CAPSTONE!

Timing and Decisions

Timing and Decisions   

At the start of our class, we were warned that time management will be a key factor is our success (or lack of) for this class and our project.  Along the way, I have had moments of concern, but I established a timeline early on and then proceeded with that timing in mind.  I am not significantly off-track, I have dual-pathed some elements, but the changes I have made are not unreasonable, and I’ve made some changes in my personal life to help free more time to focus on school

Even last week, as I wrote out my Project Charter, I felt relatively good.  This past week, I made good progress on documenting what I know, what I need to know, and a plan to fill in the gaps.  Nothing significant has changed, so why do I now feel so behind on timing?  As I took a step back to examine the panic (only a slight exaggeration), I have realized that it is because the more I learn, the more I feel that I need to learn before I can make a choice, a decision.

I have always been slow and considerate when making choices and decisions, especially when school work is at hand, and regarding choices in my career.  However, I have felt relatively sound on my knowledge of this category until two weeks (or so ago), when I learned more about the emotion and personal drivers in decision making.  Now, I seem to feel that they is more to be learned and more “new” detail that needs to be added to my consideration set before I make choices and proceed. 

Additionally, I feel that putting my thoughts on paper seem to make them more “final” for me.  I am my own client, I am focused on building my own business.  If Kate “the consultant” makes a reco, there is no reason Kate “the client” must proceed that way. 

In retrospect, this writing makes me wonder why I am so nervous about making a choice that only affects me.  I can make reco's to a client and feel confident, why can't I do the same for myself as client?

 

Learning is Everywhere!

This week opened my eyes to three key learnings:

1. Learning is everywhere
   This past weekend, I went to in Branston Kentucky (Lake Cumberland), to relax and “vacation”.  I took schoolwork with me, but anticipated work focused on planning, organizing, summarizing, etc.  The waiter who served us at dinner on Saturday evening walked to our table and had a handlebar mustache and slight beard.  What is that luck?  I asked my partner “Do you think I can interview him?”  “Ask if he’s willing to talk to you, the worst that can happen is he says no”.  I debated this question through much of dinner, and as we were finishing, I asked.  The look of pride on his face as he said “I would be happy to talk to you.  When do you have time?”  As we exchanged contacts details, and made plans, he told me a bit about his facial care, including “I’ve been asked to be photographed for a few calendars.”  “John” was wonderful.  Open, confident, brimming with pride as he educated me about everything remotely related to his handlebar mustache.
   I left for a weekend, focused on relaxing and getting some “seat work” done, only to finish the weekend with one of the most insightful interviews I’ve had.
   
   
2. Any product can be sexualized
   Generally, I consider myself to be rather savvy and “aware”.  I know I was raised in a sheltered way, but through work, travel, and personal choice, I have learned there is much in the world different from me.  Because of this I try to stay aware… Political Movements, Cultural Trends, how others live, what else is “out there”.  However, this past week I landed in a world where beards go beyond pride and masculinity and into sex-appeal, sexuality, and blatant sex.  While working through the competitive audit, I found a brand (at TJ Maxx) called “Beards and Beavers”.  At first I thought it a bit crude, perhaps there was slang I was not aware of, then I saw one of the variants “Cherry Popper”.
   This was shocking.  I know this overt branding does not appeal to all men, nor do all men think of their facial hair in this way, but… well… all I can say is “Wow”.

From a learning perspective, I need to remember that different people have different preferences.  While I am exploring this market for one reason, users have a different objective, and different things appeal.  I must remember that all markets have a wide variety of users.

Thank you, universe, for teaching me a few lessons kindly.

The Last Word: Advice for future capstone students

Spring 2017 Capstone is over! This has been a stressful, sometimes overwhelming, but ultimately rewarding experience. Here's my advice for future Capstone students.

No matter how much time you think you have ... you don't. Everyone is saying it, so let me join in the chorus: Time is your enemy, and what's more, it probably won't feel that way until you're down to the wire. Even if you think that you have just one smallish task to do before your next milestone, trust that it will take you longer to accomplish that task than you think. Either the client will require more review, your resource won't be as accessible as you thought, some emergency will pop up, or SOMETHING will happen that will leave you feeling panicked. Work as far ahead as possible.

If possible, schedule frequent and regular check-ins with the client. Communication with your client and within your team is essential during Capstone. We were lucky enough to have a client who was interested in checking in once per week. This kept us on task and made us certain we were heading in a direction the client would be happy with. If your client can't have weekly check-ins, consider having a team check-in to make sure work is progressing and everyone is on the same page.

Do the background work. The Big Picture, the positioning boxes, the dynamic variable, the attribute value map - even if it doesn't seem relevant to your project, or if the client is directing you toward a different model, do the stuff you learned in Marketing Strategy anyway. The client will love seeing a marketing model they may not have heard of before, and they'll love that you took the initiative to work beyond what they requested.

Do primary research. Our client said the thing they most appreciated about our project was the interviews. Your target is out there. You can find them.

Good luck!

Some tips

This week marks the end of our Capstone project. All the work that we've done for months is now over and we need to present to the client. 

Future student, you need to know this! Capstone is difficult, but you will learn so much about marketing and also about yourself. Here are some useful tips to succeed in this class:

• Take notes, about everything and all the time. If you keep track of your work and what you have to do, you will be more efficient. 
• Don't hesitate to ask for help. Drew know so much about everything and he will guide you through this project. 
• Time is against you so stay organised! Time is your worst enemy but if you stay organised, you will have good chances to succeed.
• Comunicate! With your client or peers, talk about your findings, but also concerns. Your client is also here to help you, remember that he/she wants the best deliverable possible at the end. 

Thos are very general but if you don't follow them, it will make your project even harder.

To conclude this blog post, I just want to tell you, future capstone student, that this project will be very beneficial for you. No matter how hard it is, you will learn so much and be able to demonstrate your skills and the competences learned through your degree. It's going to be a challenge but at the end, you will be proud of your work and feel ready to face any kind of situation that your future carrier will bring you. 

Time is against us

Last week, my group presented the initial results to GE, which was a very important step of our Capstone project. Being out of the country, it was hard for me to follow everything that has been going on and how this project evolved but my group did a great job at presenting our first results and get critical feedbacks. In fact, even if we were pretty confident about our results and our way to lead this project, the feedbacks that we gathered from this presentation made us rethink some points about it and about our value proposition. The point that they raised was that GE maybe doesn't need a different message for each vertical but a universal message that they can adapt easily to every vertical by modifying is a little. Another important thing that this presentation taught us is that now we know that we should present a little bit differently than last week on our final presentation. They like cautious better than confident when it's about this tough project. 

Our final presentation will be in two weeks and these weeks are going to fly by. We have a lot of work to do and still need to gather information from our Qualtrics survey. Time is definitely our enemy now and adaptation is a skill that we need to perform very well to make this project a success. 

Closer to the end

Another week has passed and, once again, we gathered new important information. The final presentation is in exactly a month now and we already have to present our preliminary results next week to Laurence. 

Last Thursday, we had the chance to visit the UCRI, that specialises into additive manufacturing. Our contact there spent a lot of time with us and gave us a lot of very important information for our project. We also saw the machines from two different brands concerning metal, and had some feedback about them, which will be a key information for Capstone. We almost saw the machine in action but a problem occurred and we couldn't see it working. This shows us that this technology is still in development and that improvement need to be done from most of the companies in the market. It was great to have a very honest feedback about the whole additive manufacturing market from UCRI. 

Now time is against us and even if we are on track and on time, we still have a lot of work to do. We definitely had a great week concerning information and after this meeting with UCRI, we know that we are on the good path to deliver a successful deliverable to GE. We now have to integrate this information to our Capstone documents and talk about this with Drew next Monday during our meeting before presenting to Laurence. 

Adaptation is a skill

This week my group and I presented the Attribute Value Mapping exercise with the help of our marketing teacher Drew. We did this exercise with Laurence, our GE contact, and two employees, Nick and Mike. We divided every verticals and did the AVM with Nick. This was very helpful because Nick brought new insights and machines' parts to our research. After this meeting, Allison and I decided to take this Attribute Value Mapping and reorganise it a little bit to come up with a point of difference, our dynamic variable. We focused on the customisation and complexity of the parts made by the machines that the additive manufacturing industry offers for Aerospace and Defence. 

Now, we can define better our Big Picture and work more efficiently on the modules that GE asked us to deliver. This week, Laurence also changed the date of the final presentation to mid-April, which leaves us less time to finish our project. Time is really gonna be our enemy now and we have to manage it well. After all the research that we've done since the beginning, we know that we are ready to make this project a success and finish on time for the presentation. Our next step is to meet with GE on March 24th to present our preliminary results. This will give us a good idea of what we still need to accomplish and how on track we are from GE's opinion. 

As I said, adaptation is a skill that we must master to deliver the best project possible to our client. 

Outside the Bubble

Last week, Team Behr presented our project charter to our contact, Lisa. It was gratifying to hear how impressed she was with the work we've already done, and what we propose to do over the next few months.

 

Lisa seemed happy with our charter, but she felt the need to present it to her colleagues at the Behr innovation team. This makes total sense, but it also reminds me that we aren't working just for Lisa. We also have to meet the needs of dozens, maybe hundreds, of people at the client organization.

 

Our calls with Lisa take place in a bubble, where we discuss our progress and ask our questions with just her. Outside the bubble are all the people she has to answer to - not to mention Drew, who we must keep updated on our progress (and who we will meet for our first review meeting this coming week). 

 

Outside the bubble constitutes another source of ambiguity, and it's also been our first source of variability. Lisa wrote back and asked us to update the charter with an additional goal for the research - something that hasn't been a big focus in our conversations with her, but that is listed in one of our modules, and that one of her teammates thought should be included in the charter. (I'm making it sound like scope creep, but it's really not - just something we would probably have included in the final report anyway as part of the analysis, and now it's in the charter explicitly.)

 

Lisa is great, and our conversations with her have been going really well ... but we can't lose sight of the fact that we aren't the only ones with a stake in this project. This week has reminded me that we have to satisfy our client both inside and outside of the bubble.

Putting Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

This week, Team Behr worked on gaining some firsthand knowledge of our client's customers by doing some "secret shopping" at the client's store (The Home Depot) and a competitor's store. We also worked on pulling together some quotes so our contact, Lisa, can establish a budget.

As I wrote last week, we need to conduct market research on a very specific demographic group, and we've been asked not to use any Behr internal mailing lists. That means one of two things: trade organizations, or paying for responses. We have reached out to a trade group and may have some luck getting to survey their members, but otherwise, we're probably looking at several thousand dollars for a statistically significant survey.

Lisa has said she can give us a budget once we provide her with some pricing options, but I can't shake the feeling that she might not have bargained on a budget of thousands of dollars for "just a school project." This, of course, is nonsense of my own invention. There's no reason whatsoever that survey responses should be somehow less valuable when purchased by students, and Lisa certainly hasn't given us any indication that she thinks that's the case. And yet, I'm concerned that talk of a budget might put a strain on our cordial relationship.

It's always difficult to talk about money, isn't it?

But I suppose money is one of the unpleasant topics that a marketing manager must face in the real world. We provide a valuable service (that, if all goes well, will lead to the company making or saving millions of dollars), and we will require capital to do it. That's just how it goes, and so we might as well get used to having the discussion.

Still, I hope the trade organization comes through with their list. That'd be a win-win.

Research and then research some more

This week we had our first check in since the initial phone call. I knew going into this touch base, that it would be brief, but I was surprised that we finished our conversation in about 15 minutes. I realize we are still in the early stages of the project, but I left the meeting feeling like I should have had something more to give the SIT team. With that said, this coming week Andrew and I are going to be doing a lot of work. I am looking forward to seeing what insights we gain from conducting interviews and continuing our research on the culture of the region. As we have gone through the initial research, I am now finding that some details I initially thought were important might not be, and others might need to be researched some more.   

A challenge has been working on creating a marketing strategy for a region I am not familiar with. It is teaching me how to really network and use the connections that I have to gain the information I need. Personally, I do not know anyone living or working in the western Michigan region. I am learning how to be creative and use the resources that I have to connect with those that do work there. I think it will be a crucial part of the project to get first hand thoughts and perceptions on what the culture is like. 

Finally, I'm finding that no marketing strategy is the same. There is no universal blueprint that exists for all companies to use. Omri from SIT, offered to give Andrew and I an example of a marketing strategy used in a similar market. This will be extremely helpful for us to reference as we continue to work and develop our our strategy for the Western Michigan market.