Journalists learn basic strategic thinking
Last month I wrote about using a simple poem by Rudyard Kipling as a tool in strategic thinking.
I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.- from The Elephant’s Child
Today I came across a similar article by Doug Goldstein (Amex’s head of new product development ) suggesting that marketers should go to journalism school. Apparently, journalists are taught a questioning technique called the 5Ws (When, Where, Why, What, Who. plus How). According to Wikipedia (which mentions Kipling - also a journalist), this is a fundamental concept in news investigation and writing style. The maxim of the Five Ws (and one H) is that in order for a report to be considered complete, it must answer this checklist in its opening paragraphs. That fits neatly with my strategy concept of the market offer - summarising the guts of what your business is about.
Does this mean that business journalists might actually know more about business strategy than most business leaders usually attribute to them? Of course, my contacts in the business media all have impeccable understanding of such matters!
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February 27th, 2008 at 9:38 am
Jim, in an interesting parallel. I had a similar thought last evening as i was driving home. i was behind a car that had signage all over it “IBM business solutions provider”
I asked myself what that was at the time, turns out its a printer / MFD. At that point i concluded that marketers have a lot to answer for. They’ve confused the hell out of the customer base
February 28th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Jim,
Very interesting thought indeed regarding business journalists. Whether they’re aware of it or not, they already have the tools they need to dig deep into a company to discover how well the company truly understands its customers.
Investment professionals (e.g., equity analysts) could benefit too from using such a tool when communicating with the execs of public companies. The degree to which execs understand the context in which consumers use/need their products & services provides a window into how customer-centric the company likely is. Needless to say, I’d be reluctant to invest in any company that lacked a deep customer focus.
Cheers,
Doug
February 28th, 2008 at 10:15 pm
Ummm! I don’t know about that assertion Jim, but of course every one has an opinion and bias. I myself don’t tend to take any sort of advice from a journalist seriously and I agree here with our local NZ Herald’s columnist Deborah Hill-Cone on her article here, about business journalist:
Business scribes a lot of write-offs.
PS : I have followed many articles from the regular NZ Herald business columnists, and I have frequently come across some shallow analysis of the financial market performance, by those so called expert journalists.