Ninja "Meeting" Principles and Tactics
As time goes by, I hope to be able to spell out more of the Ninja Marketing Philosophy that informs these particular views, but didn’t want to miss the opportunity to “memorialize” these thoughts in the meantime…
Ninja "Meeting" Principles and Tactics
FOR CONSIDERATION: Having taught countless classes/seminars all over the world on time management and effective leadership skills, here are a few of my personal rules of thumb regarding meetings:
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Never have more than one meeting a day. COROLLARY: Never spend more time in internal meetings on any given day than you are willing to spend the next day doing nothing but talking to real CUSTOMERS (not just “users”– but that’s a DIFFERENT comment
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Schedule no more than 45 minutes for ANY meeting. Allow (and expect) people to excuse themselves as they see fit after that time.
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Remove chairs from the conference room. Don’t let people get too comfortable, and for Pete’s sake don’t encourage them by bringing DOUGHNUTS!
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Recognize that there are 3 different types of meetings: a) Informational, b)Celebratory and c) Decision-Making. Confuse this context and ensure confusion and frustration.
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Have a very SPECIFIC objective for each and every meeting and never have more than 3 things on the agenda for any specific meeting. Never give anyone more than 3 action items coming out of a single meeting.
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If you need a PowerPoint to get your point across, just send the PowerPoint. Most of us can read.
If an issue is too complex for just use a PowerPoint, write it up as a document. Better for one person to spend twice the time to develop a well-articulated proposal (remember what your English teacher said? “If you can’t
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If it’s 2-3 people, it’s a “discussion”– have plenty of those. Organizational theory teaches that any group of over 5 is almost unmanageable because of the multiple permutations and combinations of the vested interests of all involved.
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Understand RID roles for every attendee:
R=RESPONSIBLE- party “responsible” for the specific activity tied to the objective/outcome of the meeting.
I=INVOLVED- not just “INTERESTED,” but those who are directly affected and/or need to provide specific input.
D=DECISION-MAKING- those who will ultimately have to make a specific decision based on the meeting.
Everyone who does not play one of these roles can “stay home”…
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Don’t insist or expect EVERYONE in attendance to actively participate. Don’t create a culture where people feel that they MUST comment continually just to prove they are “smart,” or “engaged” or “part of the team.”
Those of us who thrive in decentralized work environments (I've "officed" in 26 locations in virtually every time zone) have learned that most seemingly “necessary” meetings truly are not. Use technology to monitor and collaborate, foster trust and individual accountability and focus on smaller, manageable discrete tasks to cut down on time wasted in meetings.
Who Else Wants "Mad Ninja Skills?"
And yet the underlying principles of “Ninjutsu” have been passed on by secretive ninja “families” for hundreds of years and have alway been embraced by “shadow warriors” seeking an unfair advantage against opponents with seemingly vastly superior resources.
So what is “Ninja Marketing?”
Successful Ninja marketers leverage the three primary traits that define a “ninjutsu” philosophy (thus the 3-pointed shuriken in the Shuriken Systems logo):
1. Simplicity
2. Agility
3. Speed
Simplicity– the shortest distance between two points is still a straight line, regardless of how many committees, corporate gatekeepers and self-proclaimed gurus say otherwise. Common sense and the 80/20 rule– when combined with the other “mad ninja skills” of Agility and Speed– will almost always get you farther faster than any other approach. The key is determining and absolutely mastering those few things that will really make a difference in your business. Forget about all the rest. At least for now.
Speed– You’ve got to be able to move fast. One of the key advantages of smaller, more entrepreneurially-oriented organization is the ability to make decisions quickly. In the four-dimensional universe that Einstein introduced us to in the last century, TIMING is ironically the element that is often the most easily utilized in manipulating the physical world. Learn to leverage speed and you can “be there” and “do that” before your competition has a chance to even notice you’re in the room.
Agility– the ability to make immediate, even instantaneous, course corrections is a key advantage in the 21st century business world when your competition may need to convene multiple meetings and conference calls just to be able to identify a problem or opportunity– let alone get everyone to agree as to how to capitalize upon it. Focus on what you really need to accomplish without being married to how it gets done, and you’ll reinvent not only your own internal “business models,” but your entire industry as well.
Balancing your Mad Ninja Skills
Notice that all three characteristics are critical and keep each other in balance. The main reason to simplify is so that you can “lighten up” to improve agility, speed and focus. Speed is hardly an asset if you’re still carrying around too much baggage. And without agility and flexibility, “business at the speed of change” can be very brittle, indeed.
In future posts, I plan to comment in more detail about each of the three key aspects of a “Ninja Marketing”-focused enterprise.
But don’t expect me to share any of my sweet dance moves…
What IS Ninja Marketing?
“Shouninjutsu”
Ninja Marketing
You’ve heard of “ninjas,” right? The sneaky little assassins always creeping around silently in old Japanese movies. Typically they wait until their opponents least expect it– usually the middle of the night. Then they slip through the tightest defenses, glide to the private bedroom of their most powerful enemies, slide open the shoji paper-screened doors, slink across the tatami floor and slit their throats before the victim has time to even blink.
Or perhaps during the hanami festival they hide in a tree 50 yards from where the target is taking a pleasant stroll enjoying the sakura cherry blossoms, when they take a small disc the size of a coaster from their sleeve and hurl a spinning, razor sharp shuriken chinese throwing star, and in less time than it takes to inhale, the enemy falls dead with the blade buried an inch deep, right between the eyes.
They never even had a chance to see it coming.
Marketing Martial Arts for the Life and Death Struggle to Survive and THRIVE in a Brutal Business World
This is not the watered down “guerrilla marketing” techniques that might have been fresh twenty years ago when people first starting talking about them. These are NOT the principles you will learn in the Harvard or Stanford MBA programs. And guess what– these are not even the “flavor of the month” marketing platitudes you’ll get from the latest flock of so-called “gurus.”
It’s all about strategy and tactics– Your “weapons” and how to use them.
Samurai have their katana, and yari, and yukinoshita do-style armour. Ninja have their shinobi shozoku, nunchaku and shuriken.
In most cases, for individuals and aggressive, growing businesses, a ninja-like approach to decision-making and action-planning is far superior to a more “samurai-style” process. And perhaps the most effective of all ninja weapons is the shuriken.
Shuriken (and shaken) are sometimes called chinese throwing stars or throwing needles/daggers. The shuriken is a (relatively) long range weapon that is inexpensive, light, easily concealed, extremely accurate and fast. The target doesn’t even know what hit him until it’s already too late to react.
Simple, direct, powerful actions with maximum effectiveness.
So why do we call our company Shuriken Systems?
Think about it.
So what got me to FINALLY start a blog?
Credit basically goes to two people and their respective cohorts.
My daughter-in-law, Ashley, who with at least encouragement if not actual assistance
Howard Kaplan and the crew at Future Now, Inc. I met Howard at a tradeshow recently and found his presentation one of only two during the entire 3-day event that was worth anything. Went up afterwards to tell him so, and enjoyed our brief chat. As a result, checked out Grokdotcom.com, Future Now’s official blog. And for the first time in a long time I’ve found myself actually sucked in to the dialogs happening there!
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The proverbial straw that…you know, the camel’s back and all… was a recent post (”You and I Still Learning about Blogging&rdquo
by Jeffrey Eisenberg, one of the founders of Future Now, Inc. where he quoted a blog post by Marc Andreessen who apparently also just recently started blogging (so even if I’m late to the party, at least I’m still in good companyI should have started doing this years and years ago. Anyone who says blogs are not widely read is incorrect. I have been absolutely amazed at the range and diversity of the people who have been reading this blog, and so quickly.
It is crystal clear to me now that at least in industries where lots of people are online, blogging is the single best way to communicate and interact.
…writing a blog is way easier than writing a magazine article, a published paper, or a book — but provides many of the same benefits.[…] Arguably blogging is better because the distribution of a blog can be even broader than a magazine article, a published paper, or a book, at least in cases where the article/paper/book is restricted by a publisher to a limited readership base.
Another recent influential post (”Aren’t You My Competitor?&rdquo
by Bryan Eisenberg, Jeffrey’s brother and also a Future Now co-founder, where he referred to a Joe Duck post who in turn pointed to Kent Newsome, discussing a new “Blogging Revolution.” While I don’t particularly feel as radical as those referenced authors about the need to “refresh” my personal blog reading habits, it did inspire me to get my own voice out there.Whether anyone ever reads this blog or not, I frankly don’t really care. But I’m thinking at least I’ll enjoy it, and perhaps I won’t feel so compelled to burden Jeffrey, Bryan, Howard, and Robert Gorell’s Grokdotcom posts with so many lengthy comments!
"The Journey of a Thousand Miles...
Here it is– my first post on the Shouninjutsu Blog. I got sick and tired of not having any place to memorialize some of the near-realtime thoughts and discussions I’ve had about Ninja Marketing principles and the whole of “Shuriken” thinking.
So if you find anything here of value, great. If not– that’s fine too. It’s more a place for me to document what’s on my mind at the moment than it is anything else.
GANBARE!
