Talent Leads To Success

Building an organization is not rocket science, but it’s also not a piece of cake. It begins by determining and acquiring essential resources. Interestingly, when one examines the resources of an organization, any organization, all organizations, and reduces those resources down to their fundamental irreducible parts, it becomes evident that an organization has only three resources: time, money, and talent. In the final analysis, the successful pursuit of any desired outcome – a sale, a donation, a just verdict, or acceptance of an idea – is dependent upon time, money, and talent.

Time is abundant and given to us free of charge. We don’t have to search for it because it’s what we have as a result of being alive. Of course what we do with “our time” is up to us.

Money is slightly more scarce than time but not by much. For investors money at rest is money in decline, an untenable predicament. All that an organization must do to receive money is to convince an investor that the money will be returned. The only way an organization can make that argument is demonstrate it has the third and scarcest resource – talent.

Talent is an autonomous measure of natural ability. It exists independently of character, intelligence and discipline. That’s not to say character, intelligence and discipline are unimportant. They are important. But character, intelligence and discipline are not proxies for talent and they will not lead to talent’s creation, although they occasionally lead to the discovery and development of talent.

We have all heard that anything is achievable so long as one “works at it” long enough. The idea that talent inevitably flows from the intelligent, disciplined effort of persons with enough character to “work at it,” is absolutely wrong. It is not uncommon for highly intelligent, rigidly disciplined persons to produce results not much different from those whose efforts are sparse by comparison. The reason is that knowledge afforded by effort is not interchangeable with talent. In fact the knowledge individuals gain through disciplined effort is as opposite from talent as night is from day.

This disconcerting truth is easier to grasp when presented in familiar terms. Imagine a nascent, wanna-be Nolan Ryan looking for a book, course of study, or list of instructions entitled, How To Throw A 100 Mile An Hour Fastball. In business a like search takes the form of case studies or “How To” sales and management books. The prospect of such a case study or book is comical because everyone who has ever thrown a baseball knows you either have the talent to throw hard or you do not. It doesn’t matter how much knowledge you accumulate, how many cases you study, or how much you practice throwing a baseball; if you don’t have the talent to throw hard you will never be able to throw a 100 mile an hour fastball – end of story!

There is no case study that can change this situation. Moreover there will never be a case study capable of changing this situation. That’s because throwing a 100 mile an hour fastball is the result of having the talent to do so. This doesn’t mean everyone capable of throwing hard will develop the ability to throw a 100 mile an hour fastball. It usually takes development to turn raw talent into top performance. What it does mean is that no amount of coaching or training will turn an untalented individual into the next Nolan Ryan. You might get to the majors based on other pitching skills but no amount of coaching or training is going to make you the next Nolan Ryan if you don’t have the talent to throw hard.

Organizational success is no different. In order to succeed an organization must posses the requisite talent. To put it in absolutely plain language, regardless of other attributes an organization deficient in talent should no more anticipate success than an individual who is unable to throw hard should expect to become the next Nolan Ryan.

Nothing speaks more visibly to an investor or more certainly about an organization’s potential for success than recognition of talent as the scarcest of all resources and management of talent as the scarcest of all organizational skills. Talent and the environment in which it is managed define the nature and nurture of all organizations. While it is possible to identify and analyze these elements, one would be mistaken to assume that such knowledge will provide a means to their inheritance.

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Talent
Authors: Bob Manna & Matt Manna
Article ID: 0055BC4B
Publication date: May 14, 2012
Download: Talent (PDF)

Bob

Bob has presented to Congressmen, business and education executives, industrial and charitable organizations and university professors. He has appeared on programs with such well know personalities as PBS TV host Adam Smith, Senator William Roth and former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Danny White. Bob has several published research papers and his writings have appeared in The Christian Science Monitor and “D” magazine.
Bob’s Bio | Email Bob

Matt

Matt’s articles and speeches have been enjoyed by thousands of people across multiple business disciplines, political campaigns and charitable organizations.
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Manna Groups is a business strategy and communication consultancy. Our special abilities are to explain, in a marketplace of abundance, how products are successfully developed, promoted & sold and to foster the talent required to bring about that success. Our product is called Customer DNA. The three tenets of Customer DNA are: Sculpture, Broadcasting, and Unusual Mind. Bringing Customer DNA to your organization is the purpose of Manna Groups.

In this Manna Groups video from 1981 Bob Manna details the importance of telling the truth, especially when the truth is “bad news.”

It’s tempting to label news as “good” or “bad.” But news is not about labeling. News, like all communication, is about telling; and labels like “good news” and “bad news” cloud the story each seeks to tell. The truthful telling of bad news is the first step to avoiding impending failure. In the same way as telemetry guides a torpedo towards its target, so too is “bad news” guiding you toward the arrival of success.

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Bad News
Authors: Bob Manna & Matt Manna
ID: 0051787B
Video production date: May, 1981
Mannagroups.com publication date: May 01, 2012

Bob

Bob has presented to Congressmen, business and education executives, industrial and charitable organizations and university professors. He has appeared on programs with such well know personalities as PBS TV host Adam Smith, Senator William Roth and former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Danny White. Bob has several published research papers and his writings have appeared in The Christian Science Monitor and “D” magazine.
Bob’s Bio | Email Bob

Matt

Matt’s articles and speeches have been enjoyed by thousands of people across multiple business disciplines, political campaigns and charitable organizations.
Matt’s Bio | Email Matt | Matt On Twitter

Manna Groups is a business strategy and communication consultancy. Our special abilities are to explain, in a marketplace of abundance, how products are successfully developed, promoted & sold and to foster the talent required to bring about that success. Our product is called Customer DNA. The three tenets of Customer DNA are: Sculpture, Broadcasting, and Unusual Mind. Bringing Customer DNA to your organization is the purpose of Manna Groups.

That hurts! Yet for many years that motion was exactly what was required to work the bladed trimmers we used to trim weeds and grass. So customers went to manufacturers and asked, “Can’t you do something about this?” Manufacturers said, “Yes, we can make a better bladed clipper.” They did so by adding a motor and battery. Customers said, “Gee that’s better, but now it’s heavy and hurts my shoulder. Can’t you do something about this?” Manufacturers said, “Yes we can make a better bladed clipper.” They added wheels. Customers said, “That is superb, but you see it hurts my back to bend over. Can’t you do something about this?” Manufacturers said, “Yes we can make a better bladed clipper.” They added a long stick handle!

Then, 41 years ago, a real estate salesman named George Ballas changed the game. Ballas was watching his car go thru a car-wash in Houston Texas and wondered if the revolving brushes could be made to cut grass and weeds. He got in his cleaned car, drove home, and invented the Weed Eater. A year later, in 1972, Weed Eater, Inc. came into being. In its first year the company had net sales of $560,000 per year. In 1974 the figure was $7,791,000. In 1975 it was $14,305,000. In 1976 it was $41,000,000. In 1977 it was $80,000,000.

That’s impressive growth, but it’s only half the story. The other half, and maybe it’s 51%, is what happened to the other guys. How would you like to have been CEO of a company who’s warehouse was full of bladed trimmers the day after (almost literally the day after) the Weed Eater was invented?

George Ballas’ invention of the Weed Eater is a stunning example of the difference between intelligent minds and Unusual Minds.

Intelligence is widely accepted as a measure of one’s ability to store, recall and process data. Store and recall processing is impressive. We reward it in schools and on game shows. But store and recall processing is limited by this undeniable fact, the only data that can be stored, recalled and processed is data that already exists. All store and recall processing is dependent upon what came before. It’s a kind of paint by numbers exercise, the results of which are predestined by the nature of the historical data being processed. So you say repeatedly squeezing your hand shut hurts? No problem: here’s a motor and batteries. What’s that, batteries and a motor are too heavy? No problem: here are some wheels. What’s that, it hurts to bend over? Here: have a stick.

The only way to avoid the restrictive obedience of intelligence is to develop an Unusual Mind. That’s what George Ballas had going for him. The result was that Ballas did what the intelligent mind was restricted from doing. Ballas changed the game! Let us make this point perfectly clear, until you can change the game you are destined to play it by somebody else’s rules.

A bladed trimmer with a stick, wheels, motor and batteries isn’t a change of what came before, it’s a modification to what came before. How could it be otherwise since each step along the way was the direct result of intelligent thinking, that is to say thinking restricted to what came before?

Developing an Unusual Mind, one capable of changing the game, is a largely creative process that cannot be quantitatively defined. But there is an unconditional first step, a quintessential characteristic that all Unusual Minds have in common. All Unusual Minds avoid asking, “What process do I recall to deal with the situation at hand?” Unusual Minds ask a different question, “What is the basic and invariable meaning of the topic at hand?” Until the basic and invariable meaning of the topic at hand has been identified no other question matters and after basic and invariable meaning has been revealed no other question is required.

Before the Weed Eater came along manufacturers were asking themselves, “What process(es) exist that will result in a better bladed trimmer?” George Ballas asked a different question, a basic and invariable question, “What is a better way to trim weeds and grass?” There is no evidence indicating if George Ballas was more or less intelligent than those who managed the bladed trimmer industry. In truth intelligence did not define the difference between bladed trimmers and the invention of the Weed Eater. The difference was that one focused on making a better bladed clipper while the other focused on a better way to trim weeds.

Exactly 40 years ago this spring George Ballas founded Weed Eater, Inc. Ballas has stood as a prime example of the game changing power of an Unusual Mind for each of the 40 springs since.

Happy Birthday Weed Eater!

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The Weed Eater
Authors: Bob Manna & Matt Manna
Article ID: 004FCA66
Publication date: April 15, 2012
Download: The Weed Eater (PDF)

Bob

Bob has presented to Congressmen, business and education executives, industrial and charitable organizations and university professors. He has appeared on programs with such well know personalities as PBS TV host Adam Smith, Senator William Roth and former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Danny White. Bob has several published research papers and his writings have appeared in The Christian Science Monitor and “D” magazine.
Bob’s Bio | Email Bob

Matt

Matt’s articles and speeches have been enjoyed by thousands of people across multiple business disciplines, political campaigns and charitable organizations.
Matt’s Bio | Email Matt | Matt On Twitter

Manna Groups is a business strategy and communication consultancy. Our special abilities are to explain, in a marketplace of abundance, how products are successfully developed, promoted & sold and to foster the talent required to bring about that success. Our product is called Customer DNA. The three tenets of Customer DNA are: Sculpture, Broadcasting, and Unusual Mind. Bringing Customer DNA to your organization is the purpose of Manna Groups.

Only Impact Leads To Success

Contrary to established behavior and popular belief, the role of marketing is not to cite facts but rather to create impact. The difference is consequential.

Citing facts is the practice of putting product information before customers or potential customers with the hope that such information will encourage a purchase. A trade show booth outfitted with a PowerPoint presentation and a stack of brochures is an example of this kind of thing. So too are the many fact citing practices represented under such names as Frequency & Reach, Cost Per Thousand (CPM), Search Engine Optimization, Accumulative Audience, Gross Impressions, Net Unduplicated Audience, Cost Per Inquiry (CPI) and others. In reality, these practices are the functional equivalent of a UPS rate sheet. They gauge the cost of message delivery. What they do not do is create impact. Let us be clear…

Not only is it ineffective to communicate solely by delivering facts, it’s arrogant. Fact based marketing assumes that the customer is willing to accept that what he or she already believes to be true can be false, or at least suspect. No customer willingly enters into an inquiry about a product this way. Yet, that is exactly the posture forced by fact based marketing. Even if it were possible to identify the rare individual capable of suspending existing beliefs, the evaluation time assumed by fact based marketing is a luxury that no longer exists. Today’s marketplace is one of abundance deluged by product offerings, each of which diminishes the time and patience required to reevaluate current beliefs.

The alternative to presenting facts is to create impact. It’s hard to do, much harder than citing facts. It’s often harder to accomplish than was the creation of the product being marketed. This is an important realization. If the amount of time, talent and money devoted to marketing a product does not at least equal the amount of time, talent and money that was devoted to its creation, the product will have very little chance of success. That’s tough news but it’s the truth as supported by recent evidence indicating that more than 80% of all new products fail.

So how is it done? How does one create impact and in so doing persuade others to take the action you want them to take? Start by accepting that communicating articulately and communicating with impact are different talents. Communicating articulately is the ability to fluently and clearly present facts. Communicating with impact is the ability to influence others to take the action you want them to take. It’s done by understanding how the mind turns information into meaning, and then using that understanding to present information with a sensitivity attuned to the current state of the mind(s) for whom it is intended.

Successful marketers understand the difference between being articulate and being impactful. The questions they successfully address are, will the message being articulated evoke an emotional response within those for whom it is intended and if so, will it affect change? These questions are only incidentally concerned with facts and they are not at all concerned with message delivery. In truth, questions designed to measure impact exist specifically to measure what happens after a message has been delivered.

It’s true that being articulate and being impactful are both important. But only the latter is sufficient to persuade. It doesn’t matter how many facts are on your side. It doesn’t matter how well you make a point or what it costs to do so. To move beyond articulate message delivery a communicator must come to understand and parlay with how the mind creates meaning from the messages it receives through the senses. Until that feat is mastered the articulate communicator will accomplish little more than that of a logistics clerk.

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Impact
Authors: Bob Manna & Matt Manna
Article ID: 005A06D5
Publication date: April 1, 2012
Published concurrently by Transaction Directory Magazine & mannagroups.com.
Download: Impact (PDF)

Bob

Bob has presented to Congressmen, business and education executives, industrial and charitable organizations and university professors. He has appeared on programs with such well know personalities as PBS TV host Adam Smith, Senator William Roth and former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Danny White. Bob has several published research papers and his writings have appeared in The Christian Science Monitor and “D” magazine.
Bob’s Bio | Email Bob

Matt

Matt’s articles and speeches have been enjoyed by thousands of people across multiple business disciplines, political campaigns and charitable organizations.
Matt’s Bio | Email Matt | Matt On Twitter

Manna Groups is a business strategy and communication consultancy. Our special abilities are to explain, in a marketplace of abundance, how products are successfully developed, promoted & sold and to foster the talent required to bring about that success. Our product is called Customer DNA. The three tenets of Customer DNA are: Sculpture, Broadcasting, and Unusual Mind. Bringing Customer DNA to your organization is the purpose of Manna Groups.

The ASR33 "Birthday Machine"

In 1878 author Margaret Wolfe Hungerford gave life to the now familiar idiom, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” In the nearly 135 years since, the assignment of beauty, of value, of import, etc…, remain as perceptions derived on a per beholder basis. Thank goodness because if it were any other way, marketing wouldn’t work.

Marketing works because perception exists. And perception requires individual judgment, an opinion on the state of affairs in the world; every act of perception requires active interpretation by individual beholders. If it were otherwise, if perceptions were the same from beholder to beholder, there would be no need for (and no) marketing. There would only be statements of fact.

But every successful marketer will tell you that facts, standing alone, are incapable of achieving the superior results derived from a strongly felt perception. That is what we mean when we say a customer is incapable of thinking about a product until he or she has been guided to have a strong feeling about it.

The key to shaping perception, to causing a customer to feel deeply about a product, is to create a story that stimulates the mind passionately. This condition cannot be achieved by a mere recitation of facts. At Manna Groups we call this talent Sculpture – the ability to create stories that deeply resonate with what is already believed by the beholder. These stories represent the root of perception. At their best they connect a beholder to a product by way of a fundamental, commonly held belief. Consider the following true story.

There has never been a clearer or more precise exemplification of, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” What the maintenance man told the presenter decades ago is that perception is determined upon what customers already believe to be true. To say it succinctly, the truth about “the truth” in marketing is that there is none. In the same sense as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so to is the truth about your product.

Consider the following…

The reason 80% of new product offerings fail is because the message wrapped around the product failed to persuaded anyone to try it! Until a product is bought and put into use, the truth about why the offering failed has nothing to do with what the product does, as a scientist, engineer, or ineffective marketer might think about it. The only thing that matters until a product is bought, is what meaning the customer’s mind makes out of the messages that surround the product on offer. How can it be otherwise?

The purpose of marketing is not to introduce the customer to new truths. From the point of view of the customer there is no truth other than that which he or she already knows. The purpose of marketing is to rearrange the truths already present in the minds of customers to produce positive, deeply felt perceptions.

Happy Birthday, birthday machine. It’s been forty-seven years since you reminded us that beauty really is in the eye of the beholder!

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The Invention of The Birthday Machine
Authors: Bob Manna & Matt Manna
Article ID: 004C95FA
Publication date: March 01, 2012
Published concurrently by Transaction Directory Magazine & mannagroups.com.
Download: The Invention of The Birthday Machine (PDF)

Bob

Bob has presented to Congressmen, business and education executives, industrial and charitable organizations and university professors. He has appeared on programs with such well know personalities as PBS TV host Adam Smith, Senator William Roth and former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Danny White. Bob has several published research papers and his writings have appeared in The Christian Science Monitor and “D” magazine.
Bob’s Bio | Email Bob

Matt

Matt’s articles and speeches have been enjoyed by thousands of people across multiple business disciplines, political campaigns and charitable organizations.
Matt’s Bio | Email Matt | Matt On Twitter

Manna Groups is a business strategy and communication consultancy. Our special abilities are to explain, in a marketplace of abundance, how products are successfully developed, promoted & sold and to foster the talent required to bring about that success. Our product is called Customer DNA. The three tenets of Customer DNA are: Sculpture, Broadcasting, and Unusual Mind. Bringing Customer DNA to your organization is the purpose of Manna Groups.

Bank Of New York c. 1784

The Bank of New York (now Bank of New York Mellon) was founded in 1784 and is generally regarded as the oldest bank in the United States.

Although difficult to exactly pin down, people in 1784 lived somewhere between 25 and 40 years.

Today the difference between ages 25 and 40 is more a measure of conduct than life expectancy. Nowhere is this more evident than in the world of banking.

Juliette Gordon Low founded the Girl Scouts in 1912. This past year, the father of a Girl Scout described an unusual characteristic that he and many of his Facebook coworkers share: they don’t customarily carry cash to work. This insight, shared with his daughter and her troop, resulted in her troop selling 400 boxes of cookies at the Facebook Headquarters using a mobile device to process payments.

The genesis of the Salvation Army’s Red Kettle Campaign occurred in 1891 when Army Captain Joseph McFee placed a pot at the Oakland Ferry Landing with a sign that read, “Keep the Pot Boiling.” Today ringing bells and red kettles are iconic emblems of the Salvation Army Christmas Charity Campaign. The bells will likely be around forever but the kettles may not fair as well. This past season The Salvation Army accepted mobile payments at ten separate locations in each of four cities: Dallas, San Francisco, Chicago and New York. As Salvation Army spokesman Major George Hood said in a recent New York Times article, “A lot of people just don’t carry cash any more. We’re basically trying to make sure we’re keeping up with our donors and embrace the new technologies they’re embracing.”

These examples illustrate the proper definition of the term brand. A brand is a story that exists inside the mind of a customer or potential customer. This “mind centered” definition of brand differs significantly from the traditional definition of brand, “A name, term, design or symbol that identifies one seller’s product as distinct from others.”

Brands are not names, terms, designs or symbols. Brands are the stories that a customer’s mind makes of names, terms, designs or symbols. These two ways of defining brand are allied, but they are not the same. Branding certainly requires names, terms, designs or symbols but that does not mean the existence of these things (even when they are expertly created) will lead to successful branding. The existence of a brand and the acceptance of a brand are two different things and conflating them is futile.

A twenty-five year old and a forty year old both require the means to deposit funds into their banking account, and in this regard they are alike. But the twenty-five year old identifies making a deposit as something she does in a coffee house with a smartphone. The forty year old leaves the coffee house, drives to a local branch, and literally deposits the funds in question. Both have satisfied exactly the same need and both may be customers of exactly the same institution, but each in a nontrivial way identifies the story of “making a deposit” differently.

No name, term, design or symbol can be baked into a cookie that will change how Facebook employees in Silicon Valley identify with the need to make payment for products. The narrative these folks are living elevates mobile payments above cold hard cash – end of story.

Major George Hood is almost correct when saying, “We’re basically trying to make sure we’re keeping up with our donors and embrace the new technologies they’re embracing.” We say almost because donors do not embrace technologies. Donors, (many in the case of The Salvation Army), embrace causes. Donors also demand that the causes they embrace adhere to the stories identified in their mind. That is why the Salvation Army’s experiment in accepting mobile payments proved successful in Dallas, San Francisco at large, Chicago and New York. The folks in those cities embraced the same cause and share the same story regarding payment processing as their Silicon Valley counterparts.

Be it cash, cookies or kettles, branding’s story has not changed since at least 1784. The task of choosing names, terms, designs or symbols is not for the purpose of identifying a product; it is for the absolute requirement to create a story that resonates within the mind of the customer.

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The Story of Branding
Authors: Bob Manna & Matt Manna
Article ID: 00586F15
Publication date: February 01, 2012
Published concurrently by Transaction Directory Magazine & mannagroups.com.
Download: The Story of Branding (PDF)

Bob

Bob has presented to Congressmen, business and education executives, industrial and charitable organizations and university professors. He has appeared on programs with such well know personalities as PBS TV host Adam Smith, Senator William Roth and former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Danny White. Bob has several published research papers and his writings have appeared in The Christian Science Monitor and “D” magazine.
Bob’s Bio | Email Bob

Matt

Matt’s articles and speeches have been enjoyed by thousands of people across multiple business disciplines, political campaigns and charitable organizations.
Matt’s Bio | Email Matt | Matt On Twitter

Manna Groups is a business strategy and communication consultancy. Our special abilities are to explain, in a marketplace of abundance, how products are successfully developed, promoted & sold and to foster the talent required to bring about that success. Our product is called Customer DNA. The three tenets of Customer DNA are: Sculpture, Broadcasting, and Unusual Mind. Bringing Customer DNA to your organization is the purpose of Manna Groups.

Start Today

It’s hard to imagine someone who has recently made a purchase saying to another, “You know I bought this product because of the extraordinary communication that preceded my purchase”. Yet that is exactly why products are purchased. Every purchase is motivated by the communication that precedes it. The communication comes first. The act of purchasing comes second. And what is true for products is equally true for votes, verdicts and volitions. Every human undertaking is motivated first by communication.

Before reading past this sentence take a moment and reread the first paragraph of this article.

Now consider this familiar proverb, “You never get a second chance to make a good first impression”. Can there be any doubt in your mind that the words “good first impression” denote communication? The practical upshot of this realization forms the basis of two important New Year’s resolutions.

Be it resolved in 2012 that product quality does not correlate with first impressions. Be it further resolved that first impressions are composed solely of communication. In order for a first impression to be positive it must be composed of communication that is received positively by those for whom it is intended.

Suppose you have control of a product that is in every quantifiable way better than the products currently in existence. The usual list of requirements has been satisfied. The product is well tested. Manufacturing and distribution requirements have been satisfied. A sales team is in place. The only thing left to do is, “take the product to market”. Which means what exactly? One is tempted to reply that the question is superfluous. The only thing required to take the product to market is to make the product’s facts known to prospective customers – a simple quantitative exercise.

Well, good luck with that. Customers do not pay attention to facts when forming a first impression about products. Customers pay attention to what they have already experienced when forming a first impression about products.

The phenomenon of using past experience as a basis for forming new impressions is technically known as perceptual and cognitive mechanics. What it means practically is that customers feel deeply before thinking clearly. When a customer is exposed to communication that echoes his or her own life and beliefs, he or she is likely to form a positive impression. This is not a quantitative exercise. It is a qualitative exercise.

One way to put a finger on the difference is to apply the “Used Car Salesman” test. There is no quantitative statement a used car salesman can make that will make us feel he is telling us the truth. Why? Because we are incapable of thinking past the existing impressions in our mind of a used car salesman. A truly sad thing to recognize is that even if the used car salesman is telling the truth we will not believe what he is saying. A used car salesman is a used car salesman. End of story!

Imagine that part of your “take to market” strategy is to send a blast Email to those who are likely to be interested in your product. Do you suppose there is any list of facts you can include in that Email that will create a positive first impression? The chances are many to one that such an Email will never even be opened let alone evaluated. Email, you see, is an electronic equivalent to the used car salesman. Their form speaks louder than their message.

It is most revealing when a client asks us why we chose a particular medium over another, or why we decided to create a message that did not extol a products technical achievement(s). The question assumes we were in control of how such a communication would be received by those for whom it was intended.

The marketer who is seriously committed to achieving success must accept that product merit comes second to meritorious communication. If it were the other way round every meritorious product would become successful.

The year 2012, and those that follow, will be better served when we resolve to understand that facts are not the same as impressions and that they are miles from truth as it is understood by the mind and the heart.

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Persuasive Resolutions
Authors: Bob Manna & Matt Manna
Article ID: 004D9362
Publication date: January 01, 2012
Published concurrently by Transaction Directory Magazine & mannagroups.com.
Download: Persuasive Resolutions (PDF)

Bob

Bob has presented to Congressmen, business and education executives, industrial and charitable organizations and university professors. He has appeared on programs with such well know personalities as PBS TV host Adam Smith, Senator William Roth and former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Danny White. Bob has several published research papers and his writings have appeared in The Christian Science Monitor and “D” magazine.
Bob’s Bio | Email Bob

Matt

Matt’s articles and speeches have been enjoyed by thousands of people across multiple business disciplines, political campaigns and charitable organizations.
Matt’s Bio | Email Matt | Matt On Twitter

Manna Groups is a business strategy and communication consultancy. Our special abilities are to explain, in a marketplace of abundance, how products are successfully developed, promoted & sold and to foster the talent required to bring about that success. Our product is called Customer DNA. The three tenets of Customer DNA are: Sculpture, Broadcasting, and Unusual Mind. Bringing Customer DNA to your organization is the purpose of Manna Groups.

What Color Is This

Quick, finish the following sentence. The color defined by the information given inside the box shown to the right is ______? Before you can answer you must know that “nm” is the abbreviation for nanometer and you must know that light reflected at a wavelength of 600 nanometers is perceived as color red.

But even if you know both of these things an important question remains. Does knowing that light reflected at 600 nanometers is colored red equal the experience of actually seeing █?

It’s tempting to believe that it does. This is not the case, however, and a simple thought experiment will illustrate just how big a difference there is between these two complementary, yet vastly different, methods of communication.

Assume you are a colorblind scientist. Your brain is able to understand the concept of color but since the color receptors in your eyes (the cones) do not function, you cannot see colors. As a result of your condition, when you look at an apple you cannot know what color it is unless you point a spectrometer at the apple and record the wavelength of the reflected light.

You decide to study a close friend who is able to experience color. Over time you become able to exactly describe the entirety of color processing going on inside of your friend’s mind. You trace the process from the moment light enters your friend’s eyes and passes through all the color processing parts of your friend’s brain. You even identify the neural activity which allows your friend to report, “I see red.” From a scientific point of view you know everything there is to know about color recognition.

You approach your friend with a detailed report and announce, “This is what’s going on inside of your brain when you see color.” Your friend is very likely to react to your presentation disapprovingly by saying, “Sure that may be what is going on inside of my brain, but I am also actually seeing color. When I look at a red apple, where exactly in that report does it show the color █?” What your friend is requesting is an explanation for what Manna Groups calls basic and invariable meaning – the actual first hand, ineffable experience of seeing █.

What you, the scientist, presented to your friend is not basic and invariable meaning. It is a translation of basic and invariable meaning. This thought experiment clearly demonstrates that a translation (600nm) does not equal the personal basic and invariable human emotion of seeing █. The translation is clearly complementary, but it is not equal. Something is lost in the translation.

There is a solution to ameliorate this situation, we call it Sculpture – the practice of creating marketing messages and materials which safeguard against translation loss.

The purpose of this document is to proclaim that marketing messages built upon a translated description of a product or service will fail. Such messages are to effective marketing as 600nm is to █. Marketing messages succeed only when the basic and invariable meaning already stored within each of us are Sculpted to connect to the product or service being offered.

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Seeing Red
Authors: Bob Manna & Matt Manna
Article ID: 00618023
Publication date: September 5, 2011
Published concurrently by Transaction Directory Magazine & mannagroups.com.
Download: Seeing Red (PDF)

Bob

Bob has presented to Congressmen, business and education executives, industrial and charitable organizations and university professors. He has appeared on programs with such well know personalities as PBS TV host Adam Smith, Senator William Roth and former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Danny White. Bob has several published research papers and his writings have appeared in The Christian Science Monitor and “D” magazine.
Bob’s Bio | Email Bob

Matt

Matt’s articles and speeches have been enjoyed by thousands of people across multiple business disciplines, political campaigns and charitable organizations.
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Manna Groups is a business strategy and communication consultancy. Our special abilities are to explain, in a marketplace of abundance, how products are successfully developed, promoted & sold and to foster the talent required to bring about that success. Our product is called Customer DNA. The three tenets of Customer DNA are: Sculpture, Broadcasting, and Unusual Mind. Bringing Customer DNA to your organization is the purpose of Manna Groups.

Projection vs. Prediction

Basing future expectations on past events is silly. Why? Because the future is a certainty but what will happen in the future is not. Every basketball fan who has watched their favorite player score 18 points in the first quarter of a game, only to wind up with a total of 23 points at the end, has a visceral understanding of how much the future can differ from the recent past.

In business, as in basketball, it’s tempting to believe the pieces of the puzzle that make up the future can be easily envisioned thru statistical analysis. That’s not usually the case however, and to believe otherwise is very dangerous. The word that most exemplifies this danger is projection. There is another similar sounding word often equated with projection. That word is prediction. But projection and prediction do not refer to the same thing. In fact there is a vast difference between them. Let’s take a look.

Suppose you are in control of an established luxury car company with steady but stagnant sales. Statistical research indicates that cars above a particular price point sell in quantity X. Below the price point X+ number of cars sell. You decide to go for the X+ price point. Because of your mathematical adroitness you “know” the increased number of cars sold will make enough real profit dollars to compensate for the projected decrease in profit margin. Perhaps your company builds a less expensive car, one that keeps costs in line with the current profit margin and provides the magical X+ units sold price point. Either way the math path seems clear – offer an inexpensive luxury car and you’re on the road to good times.

It won’t happen. In fact it didn’t happen – just ask Jaguar. Why? Because customers are motivated by stories not mathematics and a low price point is in direct conflict with the luxury car story.

That one was easy. What kind of remodeling needs to be done to keep up with changing environments? Hint: math can’t provide the answer.

Suppose you are the owner of a specialty picture frame store. Statistical research confirms an exponential increase in the number of pictures taken due to the existence of disposable and digital cameras. A decrease in the cost of making prints and the ubiquity of self-serve print making kiosks has [predictably] increased the number of prints made each year. Yea – it’s good times ahead! If X specialty frames were sold before the digital self serve era then X+ will be sold after. Wrong! The stuff that tickles a customers “special” gene changes when pictures are taken as commonly as breathing and printed as plainly as pushing a button.

Digital cameras and self-serve print making has changed the environment. Disposable pictures require disposable frames, (frames that are readily available for use and re-use as required), specialty they ain’t.

To be sure, there are still pictures recognized as something distinct and permanent in comparison to others. But the environment in which pictures are taken and frames are sold has changed. If you limit your offering to specialty frames, customers will go elsewhere. And they will stay there until the next environmental change.

The key to prediction is to recognize that success is determined by customer behavior not mathematics. In the case of luxury cars, that means a price that supports a luxurious story. In the case of picture frames, that means frame stores that parlay with the digital self-serve era.

Author’s note: Ron White is a funny and famous comedian that does a bit on the difference between an antidote and an anecdote.

“If I knew the difference between an antidote and an anecdote my camping buddy would be alive today.” -Ron White

The idea for this column came from White. Confusing similar sounding words with very different meanings is funny when presented in a comedic environment. In a marketing environment, confusing similar sounding words is tragic.

• Article Info
• Matt Manna
• Manna Groups

Projection vs. Prediction
Author: Matt Manna
Article ID: 00560503
Publication date: August 28, 2011

Matt

Matt’s articles and speeches have been enjoyed by thousands of people across multiple business disciplines, political campaigns and charitable organizations.
Matt’s Bio | Email Matt | Matt On Twitter

Manna Groups is a business strategy and communication consultancy. Our special abilities are to explain, in a marketplace of abundance, how products are successfully developed, promoted & sold and to foster the talent required to bring about that success. Our product is called Customer DNA. The three tenets of Customer DNA are: Sculpture, Broadcasting, and Unusual Mind. Bringing Customer DNA to your organization is the purpose of Manna Groups.

An Unusual Mind Ghost

A good idea, like a good ghost story, is the product of an Unusual Mind. Defined by Manna Groups as the ability to discover and turn the basic and invariable meaning of something into an original idea that has value, Unusual Mind talent comprises half the reason an enterprise succeeds. The other half is comprised of the talent to successfully promote the valuable discovery.

The ability to store and recall data, a common measure of intelligence, is a highly regarded attribute. But the ability to store and recall data is not an indicator of the ability to come up with original ideas that have value. Anyone who has, “put a bunch of smart people in a room and hoped for something new,” will know exactly what I’m talking about. In truth the ability to recall data is concerned entirely with what has happened in the past. Ideas that spring from the Unusual Mind are new ideas that deliver value.

The unusual mind of George Ballas had an idea that the brush action which removed dirt from a car could be used to cut grass. Prior to the Weed Eater plenty of intelligent minds had made improvements to bladed trimmers by adding motors, batteries, wheels and handles. It was George Ballas that came up with the Weed Eater and gave the intelligent something new to think about. He also did away with bladed trimmers.

Unusual minds work by regarding the messages that come thru their senses as ideas, not as facts. The difference between an idea and a fact is important. Ideas are possible representations of the world that we hold in our head. Words are ideas we can pronounce; pictures are ideas we can see; gustatory and olfactory sensations are ideas we can taste and smell and tactile stimulations are ideas we can literally feel.

Facts are representations of the world we hold in our head that we believe actually represent the world. Before the Weed Eater, the idea of cutting grass with a swirling brush could not exist in the mind of a person who represented the world solely by facts. In such a mind the desire to cut grass could only be satisfied by recalling the appropriate grass cutting fact – a blade.

Children are natural Unusual Mind practitioners because all the messages that come thru a child’s senses present themselves as ideas, not as facts. Turning the messages we encounter as young people into the facts we cling to in later life is the very definition of growing up. It is also the behavioral change that most inhibits Unusual Mind talent.

Which brings me to the following ghoulish exchange that took place, a couple of Halloweens back between my 4-year-old niece and myself.
Madeline was drawing something green.

I asked, “Madeline what are you drawing?”

“A ghost,” she said.

I said, (and I should have known better), “That’s nice but how do you know what ghosts look like?”

She pointed at her drawing and said, “They look like this.”

Wonderful stuff!

• Article Info
• Matt Manna
• Manna Groups

An Unusual Mind Ghost Story
Author: Matt Manna
Article ID: 00562E6B2
Publication date: November 15, 2007

Matt

Matt’s articles and speeches have been enjoyed by thousands of people across multiple business disciplines, political campaigns and charitable organizations.
Matt’s Bio | Email Matt | Matt On Twitter

Manna Groups is a business strategy and communication consultancy. Our special abilities are to explain, in a marketplace of abundance, how products are successfully developed, promoted & sold and to foster the talent required to bring about that success. Our product is called Customer DNA. The three tenets of Customer DNA are: Sculpture, Broadcasting, and Unusual Mind. Bringing Customer DNA to your organization is the purpose of Manna Groups.