The Marketing Rules Podcast in Writing: Kurt Uhlir

by Julia Fras | Nov 23, 2022 | The Marketing Rules Podcast in Writing

#MarketingRules

#ThinkinCircles

#RecruitmentMarketing

Watch the interview:

The Marketing Rules Podcast in Writing Halloween Special: Elizabeth Lembke

by Julia Fras | Nov 14, 2022 | The Marketing Rules Podcast in Writing

#MarketingRules

#ThinkinCircles

#RecruitmentMarketing

Watch the interview:

The Marketing Rules Podcast in Writing: Darshan Mehta

by Julia Fras | Aug 18, 2022 | The Marketing Rules Podcast in Writing

The Episode Transcript:

00:01.30

thinkincircles

It is my pleasure to be joined today by Darshan Mehta. Dash and is a great It’s a pleasure to have you on as I as I said um, I’m going to guess that kind of the majority of or organs may never have heard of you. Ah, but hopefully they’ll be kind of gripped by the time we finish the today’s recording but if you could give us a little bit about your background and I know you’ve written a few kinds of books and things of that. So, give us a bit of a potted history of.

00:39.33

Darshan Mehta

Sure it’s great to be here. Thanks James. Um I’ve been in the marketing advertising branding area for about twenty some years and I recently wrote a book called getting to aha why today’s insights are tomorrow’s facts. Because if you think about it our world that is basically based on insights that someone had at None point to develop a lot of the products and sources that we use now an easy example for all of us to identify, was it wasn’t that long ago that most of us didn’t carry smartphone from this and basically since the late 2000 s yeah, now. Everybody’s carrying a basic computer in their pocket to basically manage and run our lives on a daily basis. So, but at some point, that that was an insight that someone had then these are products that we basically start using. So, if you can gain these insights ahead of time you can gain a competitive advantage.

02:59.34

thinkincircles

Um, yeah, I Always think I think about this quite a lot because that the fact that we’ve got this kind of this pocket almost supercomputer all right, just kind of wandering around with you. That’s got you know more computing power than it took easily took to put men on the Moon. Um, always kind of kind of amazes me that there is this kind of just. Literally a thing that you’ve got the world at your fingertips and it’s something we completely kind of take for granted

these days.

03:09.19

Darshan Mehta

Absolutely and maybe you think about it I think the phone is probably within each person’s proximity about None to ten feet at none you know hour I mean 24 hours a day seven days a week and be more so than your significant other or spouse. And something that we’ve all kind of come to rely on and use on a regular basis.

04:32.60

thinkincircles

Um I read some interesting statistics around kind of mobile phone uses especially with different kind of generations and that’s ah, kind of younger generations the none or nothing they do on a smartphone is make a phone call. You know there’s every other thing you can do on a smartphone is used apart from it.

04:26.67

Darshan Mehta

Um, exactly.

05:11.78

thinkincircles

Kind of making a phone call on it anymore. Um, which ah which is Crazy. You know I mean um, yeah, ah, which is yeah so, it’s interesting to do and actually is an interesting kind of marketing kind of strategy as well. Right? if you know that people have kind of got these things in their pockets but they’re not using them to make phone calls then. There’s ah, there’s a tactic behind that which we will kind of get Onto. We’ll talk about the kind of marketing strategies and how they’ve evolved and how we kind of stand top of them. But you’ve mentioned a couple of times about ah around kind of insights. So, for the listeners. Why don’t you can you kind of Define What you have what you consider as insight right? because it might be slightly different. We might all have slightly different kind of things that we understand it to be so let’s start with defining it and then we’ll talk about how we can use them.

05:58.99

Darshan Mehta

Sure I mean I think people do use insights ah in a varying degree I would say insights are more than facts or observations. They’re actually a combination of understanding societal Trends technological trends as well as facts and observations kind of putting them all together. Um, to make a succinct thought that helps you have a deeper understanding of what’s really driving something driving a behaviour a purchase decision or whatever let me give you an example I think one of the best people who give insights are really good comedians. They’re the ones that basically take something from over here over here, put it together and articulate it in a way that makes you say oh my God I never thought of that but that is so True. So, it’s kind of gets at a core truth but it’s articulate in a way that you had not maybe thought about and so what you’re trying to do in many ways when you. Searching for these insects trying to get that moment. You’re trying to tap into what people think and feel there’s subconscious thoughts and feelings because 95% of what we do or make decisions are based on our subconscious and so you’re trying to tap into that and if you can articulate that deeper insight or motivator then that’s going to help you. Quite a bit.

09:06.76

thinkincircles

So it could be almost kind of 2 You know two disparate kind of events situations facts. Whatever your kind of cool that you know it takes someone then to make the connection that there is a relationship between these things and that obviously that’s the insight has then been.

09:07.11

Darshan Mehta

Um, exactly.

09:46.44

thinkincircles

Kind of great at that point. Yeah, um so from a business standpoint. Let’s take a start-up Businesses. You know, a lot of people who listen to the podcast are kind of small size businesses. A majority of them are in the staffing And HR space but we kind of get. Tech providers and things that they’re listening as well. But if you are a start-up. How do you kind of use these insights to you know to grow your business.

10:01.10

Darshan Mehta

None of the best ways a start-up can use insights is really to get to product market fit sooner and much more alignment of the 2 you know often we as entrepreneurs come up with a product or idea based on ah a pain point. We’ve had or experience. And then you want to take that idea to market which is great but sometimes you know when you actually talk to the marketplace. You’ll find certain tweaks or things that need to just be modified slightly. They can make a big difference and if you really think about it’s not just for start-up but even established businesses. There are basically two ways you can make business decisions. 1 you can stay in the door, or you can make them based on information you’ve actually bartered and tapped into from your customers so that you have a much more informed decision and either way the market play is going to speak to you give you feedback and your choice is really do you want to listen sooner or do you want to listen later.

12:29.72

thinkincircles

And if you’re a start-up suppose the question that comes to me is that 1, you’re probably resource light time light. You know, ah the people in the business are probably wearing all kinds of different hats to do all different types of things in business. You know how a business does you know start-up business kind of you know. Get the head around this and you know find the time and the kind of resources to kind of look into this and I’m sure you’re going to say well you would do with that before you start up, but you know a lot of businesses. Don’t do that right? You know they just kind of got. We’ve got a great idea. We want to do this. Let’s crack on and suddenly they get into selling mode. And then everything else kind of goes out the window that point and.

13:05.69

Darshan Mehta

Yeah I would encourage I mean as basic as just having interviews or having conversations with your potential customers and then if you wanted to get to the next level Up. You can actually engage in focus Groups. You can do online focus groups with our platform, or you can also do in-person focus groups which tend to be a little bit more expensive but that’s doable and then of course. Later on, once you have better insights into what your customers think and feel if you find you want to actually extrapolate that to the population then you can do Surveys But yeah at the core of it, I would absolutely start with having engaging conversations and the purpose of these conversations is not to sell. Customers. It’s actually tap into what they think and feel and how likely are they to buy your product a service and if they’re not likely to buy What would it be needed to change alter or fix it so that maybe they would consider buying your product to service.

15:33.50

thinkincircles

Um, and so let’s assume you you’re a start-up. Ah, you’ve kind of gone past this kind of growth but your kind of this initial growth phase you’re into finding funding sort of you know for you then kind of a couple of years in how this does then kind of play out once you’re kind of 3, 4 No kind of 6 years into your business. None.

15:34.63

Darshan Mehta

Well, you know this process is an ongoing process with your customers I mean their needs change things change and insights are always going to be coming forward as again. A result of technological advances societal cultural trends for example, before 2019 no, no one was really thinking about the pandemic or how that might influence our purchase decisions but post pandemic has changed lot in terms of how people are buying what they’re buying and where they’re putting their really their time and money into and then that was a big change and that’s something that so it’s a constant evolving conversation to tap on these insights. However, let’s say you have a successful product. The other thing you want to maybe shift towards you know once you’ve gotten a product market fit is to maybe explore more of ways. What are some existing pain points that maybe you can address that no one else is addressing so this kind of conversations focus groups things that can actually lead to product innovation. Um, again, you can guess in the dark or you can and go along with what your customers are telling them and kind of evolve with them and change with them, and you know improve your product and for your experience working with this I have to just be the product. It could be the buying experience that needs to be enhanced and that can be worked on as well. So, this is an ongoing conversation. Um, and you know it’s based on your needs your budget and your time frame but it’s not something you just do once and then you stop doing it.

19:01.72

thinkincircles

And so is this something that is driven from the top you’ve gone I’ve got um you know, ah subject matter experts within the business. Ah or you original rely on technology to kind of to draw in these insights and gain these insights. Well. Is there one size fits all how would you kind of tell us how you would go about that.

19:04.85

Darshan Mehta

I think, and you know when you have support from the top. It’s going to go much better all-around None you might get budget. You’ll get time and you’ll get you know buying and it something should come from the top and if you think about it all we’re really talking about is you know some people call it Mark research and reality. It’s as simple as structured curiosity. And what you’re trying to do is have these conversations so you can tap into what people think and feel and that’s what’s going to give you a head start and these insights so you can actually gain a competitive advantage from your competitors and so let me give you simple example AirBnB and when they first started out. They were told to go out and talk to the customers. They weren’t you know getting some tractions but not in all markets and the market that they seemed to be doing somewhat well was in New York and so they decided that fluids in New York actually sit down at the kitchen table with many customers and they quickly realized one of the big problems was. A lot of these people just didn’t know how to take good quality pictures of their homes, so they actually took better pictures and within a week and they trained them how to take better pictures within a week the sales doubled and that was a big difference in the success and trajectory of the company. Once they did that which was actually having conversations with their customers and learning what could make a difference and again that didn’t take a lot of time, I mean a lot of money, but it did take some time to delve into it once they did that it really changed the trajectory of their sales.

22:37.36

thinkincircles

Yeah, That’s a great example. Um, how something kind of quite visual and kind of just kind of just tweaking round the edges is ah can kind of really turn things around. Um, let’s move on to one of my kind of favourite observation kind of marketing strategy. And how that then kind of flows on from the kind of insights you’ve gained so you know marketing strategy especially for smaller businesses and start-ups is probably something that they is secondary in their kind of list of things that that when they’re kind of ah getting up but um, just tell me you know from work you’ve done and maybe some examples the importance of getting that kind of strategy right? or at least working on it right from the beginning.

23:20.47

Darshan Mehta

Yeah, I mean one way or another you’re go to Up with a strategy whether you design it or the market kind of dictate for you right? And the thing is you can spend a lot of time and a lot of money upfront by guessing and then doing it and your marketplace is going to speak to you or you can actually do some trial. Balloons as I say and see what’s going on before you spend. Yeah, the big portion of your time and your budget to actually see if this strategy is going to take hold and again it’s going back to the thing, we talked about earlier your choice is really not whether you’re going to have a strategy you want to do it sooner or later by listening to the customers. So, it’s a much more likelihood to be a successful strategy when you do implement it.

25:24.54

thinkincircles

Um, and I know you from other conversations and kind of podcasts and the book. You know there’s you know marketing choices are changing constantly, right? and no more so over the last kind of ah couple of years as you already mentioned something things like the pandemic and. Whatever else kind of goes on in a world means you need to adapt pretty quickly. So, you know how businesses can adapt you know in ah in ah in an ever changing and faster changing kind of world.

25:39.91

Darshan Mehta

Sure I think the nothing is definitely increase your level of curiosity and wanting to observe as well as absorb information that’s out there. For example, you know when you read about the pandemic you know that more and more people are spending time at home. Many of them can go to the office. As a result, you know that was likely going to be a situation going to cost people spend morning more money on their home to make it more comfortable for work as well as a personal life and chance are they’re going to be spending more money in home offices things like that. So, these are the kind of things like I said you need to understand societal change technological changes. That are going to start impacting decision making and behaviour and I think the other thing realizes as a result of what’s been happening and really hyper competition. But also, the pandemic people no longer just buying products they’re buying experiences now they’re buying an experience from the very beginning when they see you. Interact with your product and service and all the way through post-purchase and that’s a big part of a decision making now as well as referrals so these are all things you kind of need to look at so increase your level of curiosity read as many things you can to understand a sense of where societal trends things are going. And then see how that will impact you and then again have those conversations with your customers and see from them. How these things are impacting the way they buy products or services and ultimately the decision making they’re doing.

29:11.18

thinkincircles

So these kind of ongoing conversations with your customers that you know you mentioned ah that they need to be kind of structured. Um, how does that work is that as simple as a couple of phones. You know you know questions you need to ask every time you speak to them on a phone or when you meet them is it.

28:53.97

Darshan Mehta

Um, any.

29:50.00

thinkincircles

As formal as you mentioned as Surveys kind of how far do you need to go? What is the kind of what’s the spectrum we need we need to be looking at that.

29:26.11

Darshan Mehta

It depends on your needs. But I think we need to break it down. There’s basically two ways to do kind of research one is what we call qualitative and is quantitative and the benefits are qualitative. It allows you to have real conversation and allows you to have them be open ended. And what you’re trying to do is go deeper and deeper on a particular topic or subject. For example, when you’re at a cocktail party and you’re meeting a few people and you start talking about a topic and everyone’s feeding off each other going deeper and deeper into the topic and you’re all having a very engaging conversation. That’s what you’re trying to recreate in a focus group. And 1 of the benefits of doing it as a group is when you have lightminded people talking about a topic. You know these are things that trying to tap into what they think, and feel are subconscious. But as you’re talking about something James, I am then I might feed off what you’re saying to oh that’s really interesting. What you said I never thought of it and this what makes is how it makes me feel then you can feed off that. And that’s the benefit of that kind of conversation. But again, you can also have them 1 on 1 and then once you have you know a better understanding of what people are thinking and feeling you know then you might want to think about doing a survey so you can say like I have a pretty good sense. What people are telling me I want to now know. What percentage of my audience actually feels this way is 20%, 50%, or 70% and you know there’s many different ways you’re going to get feedback now it is. You’re going to get feedback by having conversations you’re going to able to get feedback by comments and referrals that are on the internet through your social channels. So, there’s many different ways to collect. And gather information. But what I’m talking about is behaviour that is recorded in terms of online purchases of that tells you what they’ve actually done but the benefit of if you go prior to that and do these conversations you’ll understand the context upon which that decision was made. In other words, what drove them to buy or not buy that product. What drove them to look at for other alternatives basically based on price experience and so on and that’s the kind of insight that’s going to give you better context for all the analytics that we’re generating online through all the different methods.

34:16.98

thinkincircles

Yeah, um, the yeah, the kind of context instead of content. The context is King right? Yeah, it’s understanding that kind of ah that moment micro detail. Um yeah, I mean that makes um, complete sense a couple of times. Also, you’ve mentioned um, ah, customer experience and customer centric. Kind of ah the importance of these terms. So, let’s kind of ah, let’s talk about that for a little bit so you know how important it is to be more kind of customer centric.

34:33.17

Darshan Mehta

So absolutely I mean ultimately you exist because your customer is willing to buy your product to service I’ll give an excellent example of Gillette razors that you know their innovations were adding new blades to their cartridges went from None blades to None to 4 to 5 and. Um, sure what at the None or None but what happened was that was the innovation but what they neglected to keep an eye on was the customer experience. So as these blades increase the price of the cartridges increased as well to the point that least in the us, I’m much for in other countries. But. In order to go buy them at the store you had to go to the clerk and have to unlock the cabinet to get them for you and that took away from the buying experience so up comes this upstart that basic says I want to change the buying experience and make a subscription base because you’re going to need these on regular basis, and they are basically. Took on and was very successful with you know Gillette that had none of the market.

37:15.24

thinkincircles

So yeah, yeah, that um, that that’s a kind of interesting kind of position of a disruptor coming into that market and really kind of um, ah shaking up. Um for the smaller businesses though who might not be on the kind of size of the kind of Gillette. You know. How do we go about kind of improving that kind of custom experience and lets you know I’m thinking with kind of the organization today. It is around you know interaction on the website. For instance, you know what? what were kind of what we some of your kind of to kind of build a better custom experience online for a smaller business.

37:43.50

Darshan Mehta

Um, sure. But in fact, if you go back to the None example actually it was Gillette that was the industry leader but as a start-up that actually interrupted and who would have thought that you know yeah you know if I came up to say hey Jane I’m going to enter the ah sha shaved of shaver business with new cartridges and blade your pi was that are you crazy you know, be There’s a big company that owns the marketplace but they focus on the experience and that made a huge difference. So, I think even so for smaller players. There are many different opportunities to enhance the customer experience and you know that’s from the time they actually find out about you to the time to interact with you and your frontline of employees. They can all make a difference and I think you should look for opportunities to enhance that experience. What is it people are looking for to make it easier more convenient maybe less expensive more than anything you want to see if there’s a way you can make an emotional connection with your customers and if you can do that that’s going to exponentially increase. Your ability to interact but also the likelihood that they’re going to recommend you to their friends and families and their network.

40:28.70

thinkincircles

Yeah, I can see this being a little easier with a product for instance when it comes to a service as I said a lot of the kind of listeners are in the kind of Patrion staffing space that that might be a bit more kind of difficult because the buying the buying process is slightly kind of is different. So is there anything that is specific to kind of services that you would suggest when it comes to customer experience.

40:33.11

Darshan Mehta

Sure if you think about it. Basically, even hospitality you know and going to hotels and stuff if you go to hotel where they don’t remember your name and they’re not personalized. They not really taking care of you. You know that makes a big difference whereas you go to some other hotel where they say hey hello James is good to see you again. Welcome back. You know would you like to have your feather pillows again. So, in other words, there’s opportunities not in just product but also service as well. It ultimately comes down to really having a good understanding your customer and nowadays with you know, being able to capture so much information you can have these things in the database that you can capture it unique special things that people like so that way they feel like hey. You know they’re special. They’re having a great experience and that’s something that they’re going to want to come back to you with their friends and families. So that’s say, “Hey, look,”. You know? You’re going to know that when you walk up to the hotel. They’re go to say your name James they’re going to talk to you and it’s going to you know make you feel good as well. As with your friends and family when you’re bringing up as well.

43:01.78

thinkincircles

Yeah, that kind of personalization I think ah is um and somehow the kind of getting ah the technology and kind of ah to kind of play a part in that as well. I think is pretty important as you’ve already mentioned kind of capturing it in a database and then you know being at a proactively. Kind of feed that back to the customer once they ah when they come back. Um, it’s been absolute pleasure talking to you today. What we will do will include all of your kind of details in the show notes will include a link to your book as Well. I know you’ve kind of ah that was recently Published. So, if anybody wants to know more about you and to read more about kind of what you do and how you help businesses that I’m sure they can read up in the book. Um, but for now Darshan it has been absolutely pleasure. Thank you very much.

43:46.53

Darshan Mehta

Thank for that tune, pleasure talking to you.

Watch the interview:

The Marketing Rules Podcast in Writing: Shannon Russo

by Julia Fras | Aug 3, 2022 | The Marketing Rules Podcast in Writing

The Episode Transcript:

#MarketingRules

#ThinkinCircles

#RecruitmentMarketing

Watch the interview:

The Marketing Rules Podcast in Writing: Matt Alder & Mervyn Dinnen

by James Whitelock | Jul 11, 2022 | The Marketing Rules Podcast in Writing

The Episode Transcript:

00:00.00

thinkincircles

Welcome back everybody to the marketing rules podcast, it’s my pleasure today to have two guests, two for the price of one, Mervyn Dinnen and Matt Older. Matt has been on the podcast several times now but Mervyn this is your first time on the podcast, so welcome.

00:19.12

Mervyn

Thank you! It’s an absolute pleasure to be here James.


00.22.06

thinkincircles 
Pleasure’s all mine. Matt it’s good to have you back, I think you’re the guest we’ve had back more times than anyone else now.

00:32.20

Matt Alder

Well there we go, I must be doing something right? It’s a pleasure to be back again.

00:38.80

thinkincircles

Great! Today we’re gonna have a little check about your new book “digital talent,” which has just been released. I can see a lot of noise being made on the market about this and everybody seems to be raving about it. I must admit I haven’t had a chance to have a read of it myself. But, hopefully by the end of this podcast, you’ll have wet my appetite so I’m gonna go out and  line your pockets with a little bit of more money from Amazon. But I’ll tell you what, we have a lot of authors on here and usually it’s a solo sport. But the 2 of you working together really interests me and how you divide up the labour of working and writing on a book. So how do you write together? What’s the process that you go through when you’re writing it because this is your second book now?

01:29.41

Mervyn

It is yes.

01:32.53

thinkincircles

So Matt, how is it that you work together.

01:34.74

Matt Alder

I think we’re very lucky to start with because we have a similar style of working, we have a similar style of writing. Sometimes it’s actually quite difficult if you read the book to know who’s written what. So that actually makes it easier for us because what we’ve done with both books is we’ve literally just divided up the chapters and said I’m writing chapter one, Mervyn’s writing chapter 2 whatever it might be. We’ll talk about the book, we’ll work out what it is that we think will be valuable to people. We do a lot of research and write research reports together outside of writing books. It’s also like what research have we done, what can we bring to the table. Then once we settle on a topic we then work out how that breaks down into a book, and then divide the chapters up, and write them individually. But then come together, review them, and discuss as we move forward with the process. Did I miss anything there Merv? Give us some more insight.

02:58.25

Mervyn

No, I don’t think so. With the original asynchronous workforce in that we’re remote, we’re hybrids and we don’t write at the same time. So I think that’s a useful validation for how it works. Matt’s right and we’ve probably both got slightly different but complementary interests. Matt is a lot stronger around tunnel acquisition, technology, whereas I spend a lot of my research writing and conference going more around the HR side employee experience, talent developer, talent management, internal mobility, those kind of areas. So it comes together quite well, we both agree effectively, what are the key parts of the narrative that we’re going to make and then it’s as Matt says, the chapters are effectively divided up. We will probably write most of a chapter and then let the other person have a read of it. What do they think? Are we going in the right direction? Are we going off on tangents? There’s a lot of that as well, but again, we’re friends, we’ve been doing this together for about eight years now so it’s an easy relationship in that respect.

04:21.80

thinkincircles

It sounds very democratic is there not a natural leader between the two? I’m looking for some juicy gossip really, there must be some tension right.

04:32.87

Matt Alder

No, not tension so much, I think Mervyn summed it up well there. We have slightly different angles that we come from. Mervyn’s been working in recruitment for a very long time. But just in terms of the research we do, he does have that focus on talent management and learning development, employee experience and I have the focus on talent acquisition and technology. So we will defer to the other ones view, we ask for help when we need it. I suppose the biggest challenge with writing like that. You have to be very careful that you don’t repeat the same stuff throughout the book. I think there were a couple of points where Mervyn had written a beautiful several thousand words section, and I’d written a beautiful several thousand words section, and the other one had actually already written about that particular report or that particular topic. So that’s where the challenge is. The challenge of writing a second book is not necessarily of working together, but writing a second book is a big challenge. I think that we now understand what bands say when they talk about difficult second albums. When you write the first book you write down everything that you know, everything that you’ve ever known. Then you come to write a second book and you’re like oh right? What do we have to write about? So actually I think although it was very difficult; writing the second book was probably more rewarding because we had to go out and really work on it, really research it, really get to the bottom of the topic and find out what’s going on, speak to some really interesting people, pulling some really interesting research. Writing a second book is a challenge but I was gonna say it was more enjoyable, I’m not quite sure that’s the right word? But more satisfying at the end I think in terms of what we came up with.

06:54.28

Mervyn

It was a different experience as well because the first book we had planned out what we were going to say, how we were going to say it, the order we were going to say it. The writing pretty much followed that flow, whereas with the second book, we had started off planning much the same thing and we’d both written probably a couple of chapters and then obviously covid hit. Everything we were writing about was about to change and so that was needing to take a step back. And then recalibrate in fifteen months in, and what we don’t want to do is write the post-covid playbook because that’s going to date very quickly. What we do need to understand is what is happening now in the way we work, and how technology is responding to the various challenges and hybrid working and things like that. And what are the bits that clearly are going to impact the next 3 to 5 years and will become the norm. So what we’ve been doing over the last two years becomes business as usual. That was quite interesting and certainly I found myself going back to change a bit of the chapters I’ve already written. But also going off into a slightly different path. I suppose going back to one point that Matt said earlier on, we scope out at the beginning what the chapters are going to be. Roughly these chapters are going to be about this, this, this and this and for each one we will break that down into six, seven, eight, nine, ten little subsections of the things we’re going to cover. And so we’ve almost got that constant check with each other, because it’s a master document that we keep going in and out of. So we’ve got that check about are we going off on a tangent? Are we doing something different? Or are we both replicating the same thing? So I think it’s nothing we formally have to do, I think informally we’ve always got that kind of open eye onto that.

09:03.40

thinkincircles

Was there a plan to write a second book? Was that always on the roadmap or was there pressure because of the success of the first one or from the publishers to write a segment? What was that situation?

09:21.75

Matt Alder

There wasn’t a plan to not write a second book if that makes sense. I think it was always a possibility. The first book was really successful, people really liked it. It opened up a lot of opportunities for us. Then a second book kind of became a bit of a no-brainer, but actually the thing that really drove it was the topic. Digital talent looking at digital transformation and digital skills and it’s something that we touched upon a little bit in the first book but really wanted to dive into in more detail. It’s just a great process writing a book. You find out so much, look at so much information. We asked the publisher what they thought and they said yes straight away. So it just fell into place, I don’t think there was a roadmap that says book year one, book year two. It just seemed like the natural and right thing to do.

10:42.11

thinkincircles

Is it easier the second time round? Or is it harder? Or is it the same? How would you describe it, Mervyn?

10:56.90

Matt Alder
I think it’s different, I think it is more difficult because as I said you’ve already written down everything you know in the first book. However, you know what the process entails. You know what happens afterwards you know what happens when you release a book, the kind of things that people will want to talk about, you know that. Within our book, our book ends with a very clear summary and a very clear model that we can then go and talk about, to bring people value from the book. I think that the things that we learned doing the first book were incredibly useful and built on that in the second. What do you think Merv?

11:42.45

Mervyn

I would agree, I think that’s the first book as Matt said we wrote about what we knew and we had both tracked how things were changing. And what we call the talent journey, the journey from first finding out about an organisation to your alumni relationship. It was like 1 seamless journey underpinned by tech, it wasn’t a series of stages with beginning, middle and end. We knew how we wanted that to flow and each chapter was describing each stage along that process. There was a lot more external research because we both go to a lot of events. I’ve been to a lot of US conferences, we both go to HR tech, to unleash, and those big expos. Particularly the user conferences like influence greatness, work human, ultimate connections, those kind of events where you hear real client stories and you really get to dig in. So I think that we had a lot more to draw from. I think there were some of the bigger themes that we were tackling like leadership in the digital age, what does it mean? How can we help advise HR people, how to help their leaders? There were some meteor topics for us to do some research on and really try and get our heads around, such as how we could write about it, and how we could shape it as something which is useful and informative to the audience.

13:33.26

thinkincircles

Was digital talent always going to be the second book or were there other areas that you were considering exploring, that you were saving for book 4 or something like that.

13:46.58

Matt Alder

No I think this was always a really strong idea because it just built the first book. Over the last couple of decades we’ve just seen this demand for digital talent and digital skills go through the roof, so it was an obvious thing for us to do, and what was really interesting was actually the pandemic made it even more obvious. So we were writing it and we kind of got to the pandemic and we realised that we were writing exactly the right book, because funnily enough a lot of the things that we’d already written about, actually happened during the pandemic so we had to take those out. Because it felt like, “this is gonna happen in the future, oh, it’s already happened”. So the pandemic really accelerated what we were writing about and made it the perfect choice for the thing. But this was always going to be the second book. It’s just a really logical follow on from the first and it really reflects what we’re seeing around the markets.

15:00.34

thinkincircles

So there was never the idea of leaving the first book on a cliffhanger so it could lead into the second book?

15:06.84

Mervyn

Not exactly no, but you never know, maybe.The second book is not really finished on a cliffhanger, but I think between us we already have a few ideas for a third book should Kogan page wish us to write a third book.

15:24.36

Matt Alder

We’re not presupposing anything at this stage but we would like to write another one. So if you do like this one please, please let us know.

15:36.77

thinkincircles

You need a trilogy right? 

15:40.20

Matt Alder

Well you know what that is actually the big thing. We were like we have to have a trilogy. We have to write another book with the word talent in it, so it’s an exception to talent digital, the talent trilogy. 

15:51.77

Mervyn

Yeah, the aim is up there with the lord of the rings. “Return of the king”, return of the talent is the third book. 

16:09.58

thinkincircles

Well we look forward to that. That was gonna be my last question actually about the third book. Let’s talk about the book itself. Mervyn let’s give you a go because otherwise Matt’s gonna steal the limelight.

16:28.39

Mervyn

You podcasters. It’s like a private union isn’t it.

16:37.61

thinkincircles

If only. Tell us about the themes of the book and what the book’s about and what we can expect when we’re going to read the book.

16:48.10

Mervyn

What’s the book about? It’s about the digital talent journey. So the first book was very much charted about how things were changing as I said earlier so I’ll try not repeat exactly the same thing I said earlier. But it’s how tech underpinned this seamless journey and we covered things in that book like performance management. How this was changing from rank and yank to ongoing conversations and how the town acquisition itself was changing. But this really recasts it for the digital age because this is 1 seamless intuitive happening. It’s not something that can be broken up. So you’ve got lots of different stakeholders, a bit like a relay race. You know I use an analogy in one of the earlier chapters about the talent cycle being like a relay race. And historically the batton keeps getting dropped. We hire somebody, the batton gets dropped because on boarding whose responsibility is it? But candidates expect applying for a job to be like subscribing to Netflix. As far as they’re concerned they’re doing this stuff online, they expect to know where they stand, they expect you to be taking it seriously, to be letting them know if there’s something wrong if they haven’t done something wrong, not just silence means we haven’t accepted your subscription for example. And so expectations have changed and I think that it intensifies the experience that people want. I think one of the important differences that I’ve seen over the past two, three, four years is this concept of experience, candidate experience and employee experience. It’s something historically companies would begin to see that’s something they did. “Oh, we create a great experience for our people”. But actually employee experience is what the employee experience is, and all the research particularly from those tech companies who are involved with recognition, well-being, shows that as far as the employee is concerned. Their employee experience is what they experience on a day-to-day basis. It’s nothing to do with what their manager thinks they are creating. It’s to do with how the employee experiences what the manager does. That makes a huge difference, we have a great recognition scheme in place. But then you see research where 40% say they’ve not had recognition for four months or something you know it’s the reality. For me it was very much the reality of how this happens. The fact that we have so much more data, so much more information, things like talent intelligence. We need to be able to use this in a way that really supports and enables our people. Because if they don’t feel supported, enabled, they don’t feel we’re on their side, they’re not developing. They’re going to move. Over 60% say in research that it’s easier to find a job in another company, than it is to change jobs in the one they’re in at the moment. Those are the kind areas that we’re tackling in this book. To discuss how do we make this better? 

20:18.60

Matt Alder

Absolutely. It’s also all about the backdrop to all of this, in terms of what’s driving it. So every single employer on the planet pretty much is having to undergo some kind of digital transformation. What was interesting about Covid is that we thought we were writing for a subset of employers. But during Covid we saw theaters and restaurants, and cinemas and companies that you’d never imagine would have to be an active part of the digital economy or communicate extensively digitally were having to do that. It’s something that affects every single business, and a lot of the backdrop is around the shifting skills. The fact that employers need different skills in their business and how do they do that? How do they attract people with those skills? How do they develop those skills? What are those skills? There’s points where we take a step out and reflect on some of the systemic issues in terms of education systems giving people the right skills. The huge role that diversity and inclusion plays in this as well. So the book covers a lot of ground with that sort of central digital talent journey, driving it forward, against this backdrop of skill shortages, and changing skills and digitally transforming businesses.

21:53.38

thinkincircles

To give us a bit of a flavour of what we can again, of what we can expect when we get going. What are the chapter titles and things that we can expect?

22:05.82

Matt Alder

I can read them out? I’ll talk you through the flow of it. We start off by talking about digital skills and digital transformation and not just technical skills, but actually the fact that everyone needs digital skills within a business. We talk about talent acquisition, we talk about talent experience,talent management leadership. These are all the chapters that Mervyn wrote, so I’m just talking about his chapters. There’s a big chapter on diversity and inclusion. And then the book finishes by looking at work technology. How is technology helping with the digital talent journey? What can we see? What are the trends? And then we talk about what we call the new future of work. How are the trends that we’ve seen, growing during the pandemic and affect the way that work, works. Then in the conclusion we finish off by talking about this sense of total talent management, in terms of how companies need to borrow skills to get skills into their business, and really look very holistically at how they manage the different types of workforce that they might have.

23:25.90

thinkincircles

So anyone listening if that hasn’t wet your appetite for going out to get the book I don’t know what’s going to? Without sounding too cheesy I assume the book is available at all good online retailers? And that very big one online retailer as well I assume.

23:45.40

Mervyn

Yes, you can certainly buy it from Amazon. Obviously it’s better for us if you buy it from Kogan page. A, we get slightly more from it and B, Kogan page are more likely to want us to write a third. I’m sure there are other places I’m afraid in southwest London, twice a week I go into my local waterstones bookshop and it’s still not stocked. I believe that most of the big bookshops you get in city centres, I think Kogan page, some of their books are there in the business section. I’ve not spotted it anywhere in a big bookshop yet, but I’m always hopeful. 

24:38.68

thinkincircles

I’m sure it’s there. You know what guys it’s been an absolute pleasure talking me through your working process and the themes of the book. Obviously we will include all of your details in the show notes and links to where everybody can get their copy of the book. Matt it’s been a pleasure to have you on again. Mervyn it’s been an absolute pleasure to have you on for the first time. Hopefully it won’t be the last, maybe for book three we’ll do this again? The return of the talent. Whatever we’re going to call it. But for now, it’s been an absolute pleasure. Thank you very much guys. 

25:18.17

Matt Alder

Thank you.

25:19.16

Mervyn

Thank you James!

Listen to Matt and Mervyns episode here.

Connect with Matt here.

Connect with Mervyn here.

Connect with James here.

Find all the latest podcast episodes here and on all other podcast platforms!

Support for this podcast comes from Staffing Future.

#MarketingRules

#ThinkinCircles

#RecruitmentMarketing

Watch the interview: