The Open Chair

This past week, I spent a few days meeting with one of my clients to kick off a new project.  My client had hired me to help them develop an organized marketing strategy for the next 18 months, and our meeting was focused on helping me understand their organization’s overarching objectives and goals, as well as their target customer markets.

While the purpose of the kick off sessions was to give me the proper background and understanding of the direction and challenges facing the company, I knew that the sessions would also be very beneficial to my client.  Many of the key organization leaders participated in the meeting, along with their marketing and sales leaders.   All of them were there to explain their visions of the future and where they needed the organization to focus and grow.  Unfortunately, but realistically, the opportunity to have this type of strategic conversation does not happen frequently in their organization (this is probably the case for many organizations), because the teams are typically too consumed by “fire fighting” and reacting quickly to customer needs or market developments.  It was my presence as an educated but objective outsider who was asking the “who, what, why, and how” questions to understand the background and needs to inform the marketing strategy that got the various team members sharing their plans and rationale. It was my asking these questions that helped the organization uncover some conflicting views as to who were its target customers and realize that perhaps some of the marketing activities that it had been doing for quite some time were not targeted to any of its core customers.  I know that if I hadn’t been asking these questions as an outsider, my client would not have recognized and resolved these critical issues.  My presence helped bring these issues to light.

After the sessions, I thought that it was interesting that an outside perspective helped uncover some strategic issues needing to be addressed, but I did not really think about how this could become a formalized practice.  However, later in the week, I met with a woman who has years of experience in brand management and advertising. In our conversation, she happened to mention that she had just started implementing the “open chair” policy with her current agency — a practice that she had used extensively with other companies over the years.  She explained that the open chair policy was the practice of leaving an “open chair” in key strategic meetings.  This chair could be filled with an external subject matter expert or individual who is not directly involved with the project or issue at hand, but has some experience or perspective that enables him or her to ask thoughtful questions or add ideas to the discussion.  The role of the open chair individual is to provide a different perspective from the rest of the group to help the group come to an optimal decision or resolution.

As my acquaintance explained all of this to me, I realized that I had served as the open chair participant in my client’s discussion earlier in the week, and I recognized the value that this brought to my client.  It got me to thinking that this type of practice could be a very useful tool for all sorts of organizations facing many different issues.  Sometimes the day to day pressures and work load  force teams to make assumptions about what everyone knows, or thinks, or agrees on, and it takes an outsider with a slightly different perspective to question these assumptions.  It is when these assumptions are questioned that significant break-throughs can be made.

Is the open chair policy something that you could try to implement as you face your next decision or challenge?  Is it something you are already doing?  Let me know if you are using it and how it is working.

4 blog improvements in 2010

With the start of the new year, I’ve decided that it is time to make some changes (hopefully improvements) to the ALL In One Marketing Greenhouse.  Admittedly, 2009 was a year of learning, trial and error.  I intend to make 2010 the year of engagement with value to the Greenhouse readers.

With that in mind, I am introducing the following enhancements to the blog:

1. Dear Amy.  Have you ever heard of a little column called Dear Abby?  Well, in 2010, we’ll have some posts that feature Dear Amy.  Any marketing or branding questions that you have can be emailed to me at amy@allinonemarketingusa.com, and I’ll analyze, respond, and recommend solutions in a post (free of charge!). These can be questions on any marketing topic such as how to raise awareness for a local charity you are trying to get off the ground or how do you get 30 million people to try your new product on a $10,000 budget.  No marketing question is too big or small.  I’ll do my best to give you my two cents in a post or two.
2. Book reviews.  As marketing professionals and business leaders, it’s sometimes all we can do to get through our industry journals and Google Alerts each day, let alone stay up to date on some of the latest strategic marketing thinking.  To help you know what’s out there and what you might want to invest time in reading, I’ll do periodic book reviews that will summarize the key points that I take away from these books.  Think of it as Cliff Notes for marketing strategy.
3. Top articles and blog posts.  As a consultant, it is my job to read the latest brand, product, and retailer news daily.  You probably try to do this too — but like the books — it can be very challenging to keep up.  As a result, I’ll be writing posts every couple of weeks that summarize my ‘must read’ blogs and articles.  I hope that you’ll find this useful.
4. Shorter posts, but more frequently.  Okay, this isn’t an enhancement, but this is something I will try to work on this year to make the blog more useful and user friendly.

What else?  What would you like to see covered?  What would really add value to you?  Talk to me…I’m listening.