“Love is the surprising emotion that company builders cannot ignore.” — Brian de Haaff Copy Share Image
“Caring and a sense of purpose evoke better performance than pressure and fear. The idea that only obsessive egomaniacs can produce breakthroughs is nonsense.” — Brian de Haaff Copy Share Image
“It is hard to find many better examples of values-first leadership than Ventura, California-based outdoor clothing company Patagonia. For more than 30 years, the company has defied conventional wisdom by building its brand as much around environmental responsibility as on quality products and service. How many businesses would run a marketing campaign encouraging customers to not buy new products but… — Brian de Haaff Copy Share
“I suggest that you think about your customer’s journey as a unified experience that has three key phases: motivation, education, and adoption. Motivation refers to the reasons your prospective customer has for seeking you out and the potential needs your product can satisfy. It also asks the question, “What experiences or emotions motivate the customer to move to the next… — Brian de Haaff Copy Share
“The idea of putting customers first and acting with integrity is gaining traction. Outdoor-gear retailer REI received adulation for adhering to its values when it announced that it would not only close its stores on Black Friday in 2015 but pay its employees to get outside. Contrast that with blood-test startup Theranos. CEO Elizabeth Holmes was lauded as “America’s youngest… — Brian de Haaff Copy Share
“When I talk about kindness in business, a few people scoff. They say, “Steve Jobs and the leaders at Apple created a pressure-cooker environment but it produced category-defining products that people love and obsess over.” That is the point — the results are not worth the cost, because there is an alternative. The goal of TRM is to create a… — Brian de Haaff Copy Share
“For example, every year, I rent Intuit’s TurboTax so I can do my income taxes. I pay for something I only need for a few weeks in February even though it holds my data for the entire year. That is because it has my data from the previous year (and for years before that). It simply asks if my financial… — Brian de Haaff Copy Share
“Charles Du designed NASA’s first iPhone app, an award winner and a huge hit with more than 10 million downloads. But he also faced challenges from NASA brass who tried to water down his vision for the app. In a guest blog for Aha!, he laid out a basic principle: Maintaining your product vision is just as important as getting… — Brian de Haaff Copy Share
“A great story about a big company’s ability to do this comes from one of the world’s biggest businesses, General Electric. I learned about Doug Dietz a few years ago when I saw him speak to a group of executives. Doug leads the design and development of award-winning medical imaging systems at GE Healthcare. He was at a hospital one… — Brian de Haaff Copy Share
“Product managers are the connection between customers and the engineers who build the product. You are a bridge between what customers say and what the organization actually builds. You sit at the epicenter of everyone in your organization who builds, markets, sells, and supports your product. You explain what engineering is building to the people in sales and support. You… — Brian de Haaff Copy Share
“Persson did not create Minecraft because he wanted to create a billion-dollar company; he loved video games and kept his day job while developing it. When the game soared in popularity, he started a company, Mojang, with some of the profits, but kept it small, with just 12 employees. Even with zero dollars spent on marketing and no user instructions,… — Brian de Haaff Copy Share
“There are many ways to earn the love of employees. Hamdi Ulukaya, founder of multi-billion dollar yogurt maker Chobani, made headlines when he awarded his two thousand full-time employees stock worth up to 10 percent of the company’s value when it goes public or is sold. Ulukaya said in a letter to staff, “This isn’t a gift. It’s a mutual… — Brian de Haaff Copy Share
“Harvard economist Theodore Levitt was the first authority to write about what he called the total product.2 A total product has four dimensions that marketers, executives, and support people need to understand if they want customers to appreciate the value of what they are selling: 1.Generic What your product is — software, a suitcase, etc. 2.Expected The essential features… — Brian de Haaff Copy Share
