Nano Tools for Leaders XXXI

Crafting Contagious: Generating Word of Mouth and Making Your Product or Idea Go Viral

Nano Tools for Leaders® are fast, effective leadership tools that you can learn and start using in less than 15 minutes — with the potential to significantly impact your success as a leader and the engagement and productivity of the people you lead.

Contributor: Jonah Berger, PhD, James G. Campbell Assistant Professor of Marketing, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and author of Contagious: Why Things Catch On.

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The Goal:

Make your message go viral by following six key principles.

Nano Tool:

Word of Mouth is the primary factor behind 20–50 percent of all purchasing decisions, and it’s ten times more effective than traditional advertising, according to a 2010 white paper published in the McKinsey Quarterly. The study predicts that word-of-mouth marketing will be a $5.6 billion industry by 2015.

But to get people talking about your product or idea, you need to understand why they talk and why some things get talked about and shared more often than others. Based on analyzing thousands of contagious messages, products, and ideas, there are six key principles (STEPPS) that can help get your idea or product talked about, shared, and imitated.

Nano Tools for Leaders XXX

Sell Your Ideas Through Attunement

Nano Tools for Leaders® are fast, effective leadership tools that you can learn and start using in less than 15 minutes — with the potential to significantly impact your success as a leader and the engagement and productivity of the people you lead.

Contributor: Daniel Pink is the author of five books on the changing world of work, including the New York Times bestsellers A Whole New Mind, Drive, and To Sell Is Human. His books have been translated into 34 languages.

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The Goal:

Increase your ability to influence and move others to action by attuning to their perspectives.

Nano Tool:

Research confirms that the ability to influence people — to engage and move them to action — is based on a complex set of skills related to attunement.  Attunement involves understanding other people’s perspectives, getting into their heads, and seeing the world through their eyes. But it is more than merely understanding what others are thinking; it also includes how they are socially connected to others.

Nano Tools for Leaders XXIX

Visionary Leadership: Creating Scenes That Change the Future

Nano Tools for Leaders® are fast, effective leadership tools that you can learn and start using in less than 15 minutes — with the potential to significantly impact your success as a leader and the engagement and productivity of the people you lead.

Contributor: Greg Shea, Adjunct Professor of Management, Faculty Associate, Center for Leadership and Change Management, The Wharton School; and Cassie Solomon, President and Founder, The New Group Consulting, Inc.

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The Goal:

Ensure your next change initiative is a success by envisioning the behaviors needed to implement it.

Nano Tool:

Leading successful change initiatives is an essential skill in today’s “perpetual whitewater” business environment. Yet nine studies done between 1994 and 2010 report that 50 to 75 percent of all change initiatives fail. Behind such failures you’ll often find a missing ingredient — one that may seem obvious in retrospect, but that many change leaders overlook — a clear, specific vision of the desired end-state.

Nano Tools for Leaders XXVIII

More and Better Innovation Through Outside Communities

Nano Tools for Leaders® are fast, effective leadership tools that you can learn and start using in less than 15 minutes — with the potential to significantly impact your success as a leader and the engagement and productivity of the people you lead.

Contributor: Ethan Mollick, PhD, The Edward B. and Shirley R. Shils Assistant Professor of Management, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

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The Goal:

Harness key sources of innovation outside your company.

Nano Tool:

Joy’s Law, named after Sun Microsystem’s founder Bill Joy, states that “No matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for somebody else.” Research on the sources of innovation has proven Joy’s Law correct. Many of the ideas and innovations that lead to breakthrough products and services start outside of companies, among users of products and informal communities of amateurs. In fields ranging from scientific instruments to commercial banking, from semiconductor manufacturing processes to plastic extrusion, researchers have found that key innovations were developed by users, not manufacturers.

Nano Tools for Leaders XXVII

Self-Design: A Tool for Positive Change

Nano Tools for Leaders® are fast, effective leadership tools that you can learn and start using in less than 15 minutes — with the potential to significantly impact your success as a leader and the engagement and productivity of the people you lead.

Contributor: Charles E. Dwyer, PhD, Associate Professor, Educational Leadership Division, Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania

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The Goal:

Replace beliefs, behaviors, and emotions that are holding you back with ones that will better help you achieve your goals.

Nano Tool:

A leader’s effectiveness is a direct function of his or her behavior as interpreted by others. While it might be tempting to blame those you lead for their unwillingness to follow, it is your behavior that builds trust, motivation, and influence — or it creates suspicion, apprehension, and discouragement.

Nano Tools for Leaders XXVI

Global Brands, Local Presence: Striking a Balance

Nano Tools for Leaders® are fast, effective leadership tools that you can learn and start using in less than 15 minutes — with the potential to significantly impact your success as a leader and the engagement and productivity of the people you lead.

Contributor: George Day, PhD, The Geoffrey T. Boisi Professor, Professor of Marketing; Co-Director, Mack Center for Technological Innovation; Director, Emerging Technologies Management Research Program, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

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The Goal:

Find the right balance between central and local control to gain the best of both for your global brand.

Nano Tool:

One of the most hotly debated issues companies face as they build a global presence or enter a new market is ‘Who gets control of the brand?’ Are the key decisions made centrally by corporate headquarters, or does each local market get to chart their own course for marketing, advertising, pricing, positioning, and perhaps even decisions about naming and branding their own products or services?

Nano Tools for Leaders XXV

Negotiation Advantage: Make the First Move

Nano Tools for Leaders® are fast, effective leadership tools that you can learn and start using in less than 15 minutes — with the potential to significantly impact your success as a leader and the engagement and productivity of the people you lead.

Contributor: Adam Grant, PhD, management professor, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

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The Goal:

Capture powerful negotiation advantages by knowing whether to make the first offer.

Nano Tool:

Most people believe that you gain a strong advantage in negotiations by letting the other party put an offer on the table first. By waiting for an offer, you receive valuable information about the other side’s bargaining position. But the overwhelming evidence actually favors the opposite strategy: there is usually much more to gain by making the first move yourself.

Nano Tools for Leaders XXIV

Shifting Mindsets: Questions That Lead To Results

Nano Tools for Leaders® are fast, effective leadership tools that you can learn and start using in less than 15 minutes — with the potential to significantly impact your success as a leader and the engagement and productivity of the people you lead.

Contributor: Marilee Adams, PhD; President and founder of the Inquiry Institute; Adjunct Professor at American University, School of Public Affairs, in the Key Executive Leadership Program; and author of Change Your Questions, Change Your Life: 10 Powerful Tools for Life and Work.

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The Goal:

Quickly change the mindset of your team — or yourself — from being “stuck” to finding possibilities and solutions.

Nano Tool:

Our mindsets are determined by the questions we ask. Some questions have the potential to catalyze breakthroughs and inspire transformations. Others lead to stagnation and demoralization. The difference lies in whether you ask Learner Questions or Judger Questions.

Nano Tools for Leaders XXIII

The Attribute Map: A Tool for Creating Competitive Advantage, Part II

Nano Tools for Leaders® are fast, effective leadership tools that you can learn and start using in less than 15 minutes — with the potential to significantly impact your success as a leader and the engagement and productivity of the people you lead.

Contributor: Ian MacMillan, The Dhirubhai Ambani Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship; Professor of Management; Director, Sol C. Snider Entrepreneurial Research Center, The Wharton School

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The Goal:

Build ongoing competitive advantage by knowing what your customers care about most.

Nano Tool:

An Attribute Map is a highly effective tool for assessing your customers’ real needs and desires. It simplifies the complexity of your customers’ reactions to your product or service and your position with respect to competitors. Attribute maps let you clearly see where additional resources could have the greatest impact and give you objective information about the likely consequences of a move.

Part 1 of this Nano Tool offered steps for creating an Attribute Map. Here, we explore three specific ways to mine your attribute map for a “marketbuster” — an exceptional opportunity for growth.

Nano Tools for Leaders XXII

The Attribute Map: A Tool for Creating Competitive Advantage, Part I

Nano Tools for Leaders® are fast, effective leadership tools that you can learn and start using in less than 15 minutes — with the potential to significantly impact your success as a leader and the engagement and productivity of the people you lead.

Contributor: Ian MacMillan, The Dhirubhai Ambani Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship; Professor of Management; Director, Sol C. Snider Entrepreneurial Research Center, The Wharton School

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The Goal:

Build ongoing competitive advantage by knowing what your customers care about most.

Nano Tool:

Creating value for customers is dynamic: yesterday’s differentiators become tomorrow’s taken-for-granted norms. To stay competitive, you need a simple way to assess what matters most to each of your customer segments. Armed with this knowledge, you can optimize your innovation investments by focusing on the areas with the highest perceived value for your customers.