Lessons from the Real World – Webinar Notes

Background Information: Up front, I talked a lot about my experiences and where I draw my inspiration for looking “outside the box.” I talked about my presentation about the Brain Trust model. I really developed that idea after reading Creativity, Inc by Ed Catmull. It is a great combination of business advice and a history of Pixar Animation Studios, who continue to put out high-quality films every year. It is my favorite business book, and I highly recommend it to everyone.

I also mentioned my “client experience” series of articles in the APMP-NCA e-zine Executive Summary. They are available here and here. I also had an article published in the APMP Journal on the topic, which you can find here. (All links are limited to APMP members)

Innovation

I mentioned three companies as examples of innovation: Apple, Casper, and Airbnb.

I mentioned about the Ignite talks at the APMP Bid and Proposal Conference in New Orleans. There are photos available of those presentations here. Video of mine is available on the “Speaking Engagements” page on my website.

Customized Standardization

I mentioned two companies: Roti and Chipotle.

Chris Sant’s talk in New Orleans was entitled “To Your Heart’s Content: Develop Content Libraries That Cut Proposal Time 35% While Still Improving Win Rates.” The slides do not appear to be on the APMP conference site, but you can click here to go to Chris’ site for more information on him.

The Client is the Center of All We Do

The big example I used was the Walt Disney Company, specifically Walt Disney World. Disney also has the Disney Institute, which provides training, an informative blog, and a regularly updated Twitter profile. They also have put out a book, Be Our Guest, that provides a summary of their philosophy. As I mentioned, the Disney #castcompliment provides recognition for individuals who have gone above and beyond to help Disney guests. Go to Twitter and search #castcompliment for recent examples.

Be Known for Something

The two companies I mention here are Honda and Amazon.

If you are interested in APMP certification, check out this page. Also, check with your individual chapters for potential training and support. The APMP-NCA chapter, as part of our Mid-Atlantic Conference and Expo, has a training day on 12 October that covers Foundation level certification – more information can be found here.

How Do You Handle a Crisis?

The “good” example of how to handle a crisis was the Tylenol case. This article from Time in 2014 is a good summary of the case and how it is a case study now. You can also find a more detailed write-up on this Wikipedia page.

The “bad” example was the case of United Airlines and Dr. David Gao in 2017. You can find the letter I mentioned from United CEO Oscar Munoz here.

Concluding Thoughts

I hope you got some actionable information from the webinar. As I mentioned at the top, I plan to write a couple of blog posts with some of the details from the webinar on how we can learn from these examples in the next 2 to 3 weeks. So watch this space! As always, feel free to drop me an email or follow and interact with me on Twitter here. I hope we can continue the conversation.