I met with Francois Gossieaux, co-founder and President of Human 1.0, to discuss elements of his book The Hyper-Social Organization: Eclipse Your Competition by Leveraging Social Media. Human 1.0 is a customer strategy firm that helps companies innovate business programs, practices and organizational culture to realize the benefits of social media and Web 2.0. Francois and I discussed the challenges of contemporary marketing organizations and the challenges faced by Chief Marketer Officers as they transition from CMO 1.0 to CMO 2.0. We discussed the difficult tasks of these executives and their need to get out of their silos, suggesting, perhaps, that they spend more time with customer service.
We also attacked the perceived perch of social media. We acknowledged the importance of social media, but analyzed our disbelief that many “experts” in the area actually lack basic social skills. The key to success is understanding the cultural aspects, which is the foundation of both community and social media.
Rob Ciampa
Sales and customer service are the keys to building a great marketing organization. Alignment between these two disciplines can help fix a marketing organization that might not be fully grounded in the reality of the markets served. There’s another important byproduct: it makes a company more cohesive by more tightly bonding marketing, sales, service, and product. But what about social media and the huge investment so many have made? Perhaps sales and customer service are the keys to fixing that too, but that’s a story for another day.
During a recent drive through my hometown, I noticed that my junior high school (or middle school in today’s vernacular) had been replaced by an entirely new building. I was rather surprised because the old structure was built like a tank. Curious, I asked some of my local friends why the old school was razed. “We needed an elementary school.” “Asbestos.” “Needed a new roof.” “It was old.” “Was time for a better learning environment.” The last one caught me because I’ve heard that issue in many towns in which I lived.
Product Launch. Mention that to any savvy marketing person and you’ll likely get an interesting reaction that reflects a blend of euphoria and post traumatic stress disorder. As contemporary marketers, we do many things during the regular season – positioning, branding, demand generation, etc. – but we live for the post season when we bring products to market. Unlike professional sports, our postseason begins with a loud bang and then goes on for a while. Though it may be several months before we know whether we’ve taken the championship, we do have a good sense of the outcome early on.
Fast forward many years and the concept still holds, this time in business. No company is an island: many organizations rely on business partners for sales, distribution, marketing, integration, etc. These are our business “friends” and they are a reflection on/of our company. It doesn’t matter if we’re a large multinational or a regional non-profit.
In 2004, at a local bookstore in Atlanta, I came across a book called 
Shitwork
I’m starting to wonder whether an old house is a metaphor for business. Strike the “old” – maybe any house is a metaphor for business. How so?
So what’s “shitwork”? Many contemporary definitions (yes, I’m not kidding) define it as something that’s given: trivial, unrewarding, tedious, dirty, and disagreeable chores. I’m going to modify the definition to something that’s received: subpar, shoddy, goods or services that have long-term, negative economic impact.
So what does this have to do with a house? Ask most homeowners about the quality of their houses – especially the things they had to fix – and they’ll tell you about shitwork, without my fancy definition. Let’s look at this more closely.
When I moved to Atlanta several years ago to start a company, I bought a beautiful, well-known-architect-designed home. It was stunning. Within 18 months, all the rooms had to be redone because every square foot of drywall had bulges and cracks from nail pops. The builders didn’t use drywall screws; they used nails, which can’t stay in place as a house naturally contracts and expands. That’s shitwork. I had to redo every wall and ceiling.
Back up North and now living in a 100-year-old Massachusetts home, I had a water pipe let go. Upon inspection, it became clear that a plumber, ten years ago during a renovation, failed to put the new copper piping fully in a coupling before soldering the joint. That’s shitwork. I spent a weekend cleaning it up and fixing it right.
What about business? No different. As part of a marketing campaign, I hired a firm to do a promotion from one of their “highly-targeted” lists. Though we received a respectable number of leads, our conversion rates were zero. Yes, nada. Nil. I never had this happen before and upon investigation discovered that the vendor didn’t even bother to filter their list based on our criteria. They figured we wouldn’t notice. That’s shitwork. Fortunately, we caught this in time and didn’t pay them.
We can only wonder about the economic (and even environmental) impact of shitwork. Too bad the financial benefit is on the bad vendor or the unethical contractor, but only if they can get away with it. Social media and services such as Angie’s List help, but we still have a long way to go. We’re all busy people, but we can only mitigate the risk if we inspect the work, document it well, and keep a zero-tolerance policy. Whether it’s our home or our business, shitwork is shitwork.
Rob Ciampa
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