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Using Themes for Enhanced Problem Solving
Thematic Analysis is a powerful qualitative approach used by many consultants. It involves identifying patterns and themes to better understand how and why something happened, which provides the context for other quantitative analysis. It can also be utilized when developing strategies and tactics due to its “cause and effect” nature.
Typical analysis tends to be event-based. Something happened that was unexpected. Some type of triggering or compelling event is sought to either stop something from happening or to make something happen. With enough of the right data, you may be able to identify patterns, which can help predict what will happen next based on past events. This data-based understanding may be simplistic or incomplete, but often it is sufficient.
But, people are creatures of habit. If you can identify and understand those habits, and place them within the context of a specific environment that includes interactions with others, you may be able to identify patterns within the patterns. Those themes can be much better indicators of what may or may not happen than the data itself. They not only become better predictors of things to come but can also help identify more effective strategies and tactics to achieve your goals.
This approach requires that a person view an event (desired or historical) from various perspectives to help understand:
- Things that are accidental but predictable because of human nature.
- Things that are predictable based on other events and interactions.
- Things that are the logical consequence of a series of events and outcomes.
Aside from the practical implications of this approach I find it fascinating relative to AI and Predictive Analysis.
For example, by understanding the recurring themes and triggers you can monitor data and activities proactively. That is actionable intelligence that can be automated and incorporated into a larger system. Machine Learning and Deep Learning can analyze tremendous volumes of data from a variety of sources in realtime.
Combine that with Semantic Analysis, which is challenging due to the complexity of taxonomies and ontologies, and now that system more accurately understand what is really happening in order to make accurate predictions. Add in spatial and temporal data such as IoT, metadata from photographs, etc. and you should have the ability to view something as though you were very high up – providing the ability to “see” what is on the path ahead. It is obviously not that simple, but it is exciting to think about.
From a practical perspective, keeping these thoughts in the back of your mind will help you see details that other people have missed. That makes for better analysis, better strategies, and better execution.
Who wouldn’t want that?
Interesting Article about ADHD and Creativity
This “pocket” story is from Scientific American, originally published on March 5, 2019. The Creativity of ADHD.
Over the years I have found that some of the most interesting, creative, and effective CEOs have ADHD-like tendencies. The strange thing is that they may not even be aware that they have it. Hyperfocus can be incredibly effective when attached to a driven person.
Below are links to a couple of posts that make these concepts and their benefits tangible:
Just examples of why it is best to look beyond labels, lay your preconceived notions to the side, and explore the potential that each and every individual can contribute. The best managers and leaders tend to have this ability.
And if you want to take that a step further, let it guide you on finding the best approach to teaching, coaching, and motivating the people on your team. It may take a little extra effort but the results are amazing.
Sales Success for the Individual Contributor
Let’s start with two of my favorite personal quotes:
“Luck is what happens when Preparation meets Opportunity.” – Seneca, Roman Philosopher.
“Become the person who would attract the results you seek.” – Jim Cathcart, Author of “Relationship Selling”
Why are those quotes important? Because they point out that you are responsible for your own success.
Great companies with great products or services and great management teams make it much easier to be successful, but anyone who is prepared, curious, focused, motivated, and has a system that they follow can become successful anywhere.
My experience has shown the following to be true:
- Without preparation and understanding of your prospect, their customers, and their competition you are unlikely to succeed. This understanding provides the foundation for asking relevant questions to both understand the real need and to effectively qualify a deal in or out.
- Most sales occur because a Product or Service solves real and immediate business problems, or ties into strategic business initiatives.
- Your early goals should be around getting the meeting, having real discussions, understanding problems from your prospect’s perspective (including the terminology they use to describe those problems), and helping them describe what success “looks like to them” and why that is important (logically and emotionally). At this stage, you are learning and positioning, not selling.
- Deal qualification is an essential skill that enables you to focus your time and efforts where you are most likely to succeed. The faster you are able to “qualify out” a prospect that is not a good fit the better it is for you and that prospect. Eternal optimism is not a plan for filling your pipeline.
- If you have a supporting team then make sure that everyone understands the situation, their role and contribution to success, and what you want them to focus on. Never assume that things will just fall into place on their own.
- Have a repeatable process to track activities, measure progress, and identify the best next steps. Remember, “To measure is to know.” (Lord Kelvin)
- The sale is not over until your new Customer is happy. Become their internal advocate within your own organization and you will be rewarded with the customer’s trust, loyalty, and repeat business.
Ideally your Sales Leadership Team has defined a Sales Strategy, created a couple of repeatable Sales Plays and compelling supporting materials such as: Success Stories; Case Studies; ROI and TCO charts; brief but targeted Demos; and realistic Product Comparison information for internal use. These become the foundation for repeatable and scalable success.
But, if that is missing then collaborate with your peers, seek guidance from your leadership, and get creative. Remember, you are ultimately responsible for your own success so don’t allow things to become excuses or a crutch. In the words of the Buddha, “There are three solutions to every problem: Accept it, Change it, or Leave it.”
To help ensure success you will need to follow a Sales Methodology. Here is a link to a good high-level overview from Spotio.com. I’ve used several and there are pros and cons to each. None of them effectively addresses the successful progression from:
- Initiation, Understanding, and Qualification.
- Defining a compelling Solution and successfully positioning it against the competition.
- Closing the Sale, which is an area that many salespeople fall short.
The sales methodology that I personally believe is one of the easiest to use and most effective is MEDDIC. It is a Deal Qualification process, which is more encompassing than a simple Lead Qualification approach. The biggest blind spots are that it fails to address these four key areas:
- Influencers within a buyer’s organization. Knowing who these people are and what their biases may be will allow you to direct various resources towards each, and ideally provide a multi-threaded approach for each and every deal.
- Incumbents and the sentiment towards those vendors and their products. This is key to not wasting time on an opportunity that you would be unlikely to win.
- Related/Adjacent needs. Being able to tie success to multiple areas provides leverage and increases the value of your solution.
- Timeline/Urgency. This allows you to work backward from milestone dates for efforts like typical lead times for Legal and Purchasing, Integration Testing, QA/QC, Training and Documentation, etc.
Being prepared, creating a common vision of success that is based on the outcome rather than the approach, being responsive, and developing relationships and trust based on knowledge and a desire to help are easy ways to differentiate yourself from many lesser salespeople. Invest in your skills, set aggressive goals, and always hold yourself accountable for your own success.
Do this and you will become part of the 20% of any sales team that ‘moves the dial.’
Biometric Identity Theft
Recently I have been researching the potential of fraud and identity theft using fingerprints from photos posted on social media. Last week Amazon released its “Amazon One” Palm Scanner as a means to pay for purchases when shopping. That announcement made me wonder, what are the potential implications for fraud and identity theft using biometric data taken from images?
There are a surprising number of ways to accurately identify someone from a photo or video. Moreover, there is technology to copy fingerprints from social media photos taken up to three meters away. New technology has been proven effective at using 3D printing technology to create “fake fingerprints” that will bypass many fingerprint scanners.
Technology continues to improve at a rapid pace, which often means, “Where there is the will there’s a way.”
Since fingerprints can be copied from photos taken up to three meters away does that mean a palm print could potentially be copied from a photo taken 5-10 meters away? That question led to an interesting but unscientific experiment where I took pictures of my own hand, enlarged them, and then measured the distance between the ridges and furrows of both my fingers and my palm, and then compared the results of the two. Spoiler – probably not.
There are several areas where that distance was similar for both my fingers and palm. But, there were also areas on my palm where the average distance between “landmarks” was 3-5+ times greater. It turns out that for identification purposes a palm image is often segment into 3-4 distinct regions, likely due to this type of variation. This link was helpful to understand the process.
This research led to an idea for a chip-based embedded filter for smart devices and laptops. It would obfuscate key biometric information when extracting the data for display, without affecting the integrity of the original stored image. This functionality would automatically provide an additional layer of privacy and data protection. It would require optimized object detection capabilities (possibly R-CNN) that were highly efficient, and run on a capable but low energy processor like the Arm Cortex-M. Retraining and upgrades would be accomplished with firmware updates.
Edit 2020-10-13: This article on “Tiny ML” from Medium.com is the perfect tie-in to the idea described above.
While Amazon’s technology is much newer and presumably at least partially based on their 2019 Patent Application (which does look impressive), it makes you wonder how susceptible these devices might be to fraud given reports of the scans occurring “almost instantaneously.” Speed is one aspect of successful large-scale commercial adoption but the accuracy and integrity of the system are far more important from my perspective.
Time will tell how robust and foolproof Amazon’s new technology really is. Given their reach, this could occur sooner than later. Ultimately, multiple forms of biometric scans (such as a full handprint with shape, palm, and fingerprints, or a retina scan 2-3 minutes prior to the palm scan to maintain performance) may be required for enhanced security, especially with mobile devices.
Additional Resources:
- In-depth NIH document that is helpful in understanding the process and issues.
- A Simplified Guide to Fingerprint Analysis
- A 2012 Fingerprint and Palmprint Recognition Approach Report from the European Journal of Scientific Research that has many images and very good explanations.
- “A Textural Approach to Palmprint Identification“
Are you Thinking About Starting a Business?
The last post on Starting a Business was popular so I thought that I would share a very key lesson learned and then provide links to previous posts that will provide insights as you move forward with launching your own business. If you have any questions just post them as comments and I would be happy to reply.
The COVID-19 pandemic has created a great deal of uncertainty and opportunity. For many, now is the ideal time to explore their dream of starting a business and jumping into the waters of entrepreneurship. That can be exciting, fun, stressful, financially rewarding, and financially challenging, all within the same short period of time.
Being prepared for that roller coaster ride and having the ability and strength to continue pushing forward is important. Something to understand is that “Things don’t happen to you. They are the Direct Result of your own Actions and Inactions.” That may sound harsh, but here is a prime example:
When I was closing my consulting business down I trusted my Accountant and Payroll company to handle all of the required filings for Federal, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Colorado – something they stated they would handle and I accepted at face value. Both companies had done a great job before so why would I expect any less this time?
About nine months later I started receiving letters from Ohio and Colorado about filings due, so I forwarded them along to the Accountant and Payroll company. In my mind, this was “old business” and was being handled, plus I had moved on. It was probably just a timing error, something easy enough to explain away.
Skipping forward nearly three years, I had been threatened by the IRS and the Revenue Departments from both Ohio and Colorado. I started with a combined total of nearly $500K in assessments. Slowly that dropped to $50K, and then to $10K. I spent countless hours on the phone and writing letters trying to explain the misunderstanding. It wasn’t until I finally found a helpful person in each department that was willing to listen and told me specifically what needed to be done to resolve that situation. My final cost was around $1,000. I was relieved that this fiasco was finally over.
For the longest time, I blamed both the Accountant and Payroll Service for these problems. Ultimately I realized that it was my business and therefore my responsibility to understand the shutdown process – regardless of who did the actual work. I would have saved hundreds of hours of my time and several hundred dollars by simply gaining that understanding in the beginning.
I was not a victim of anything – this situation was the direct result of my own inaction. At the time it just did not seem very important, but my understanding of the situation and its importance was incorrect and I paid the price. Lesson learned. It was my business so it was still my responsibility to the very end.
Below are the other links. You don’t have to read them all at once, but it would be worth bookmarking them and reading one per day. Every new perspective, idea, and lesson learned could be the thing that helps you achieve your goal a day, week, or month sooner than expected. Every day and every dollar matters, so make the most of both!
- Comments on and a link to an on Curt Culver about Entrepreneurship.
- Comments on and a link to an HBR article about Start-ups and Entrepreneurship.
- Innovation, Intelligent Failure, and Failing Productively.
- Acting Like an Owner – Good Preparation for Becoming an Owner.
- Profitability Through Operational Efficiency.
- What Are You Really Selling?
- Continuous Improvement and a Growth Mindset.
- The Value Created by a Strong Team.
