by industry leaders and analysts. In every case you need to be the thought leader for the category. You need to be seen as the company that has it figured it out. You need to be seen as the trusted guide.
3. Move: UC4 used it customers to help communicate to the influential analysts so they would a) see the strategic value of UC4 in IT process automation, and b) understand that UC4 has functionality leadership that can translate into market leadership. Indeed, UC4 achieved leadership status according to the top analyst firms and reports.
   Lesson: Analysts are incredibly influential – especially in IT. You have the power to help them see (and feel) the value of the space and your role in its development. This requires time and effort, but it’s well worth it.
4. Move: UC4 challenged the status quo and those who represent it, namely the largest system management companies in the distributed computing space. As UC4’s CMO likes to say “It’s UC4 vs. the Big 4”. By naming ‘the enemy’ clearly, the debate and choice becomes clearer. By using provocative statements such as “ONE Automation” and “OpsDev not DevOps” UC4 makes its anchor points and differentiation central to the debate or choice. UC4’s CMO inherited a good, but not great tagline, Rethink Automation. ‘Rethinking’ anything is a challenging action but the tagline lacked both context and identity. So, the tagline was modified to Rethink IT Automation with the reason(s) in front of it such as “Cloud. Rethink IT Automation”. The four major trends affecting IT are the reasons to rethink: Cloud, Big Data, IT as a Service, and DevOps. A unified process automation platform is UC4’s answer to helping IT effectively manage through its transition from distributed architectures to virtual and cloud architectures.
   Lesson: Challenger brands have to be clear and provocative in relation to what and whom they’re challenging and why. In so doing, challenger brands also must be compelling in how they convey why their solutions are smarter and better.
5. Move: UC4 had very little name recognition especially among strategic decision makers in IT operations. It was easy for the unknown UC4 to be seen as a risk relative to the Big 4. UC4 understood it needed to rapidly get its name known within the context of its challenger positioning. So, it used the simple device of putting its name in all communications off of the reference:
   This theme is creatively brought to life with sunglasses, whiteboards, posters, see-through business cards, videos, and hologram-like reveals. As a flexible but consistent creative platform it reinforces UC4’s identity, which awareness-wise is UC4’s biggest challenge and opportunity.Lesson: Brand recognition is critical. Working it into the essence of a challenger brand and creative campaign is rare, but really cool.

Disclosure: UC4 has been a client of 21Weeks since 2011.

Thomas Butta

For me 1WTC is less about what it is — a building — than what it stands for — the commitment to building something bigger, better and bolder. Think about it.

• A building is static. The act of building is active.
• A building is about what is. Building is about what can be.
• A building is the embodiment of how things were. Building is about forward progress and reaching higher.

Why is the notion of building so important — especially now? Because doing the opposite — not building — is a path to nowhere. Why?

• Consider the speed at which everything is changing.
• Consider how innovation lifecycles are shorter and shorter.
• Consider our easy access to just about anyone and any market.
• Consider the thousands of entrepreneurs and billions of investment currency committed to challenging conventional wisdom and current market leaders.

Taking pleasure from past success may be comforting, but it’s delusional. Continuing to operate in the same manner and style as how it’s always been may feel familiar, but it’s an insular trap. A new workout routine ceases to produce new results after six weeks. Budgeting off of past year models is an inside-out view that doesn’t reflect what’s going on in the market. Managing off of organizational practices built for productivity and efficiency will not produce the innovation and breakthroughs needed to prevail in a highly dynamic and fiercely competitive economy.

Contemporary thought leaders are actively promoting the need to think and act in this manner. Take Gary Hamel, who was ranked #1 most influential business thinker in the world by the Wall Street Journal. His latest book, What Matters Most, is about “how to win in a world of relentless change, ferocious competition, and unstoppable innovation.” You should also check out The Management Innovation Exchange. It’s “an open innovation project aimed at reinventing management for the 21^st Century.”

You have a choice. Remain as you are. And stay how you’ve been. Or courageously commit to aggressively building a bigger, better and bolder future for yourself and your organization. 1WTC may have eclipsed the Empire State Building as the tallest building in New York City, but it is committed to building the tallest building in the Western hemisphere and third largest in the world. Now that’s ambition.

The question is: Are you a building? Or are you building for a better future?

Thomas Butta

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”?

Say what you want about the Occupy Wall Street movement, but we can surely agree it has garnered attention and sparked debate. The question is why. Why has the Occupy Wall Street movement — and the related activities it has spawned — tapped our interest and emotions? What is there to learn from this change platform?

I can tell you I have questions about the movement, especially its beginnings. Were people hired to protest? Where the protestors put in place by a powerful, quietly controlling organization? Is the march on Wall Street a made-for-media event not unlike that depicted in the brilliant film, Wag The Dog? I wonder.

What I don’t wonder about is why we have been drawn into this explosive issue.

Like any smart positioning platform, the Occupy Wall Street movement has tapped into something fundamentally important to many of us — the state of the economy and what it means to us personally. We might have our different opinions about it, but one thing’s for certain: The movement has become a lightening rod for how we feel about how things are — our individual and collective economic circumstances, what caused us to get into this precarious place, and how we can get out of it.

For some, there is extreme dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs. For others, there’s a defensiveness about being seen as the cause. For others still there’s relief, perhaps even delight, in not being personally ensnared in the downward spiral of a global economy that’s sucking wind. No matter which camp you’re in, the movement is purposefully and effectively drawing our attention to what is arguably the most important issue of our times.

Smart positioning — especially positioning for a change platform — is about being four things:

1. Relevant
2. Powerful
3. Differentiating/Unique
4. Authentic

Being relevant is about focusing on an issue that’s personally important to your audience. Being powerful is about focusing on the issue that’s most relevant to your audience. Being different is about carving out a unique point of view, sometimes in relation to one that already exists and sometimes one that is controversial. Being authentic is about being real.

You can position around the first three, but not have your platform be true. If you’re inauthentic, you’ll do more damage than if you were honest in the first place because people will eventually uncover the truth. But, if your platform is authentic — especially if it’s about a fundamental truth and your point-of-view is compelling — then you have the opportunity to unleash emotions because most people will respond in one way or another when they feel something.

The Occupy Wall Street movement is an effective change platform because its core issue is not only highly relevant it’s real. Its point-of-view on who’s to blame may be controversial, but the movement has successfully sparked the debate that is shining a spotlight on the economy.

The economy is precarious. Jobs are illusive. Money is tight. The future is uncertain. Families and businesses are nervous. Many are suffering. Political rhetoric, let alone proposed solutions, aren’t satisfactory. People need resolution and answers now.

What happens as a result of the Occupy Wall Street Movement remains to be seen. What’s clear now is that all sorts of people are finally focused on it and talking about it.

What change platform are you trying to drive?

A good fit is something that matches your specifications. Fundamentally, it’s where demand meets supply.

The clothing and shoe industries do a great job of enabling a good fit. They each provide a variety of styles in multiple sizes to match what you might be looking for. And if the fit isn’t perfect, your local tailor or shoe repairman can make adjustments.

The same is true with restaurants that provide a broad menu to fit your taste. They serve hot or cold starters, main courses of meat, fish, or vegetarian, different starches. And if the preparation isn’t to your liking, it can likely be made to the way you prefer.

Now, what about a good fit like when it comes to matching a potential employee or consultant to a hiring company? How well does that work? Not as well in many cases. Why is that?

For one thing, supply isn’t as abundant.

Second, demand can be quite demanding, perhaps unreasonably so.

Third, humans aren’t made from molds or recipes. We’re unique.

Think about what happens when a hiring company meets a really good candidate who matches nearly all of its criteria. Rather than move in to secure and support that near-perfect candidate with everything needed to be successful, the company lets the person dangle while it continues to look for the ‘rock star’ or ‘supermodel’ candidate.

Now what if you’re the near-perfect candidate? The company fits most of what you’re looking for, but its process leaves a lot to be desired. It runs hot and cold with inconsistent feedback. Is that an indication of the company’s culture or perhaps what decision-making will be like? Probably so. Your interest level wanes.

What do we do with this common dance between companies and candidates?

Accept reality. There is no such thing as a perfect fit when it comes to hiring.

Go for it. Be decisive, clear and completely committed to success. That’s what makes most every relationship a good fit.

The alternative is risky. Every day you continue to look for perfection is another day you’ve allowed the market to encroach on your space and impede your agenda.

Soul

What comes to mind when you see the word, soul? Think about it for a minute before reading on. When was the last time you thought about soul?

Soul shows up in many places.

• Like music. Soul music. Can you hear it?
• Like a dramatic performance. Soulful. Can you see it?
• Like religion. “Pray the Lord my soul to keep.” Did you recite it?
• Like food. Soul food. Authentic food, be it southern collards or Sicilian rice balls.

Even though we’ve shown many associations, soul isn’t really what you see. It’s more about what you feel. You either feel soul or you don’t. Is soul something that is tangible? You can’t buy it. You can’t sell it – although some people claim to have sold their soul to the devil.

Soul is about deep, resonating feelings. Soul is about authentic base tones. Soul is about fundamentals. When you really strip it down, soul is about the essence of something. It’s probably the most precious of all that we have.

• Save my soul.
• She’s a good soul.
• He’s got a good soul.

What a wonderful way to be characterized.

Can a brand have soul? Absolutely – especially if you infuse with emotion. After all, it’s humans that connect to it.

Soul. It’s a funny looking word … and nearly as powerful as love.

Listen to my recent podcast interview with Will Burns of Ideasicle.com. On the show we cover:

1. Discuss my instrumental role in launching the controversial “Product First” campaign at PTC.
2. The importance of a CMO not only being creative, but hand picking the right team around him or her.
3. CMO as “creative director” for the brand.
4. Explain how to get people in a large organization to rally around a single, transformative brand idea.
5. About my current company, 21Weeks, and how it is transforming brands today.

Listen Now >