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Thinking Outside Books and Journals: How Publishing Teams Can Lead New Product Development
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Thinking Outside Books and Journals: How Publishing Teams Can Lead New Product Development
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Segment:0 .
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: OK, well welcome, everyone. Good to see you all. Thanks so much for coming. We actually can't see people. We just see ourselves. But hopefully you're all out there. But we've had a really fun time putting this panel together. I want to go through a couple of administrative things. The meeting hashtag is SSP2021.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: I'd love to see your tweets about the session. You can view the session full-screen by clicking on the theater mode button in the video player. And you can do closed captions at the bottom of the screen by clicking on the CC icon. For this session, we're going to ask that you put all the questions in the full section under the questions for the speaker poll. You can look at those and add a +1 if you would like to see a question promoted.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: The chat will remain active after the session, so feel free to leave comments or questions to continue your conversations as well. As our panel with thinking about the session we arrived at four questions to guide the conversation. So each panelist going to take turns addressing these questions, with polls in between. The polls are in the polls tab, and I'll ask you to respond to those throughout the session.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: Feel free to post questions at any time and we'll respond to those at the end of the session. And I'm happy to introduce our fantastic panelists. So alphabetically they are, Alexa Colella, the Journal of Marketing and Strategy Manager at the University of Illinois Press. She is focused on working on ways to elevate the humanities, in general, and assessing the structural challenges of doing so.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: Michele Dominiak is the Managing Director of Publications at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, where she oversees the business operations for AIAA's digital content and manages publication salesman team. Paul is the Vice-President, Digital Product Management and Strategy, at the American Medical Association. He lays digital strategy development for the AMA Ed Hub and JAMA Network-- home of JAMA, JAMA Network Open, and the JAMA Specialty Medical Journal.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: And Jess Ludwig is Director of Product Management Digital Humanities at Yale, where she leaves product development for a suite of text and data mining digital scholarship tools. I'm Jessica Lawrence-Hurt. I'm the Chief Marketing Officer Cadmore Media, a video publishing platform, and we're very happy to be a sponsor of this years excellent SSP event. So as you can see, we have people from large and smaller organizations, commercial and non-profit, University Press and Associations, Humanities and Sciences.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: So there's a wide range of perspectives, and hopefully you'll come away with new insights that's applicable to your situation. Setting the context a little bit, publishing teams that societies and associations have been creating new products within books and journals, although perhaps not always taking a hard look at existing products before adding more. But 2020 forced many organizations to really examine their portfolio, and how it was impacting revenue and whether it was actually meeting their audience needs.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: As we heard from the Delta Think Team yesterday, there's been far more emphasis this year on big-picture strategy and getting back to the core elements of who we are, what we do, and who we serve. Some results of that have been to discontinue products that aren't working anymore, to reinvent them for new times, and/or looking outside the traditional bucket of books and journals for new ways to serve their target audiences.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: Video and multimedia, podcasts, webinars, training resources are all examples of expansions we're seeing in product portfolios and not just among large organizations. So let's dive ahead, and please go ahead and submit your response to the first poll question. What is the most significant barrier to innovation at your organization? These are anonymous.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: So first question-- how do I, an individual, help create a culture of product innovation? And what are the reasons for doing so? Jess, why don't you kick us off?
JESS LUDWIG: Thanks, Jessica. It's so great to be here with all of you today. Product innovation is about making connections and finding patterns. So you are looking at cross behaviors, conversations, data. So being open to, and fostering collaboration through-- sharing ideas, consulting broadly about product ideas, finding opportunities to present your research. Those all cultivate trust, which helps build a culture of openness and transparency.
JESS LUDWIG: Which can then lead to discovery and really does support that culture of innovation. So all of those actions are totally impossible on the individual level-- to advance that innovative culture. And I'll hand it over to Michele now for her ideas.
MICHELE DOMINIAK: Thank you, Jess. So, this is going to be fun, because I'd like to see 100 plus participants use the Raise Hand icon. Who here has actually had a customer or a member to tell you, your people, I wish your website was more like Amazon's. Right? Precisely-- just keep ticking that up. So the question of what are the reasons for doing so-- I think that's about as baseline as you get.
MICHELE DOMINIAK: And I want to be snarky in my answer to customers and members saying, well, we don't have the money like Amazon, but I hold back-- so FYI. So we're no longer in a situation where we can't afford to innovate. And especially with all of us here, which is why you're here, with the pandemic, we've all had to innovate. And we've all had to do it real quick, or lose opportunity.
MICHELE DOMINIAK: And many of us, I'm sure, are lose-- 2020 was a rough year, I'm sure. And 2021 is proving to be a challenging year, if for nothing else, revenues have been affected, and how we do things, and staffing, and resources-- I'm sure all of us are like, oh my god, resources. We don't have enough people. If for no other reason, we have to figure that out. But the other thing too is, in terms of helping create a culture of innovation, the one thing that I've tried to work with my teams and others staff-- make it fun.
MICHELE DOMINIAK: It doesn't have to be a huge project. Again, how many times have we been pulled into a meeting that's like two or three or four days for a huge think that requires lots of tasks and it doesn't go anywhere. Like the next week, you don't hear anything about it. So I'm not just saying that for AIAA, we're guilty like I'm sure everybody else. It doesn't have to be that big.
MICHELE DOMINIAK: It can be small. It can be a process. It could be over lunch. It can be tiny. So if innovation is something that you feel your company is not doing well right now, start very small and make it fun. Don't make it such a huge thing. So I will shut up now or I could go on.
MICHELE DOMINIAK: Paul.
PAUL GEE: Thanks. I guess I'll flip it into a question, too. That was a good idea, Michele. So how many people have been parts of projects where you completed functionality, or you launched a product and found out it didn't actually meet the needs of the original goal? And what did that do to your-- how many have been a part of that?
PAUL GEE: We all have. And one of the things that does is it defeats the feeling of innovation and makes you feel defeated. Like you shouldn't have even started. And so I try really hard to empower those that are required to perform the tasks, whether it's analysis tasks, or visioning tasks, or just the coding tasks, to understand why they're doing it.
PAUL GEE: And that's sort of a challenge for myself. Can I make it so that everyone feels empowered to ask why? If you know why you're doing something and you can really answer that-- not just to make money. Or because blockchain, it's a really cool thing and everyone else is doing it-- those are really bad reasons. What will the user get? How will it change your business-- whether outside of the monetary range.
PAUL GEE: What does it mean for the mission of your business, or the values of your group? And why would you do this if someone else wasn't asking you or telling you to do it. It lets the innovation actually be true innovation, no matter how small. I think rather than being a ticket taker and just sort of processing tickets at the desk.
PAUL GEE: Oh, I'm sorry. Just keep your hand up. And Alexa, you're next up.
ALEXA COLELLA: Hi. Thanks, Paul. So I'd just like to echo everybody else. I think these things like trust in culture and making it fun, and then also making sure that your why is at the center of everything you do, is a really important thing. And I come from one of the small organizations-- one of the non-profit organizations. And thus, this is obviously not universally true, but it's a fairly risk averse organization.
ALEXA COLELLA: And one of the ways that I have found that makes a really big difference in our culture there is trying to make everybody feel a part of this overall goal together-- the cohesion. We're all very siloed-- we all have different jobs, and not everybody wants to be the big idea person. Some people want to do their job-- whether it's copy editing, or production, or any part of it.
ALEXA COLELLA: I think how we do this is just by really making sure that we listen to people, and talk to people, and figure out how they're affected, and really bring them into the process in such a way that we create a community out of collaboration. And everybody can really, really play their part. And I think part of the question too, was why. And I think there's a range of reasons for this. You know there's good and bad reasons, too.
ALEXA COLELLA: Ultimately, if you find that your organization is not one that is agreeing with you in terms of wanting to innovate and collaborate, maybe that's not your organization for you. And you have to figure that out. But at best, you could have a really big influence on making an impact on your organization, and making it more agile, and flexible, and innovative. And I think that is really profound.
ALEXA COLELLA: I think-- OK.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: Yeah. All right, thanks so much, Alexa. Those were some great points. I want to check in with the poll. So this was, what is the biggest barrier to innovation at your organization? And, not shockingly, 37% of y'all said culture of risk aversion. That doesn't shock me. 33% said too many older products taking up resources.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: That also sounds familiar. And then 27% lack of processes in place. Only 2% said leadership hasn't made it a priority, or other, so that's encouraging. I feel like, if anything 2020 has done, it's really motivated leadership to spend more time thinking about product innovation and to rebalance their portfolios. So that's good.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: Go ahead and answer the second poll question. What impact did 2020 have on your organization's tolerance for risk? And while you're doing that, I'd like to ask the panel to talk a little bit about why you should evaluate your organization's risk tolerance before you try to get buy in on your great idea. Michele, you want to kick us off?
MICHELE DOMINIAK: I can certainly try. Also, because Jess is such a professional. Hello, everybody. I'm happy to be here. Thanks Jess for saying that, wow. So I'm just going to be blunt. Those who know me know tact is sometimes not my best suit. So bottom line, CYA-- and for those who don't know what that is, Jessica will be putting that definition in the chat-- she didn't know that.
MICHELE DOMINIAK: But truly, CYA-- because let's not waste everyone's time. So part of that is, if you're not aware, the stakeholders-- it will affect the follow through of your stakeholders. So we don't want to waste other people's time, we don't want our time to be waste. So they have to believe that what they're putting into it is worth their time and effort. But it's interesting that leadership was the lowest percentage.
MICHELE DOMINIAK: That's actually not what I was expecting to hear on that poll. So that's kind of fantastic. That being said, I find in my many years of other jobs, and also with AIAA, that leadership tends to be up here, and they have the high-level stuff. The work gets done at the lower levels, and those are the people that make your stuff happen. So if those folks are even risk averse or don't have complete buy in then you're still spinning your wheels.
MICHELE DOMINIAK: So Paul, would you like to take a stab
PAUL GEE: Thanks, Michele. And I'm also happy to be here. I-- very similar, I think that the worst thing for morale is when people don't have the ability to finish their work. I've been on projects that I worked on for two years and then we switched gears because it just wasn't set up correctly. And that was a bad day. I think it makes you really hesitant as someone who is in the trenches doing the job to want to pick up the next project.
PAUL GEE: And so as a stakeholder in projects or as someone who is kicking them off-- making sure that we have the tolerance for risk, and that we're going to finish it, is super important. It drives that risk assessment, the cost assessment. It goes back to the morale of the employees and the culture they create and being able to do more and more things that are more and more excited. And Alexa, what about you?
ALEXA COLELLA: I'm also happy to be here, just so you know.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: We're all ecstatic.
ALEXA COLELLA: Thank you so much. Yeah, I agree with both Michele and Paul. Again, this very much depends on the organization. If you are already set up for new projects-- you have an R&D department, or you have an R&D committee where you have these processes laid out, it's a little bit easier because there is an expectation that things will change. And I think risk tolerance and change aversion go hand in hand.
ALEXA COLELLA: And I'm going to tell you about a time where I absolutely failed at this. I was starting a new project at the press, and I thought it was a great idea. I thought it was amazing. I thought everybody was going to love it. And so I just kind of pushed it-- I don't want to say pushed it through-- but I didn't really get the buy-in in from everybody that would be touching it.
ALEXA COLELLA: And it was a really big mistake. And it's still, to this day, is a project where I'm really proud of the idea of the project, but I don't know-- it would have been such a more powerful development if I had done that foundational work of trying to explain and get buy-in from others. And maybe not everybody would have agreed with that. But I think people would have felt respected. And if you have a very siloed organization it makes sense to work with those affected departments and collaborate in these scenarios.
ALEXA COLELLA: Because with any organizational structure, the affected members of a change will often-- and should have a little bit more input on how that change is implemented. And not just because it affects them the most, but also because they probably know the most about that technical corner of your organization. And so I think that kind of inclusion of other people on staff that don't necessarily do the exact same thing as you is really, really important.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: That's great, Alexa. Thanks for being vulnerable there. And that's so true. Often the people closest to the situation are the last one asked to participate in how we can do better which I hate to see.
ALEXA COLELLA: Huge oversight on my part. [INAUDIBLE] to Jess.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: Jess, did you want to wrap that up for us?
JESS LUDWIG: Sure. I love what Alexis said about respect, because I've dealt with some very anxious stakeholders. And the way to diffuse it was to say, what are you anxious about-- like direct questions. Get it all out on the table. And then do some scenario plans. I feel like that helps people feel more comfortable. So what happens if things explode-- we have plan B, C, or D. Even if you never act on those plans, it's really helpful to have them in your back pocket.
JESS LUDWIG: It makes people feel more comfortable. And then you're managing that risk over the course of the project. It's not like one conversation. You kind of remember, all right, I have this really anxious stakeholder. I got to go back and let her know what happened. I'm going to let him know what the status is here. So it's just a really helpful conversation for the whole product development process.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: I like to tell people being risk averse is actually quite risky.
ALEXA COLELLA: This also works with children too. Just so you know.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: I didn't come up with that myself, unfortunately. So going back to the poll-- what impact did 2020 have on your organization's tolerance for risk? 56% more willing to try new things. This is what's called seizing an opportunity. 11% less willing to try new things. That doesn't surprise me. I actually thought that would have been higher because it's been a rough year.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: And I'm not surprised. I would have thought actually more people would have been like, whoa, let's put the brakes on everything. 32% said no change. So I think that's pretty-- oh, it's going down. It's going down to 30% though-- no change. Yep, up to 60% more willing to try new things.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: So this is really a great time to kind of seize this opportunity. So go ahead and respond to the last poll question about processes for research and development. And another important question to think about when we're talking about new product ideas, is validating the concept-- or as I like to say, is anyone going to buy this? Paul, I know you have some thoughts on this.
PAUL GEE: I mean, this is tricky. Because you can validate it a million times and still be wrong. But you just do it over and over again. And I think that until you release a product, I don't think people understand what it is. Especially if you've done something where you heard their intention, and you're responding to that intention, but not necessarily to the solutions that they whiteboarded at the beginning.
PAUL GEE: Going back and repeating it-- even when you get the head nods-- asking for more input, bringing it to users, getting that validation. Every point of data you get along the way that tells you whether to tweak or change, or if someone asks a question, in any way, responding to that feedback immediately. And if you can't answer the question, something's wrong.
PAUL GEE: It tells you stuff too, about what you don't know, what you're making up, and what your whiteboarding, when you really should be building. So I would just say, repeat, repeat, repeat, and listen, listen, listen. Alexa?
ALEXA COLELLA: Yeah, I agree with that too. And this also goes back to the last question, which is about risk averse and risk tolerance. And my personal opinion here is that every organization needs to have a mechanism for R&D. And if you don't, you need one yesterday. And my organization doesn't, so there's that. I've been talking about it, we've been wanting to start it, it's been on our plate for a long time, but I just want to go out there and say that we're still working on that, too.
ALEXA COLELLA: But the reason that I say that-- every organization needs a mechanism for R&D-- is because I have watched our organization, I think, have less success with R&D, simply because we don't have the mechanism for it. Whether it's a committee, or devoted funds for it, or people actually in those roles, if you have a really well-off organization.
ALEXA COLELLA: I think those things are really important. That you have people in your organization that are sitting there and saying, it is my job to talk about and think about ideas, and put these through the paces, and see if they work, and work with the people who are affected. And have some expectations for the people that are doing these things. I just think that it's super important.
ALEXA COLELLA: The model that we are planning to use-- we had started thinking about this prior to the pandemic. This is one of those things where I do feel like it's more successful in person, but I don't have any data to back that up-- is to have a committee, because we probably don't have people that we can dedicate to this. But in that committee, if someone has an idea and it's not somebody who's on the committee, they rotate into the committee until we can solve this problem or launch this product.
ALEXA COLELLA: Because they should have an integral role in moving it through. One that they can feel like they really get some ownership of. So now it's just an example. But outside of that, I think it's just continuing to ask questions, and continuing to reevaluate that. OK, so I'm going to turn over to Jessica.
JESS LUDWIG: Yeah, I agree with what Paul and Alexis said. You don't really know what the product is until it launches sometimes, and that it maybe turns into something you hadn't even planned. So the more you can create those feedback loops-- it takes a lot of time, but the more you can talk to people-- go to your members, show them an idea. It doesn't have to be perfect, and just get some initial feedback. The more that you can bring that customer into the conversation, or the member into the conversation, that's been helpful.
JESS LUDWIG: Because it makes it less abstract for people who are building the product. And so really, tactically-- customer journey maps, empathy maps, personas, going back to the persona-- reminding people this is who we're building it for, and doing that on a regular basis has helped. And I think doing a SWOT analysis-- if you're looking at OK, here are some similar products in the market.
JESS LUDWIG: Here's how we stack up against those. And then like going to your expected user and asking them what they value. That sometimes helps quantify the value. And maybe if you're looking to sell a product, you can assign specific monetary value to those attributes. Just some tactics-- hand it over to you Michele.
MICHELE DOMINIAK: I mean, the three of you-- I'm taking notes over here feverishly because they're all brilliant. The only thing that I have to add, is that we always try to ask the same three questions at the start, in the middle, in the middle, in the middle, and hopefully at the end. And that is-- will it make money? Will it increase or retain, for us, membership-- because we're a society organization.
MICHELE DOMINIAK: And will it extend the organization's brand? If it can do all of those things, fantastic. But even if it hits on one of those things and that one of those things is part of the intention of the project, process, whatever, then we feel like we're hopefully achieving our target. So again, just repeat-- wash, rinse, repeat, for those kinds of things.
MICHELE DOMINIAK: So-- Jess.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: Those are such great, great questions to ask Michele. And yeah, I would say that's the kind of thing where one out of three ain't bad. Looking at the results for the last poll-- does your organization have a formal process for R&D? This is my favorite-- 41% said, sort of. Which sounds about right. So that's good, that's better than 34% who don't.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: For the 8% who don't know, I would suggest finding out and the answer's probably no, and maybe you can have a part in putting one of those processes in place. And I think you've heard from our panelists, it doesn't have to be a real formal thing either. It could just be some loose kind of guideline. Well actually, that kind of ties in to our next question-- how can we leverage all these processes and learning?
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: It's a lot of work. You've done all this work. Let's not throw the whole thing out and start fresh with every new product that we want to do. How can we nurture existing products and keepthe innovation going? Alexa?
ALEXA COLELLA: Ooh, I feel like going to be a little bit of a downer with this one, and say that I think that legacy operations, and treating them as legacy operations, is often a huge reason why I think organizations see failure with those operations. Everything we do should be re-evaluated on a regular basis. In my role, I re-evaluate everything that I do all the time, because there's always got to be a better way to do it.
ALEXA COLELLA: I don't think there's anything that we do that we've reached the best way to do something. Because we're still learning more and more about how these things work with other things, and how they intersect, and are they inclusive-- I think is a big one. I think a lot of the way we do things, we don't realize how excluding we are being. And so I think, if we constantly re-evaluate everything that we do, not only are we going to find some really innovative ways to improve upon those things, but I think we will find more efficiencies, more inclusive ways to do the things that we do, and-- sorry, just totally lost my train of thought.
ALEXA COLELLA: I want to end it with that.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: So being consistent--
ALEXA COLELLA: Yeah, well a nurturing an innovative environment is all about consistency. And I think having that consistency of saying, I'm doing this thing. Is this the right way to do it? How could I do it better? Is there someone I could ask who could give me advice on how to do it better? Should we be doing this better? I think, in all of our organizations, we can do this Raised Hand thing-- raise your hand if there's something in your organization that you feel is really outdated.
ALEXA COLELLA: We all have it. So I think one of the best ways to go about nurturing R&D and new products and keeping this innovation going, is also how to try to improve on old processes. I'm done.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: Thanks, Alexa. Jess, I know you have some thoughts about this.
JESS LUDWIG: I mean, it just builds on what Alexa said around iterating. It is a consistent, constant process. Product development and innovation are iterative. And I think sometimes we forget that, organizations forget that. They're like, OK, we've got it out, and then now what do we do? It's like, the runway is much longer. You really have to think about how are you going to maintain, care, and feed that product.
JESS LUDWIG: Or maybe you're not, but let's have a plan for that at the outset and really, really think about what ongoing levels of commitment look like. Because I've had situations where I've had to switch development teams mid product, where we've had to stop and start development, and it's a real drag-- obviously on innovation, but it's also a drag on morale, and just resources, and the product.
JESS LUDWIG: So the more they can plan ahead the better, but still be a little flexible. And then I think when you think about how other products are made, maybe there's a way to creatively re-evaluate a workflow, to Alexis' point of constantly look at things and question them. Sometimes we're sort of led to a certain workflow for each product and we consider them in silos instead of thinking, oh, we just did this here.
JESS LUDWIG: Maybe there's a way that we could build these products like this and then we branch at some point, or do something more creative along those lines. But I think Michele has more ideas and better ideas than I do, so I'll hand it over to her now.
MICHELE DOMINIAK: I don't, actually. But thank you. No, I was just going to say-- we've all said it here, so my apologies-- but it really is trial and error. And so let's talk about having a mechanism for R&D. I think that I am certainly guilty of this. Where I say, well, I'll just pull a small team together, the people that I know I can work really well with. We'll hammer this out in like four hours.
MICHELE DOMINIAK: It'll be brand new. It'll be shiny. We'll win huge bonuses because everybody will love it, and it will save AIAA. Turns out, that's never happened. And also, it just takes a lot of time. But, if you think it's going to take X amount of time, multiply that at least by three.
MICHELE DOMINIAK: And out of those three times, out of those times three, just make sure that what worked, what didn't work-- that iterative process. Eventually, you'll get what Alexa is trying to do and have a mechanism for R&D, which is brilliant. We don't have one by the way either. So that is absolutely something that we need to do better at.
MICHELE DOMINIAK: But I think that just patience, don't beat yourself up. We're all talking about self-care and all that kind of stuff. But truly don't beat yourself up, because these things are hard. They don't seem hard, they seem duh, but they're not. And then trying to get a small team, or even a large team, to come along with you is even harder. So those are my comments.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: Thanks, Michele.
MICHELE DOMINIAK: Sorry, Paul.
PAUL GEE: From my perspective, this has to do with inventory, I guess. Existing products pile up the more you start to innovate and launch. And everyone has a cap budget. Doesn't matter how big it is or how small it is. If you can't have products that users don't find bugs with every click on, you shouldn't have those products, and you shouldn't be building new ones yet. You want to make sure that every product you have you're proud of, because your brand's on it, and users are going to it.
PAUL GEE: If users aren't going to it or it's full of bugs, it's a good time to sunset the product or relaunch it. And if strategy drives you away from that product, then it's already-- there's no reason to keep it alive. But I've found that it's often harder to kill products than it is to launch them. And they drag down an entire staff. So trying to find a way to continually manage your products, make sure you have capped number of bugs, and a way for people to report those bugs, and you count them honestly.
PAUL GEE: And if something's untenable, turn it off and move on to something that it keeps people feeling like they're proud of the brand, their products, and what they're doing on their day to day.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: Thanks, Paul. That is so true. It's not as sexy as coming up with new products, but it kind of allows for that ideation to keep happening. Like cleaning the coffee pot. You got to descale it once in a while so you can have good coffee. Just came up with that on my own. So, as you can see, we could keep talking about this. But I would like to get into some of these great audience questions.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: First one I saw, Christine Orr. Hi, Christine. She was asking if there are any ways to get up to speed quickly in coming up with product innovation processes? Any tips about that?
ALEXA COLELLA: Every time I have tried to do new things it takes like three years. So I don't know if I'm the best person to say this. But I think, having learned from my past missteps in this, before bringing this formally, it's good to have little capsule discussions with people in the organization. It's good to get a sense of what their hesitations are, like Jess said earlier, to help understand what the anxieties are.
ALEXA COLELLA: Because people aren't going to come out and be like, I'm really anxious about this very niche thing. And express it like that. I think it's really important to kind of understand the landscape of challenges before you get into the actual work of development. I don't know if that's helpful. So I'm going to let somebody else take that, but yeah, that's what I got.
ALEXA COLELLA:
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: I think it might also get back to, I think Michele, it was her saying earlier about you don't have to make it a big thing. Just do it over your lunch, have one of those FedEx shipping days. Or maybe not have this whole huge process in place before you can start making incremental changes. So sometimes the big idea is the enemy of actually getting anything done on a smaller scale level. I don't know it anyone else wanted to respond to that.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: Certainly a valid question. Heather Stein said, how do we get researchers to care about more than the PDF? Publishers work on adding value, but getting researcher bandwidth is such a challenge. Yeah. I don't know how you get people to care about anything. And I'm in marketing.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: That's about that.
MICHELE DOMINIAK: Sorry, Heather. This doesn't really answer the question. It's more of a question to answer your question. So isn't that fun? Is it more of a chicken and the egg kind of thing? Where, for example, as a publisher if we say-- and for all those publishers I'm using this as strictly an example-- if we say all journal articles authors must include their data sets-- must.
MICHELE DOMINIAK: Required, as opposed to, meh, if you want to, or they're-- so I understand that comes with a lot of baggage. But then as an example, does that create then interest in caring, if you will? Maybe. I think it depends on how we tend to care and feed for those authors anyhow. But my question would be, I don't know the answer is, if it's a chicken and egg thing, what would be the biggest draw there for researchers maybe?
JESS LUDWIG: Yeah. I have an example that may not answer the question either. And it's not exactly related to publishing, but back in the day I worked there for the Public Broadcasting Service. And people only cared about prime time. They really did not care about the companion websites we were creating that had all these great resources, and lesson plans, and were great experiences-- curated resources that extended the life of the broadcast. So I think that became the value added, it sort of said your program is not only in prime time now it's available 24/7.
JESS LUDWIG: And I'm wondering if there's a discoverability question there. If there's maybe some value there around additional exposure or getting the research more widely seen, or discovered, when we move beyond the PDF. But it may be totally irrelevant-- an irrelevant example. They're just thinking about the value. What did that producer care about?
JESS LUDWIG: They cared about how many people were watching during prime time. And if you expanded the access, that became valuable.
PAUL GEE: So I could say how I think you do it. In 2007, it became this thing in a bunch of our heads where I was working at the time like, how do we kill the PDF? I don't think we can kill the PDF. Researchers need it, they need something portable. They're going to save it, they're going to store it-- who cares. You drive other things that users want. Users want multimedia, they want audio. It's a different use case.
PAUL GEE: They want mobile versions of your website that are easy to get in into through toll-free links or other ways. They want email and they want social as follow measures. As our mobile and our social traffic grew to about 25%, to 30%, social and email drove mobile. And mobile drives dips in and out of websites away and less reliance on PDF.
PAUL GEE: And our PDF metric went way down. There's a bunch of other things, but there are no complaints around that. And it wasn't a strategy to get rid of the reliance on PDF. In fact, the aggregate number of PDF users is higher, but the overall site users are so much higher that the percentage of the total is low. And that flips the model from what the stats were at least 10 years ago.
PAUL GEE: I don't know if it's the same for all content and all purposes, but if you're driving value away from the research flow, the PDF becomes just a portion of the traffic.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: Robin Baldwin has a question. It's kind of the opposite. Heather is like, how do we get researchers to pay attention to all this other great added value that we offer. And Robin Baldwin is saying something I think anyone who's worked in association has struggled with this. How do you deal with new product ideas and projects that volunteers want to see happen, but may or may not meet member need?
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: So these are people who want something, and they're advocating for it. And you've got to be nice to them, but you don't necessarily want to take on this huge project without doing some research at the very outset. Has anyone had to deal with that?
ALEXA COLELLA: Currently taking advice. No, actually yes. So we have an organization that we work with. I won't name it, but it's a society, and we publish their journal. And they want every library in our state to subscribe to the journal. And I think that's really great. However, I can't make people subscribe to something. So all I can do is incentivize it.
ALEXA COLELLA: [AUDIO OUT] we are currently working on a project to do something of that sort. But it takes the right conditions. I don't know that I have any really great advice for somebody coming in saying, I have this great idea. I'm a member. I do the sustaining. I'm a member for life. Can you implement this?
ALEXA COLELLA: Unless there's a way to implement parts of it or-- The best advice I have is try and see that as an important goal, because part of your membership wants it. And try and figure out a way-- how to dovetail it into existing products or even new ones-- aspects of it.
PAUL GEE: I agree. What I tended to do like-- everyone's gotten that requester that keeps requesting the same thing and you can't do it because you don't have the budget. But they're tenacious and it keeps coming in. Whether it's a single individual or a whole portion of your organization.
PAUL GEE: People just want to be listened to and to have something happen. It's the right thing for the right amount of time and money that's the hard thing. And if you find yourself spending more time saying no, at some point you just cave and you build something. And you can either build something good, or what I call passive aggressive development, where they get exactly what they ask for and they don't like it.
PAUL GEE: I think that inventorying every request and calling it a parking lot gives you the idea that it's coming-- or it's just sitting there, it's waiting. But then you start to see themes that you'd over a year, you might see 20 different requests that you thought were different and we're all annoying, but they all have a positive aspect that you do want to do. I don't know what that is, but when you see that moment you can give them all back something at once.
PAUL GEE: And it might be a little different then when they asked for it, but you can, oh, I could justify that through AdSense, so or I don't know what it is. And you figure out how to do something that's a little less than the passive aggressive approach, which still happens sometimes, because that's the way life is.
MICHELE DOMINIAK: I'm writing down passive aggressive development. Just not necessarily as something in my toolkit but-- The only other thing I'll say is that-- and this is terrible because maybe it's an excuse-- but I will say, well, in the past 10 years or so, AIAA leadership has been really very focused on-- I hate the buzzword, but-- the whole strategy. The intention of where we need to go for the next five years.
MICHELE DOMINIAK: We're just kind of focus on five years at a time kind of a thing. Because we have it happen all the time, when a volunteer who is in a very small community in aerospace, thinks their stuff is the most important stuff, and will have tremendous effects on the whole community, we have to step back and say, great idea. However, here is what the board approved strategy is for the next five years.
MICHELE DOMINIAK: And while this is certainly beneficial to your community, I don't know if it necessarily fits within the strategy. So I've used that a couple of times. And that does seem to work on occasion. And again, going back to the three questions that we always ask-- and again, you have to phrase it a little bit nicer when you talk to members-- but brand, money-- which no one ever wants to hear except for staff-- and whatever the other one was, now I can't even remember-- brand, money, and membership.
MICHELE DOMINIAK: Usually they're on board with the two, the membership and the brand.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: It'll help me, Michele. It'll help me. Isn't that enough?
MICHELE DOMINIAK: Right, you might want to rephrase it a little bit there.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: Meg Marland White has a question near and dear to my heart. Even the best conceived and executed product can fail to be commercially successful or find an audience due to lack of effective go-to-market strategy. Yes. Since we're showing vulnerability, I can say I have been in this place. I have too, Meg.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: Can you talk about how not to fall into that trap?
PAUL GEE: If you never launch a product you won't have that problem.
ALEXA COLELLA: Yeah, I mean, we'd all be lying if we said there wasn't a little bit of luck involved. Do you know who you talk to-- who your networks are? You can have the best idea and if no one hears it, and someone else comes up with it-- whose idea is it? I don't have a great one.
ALEXA COLELLA: I'm useless on this panel guys. I think that trying to climb a certain amount of disseminability I think is a really important aspect of it. Obviously the more people that know about it, the better. But there is always a time and a place for things and sometimes you can have a great idea, and it's not the right time or place.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: Sometimes in my experience, to get to the internal workings of your organization and sometimes the go-to-market strategy is wanting because it hasn't been appropriately shopped internally. And so you're not getting the resources you need to have a really strong go-to-market plan. You might need extra financial resources. Well, has the CFO been involved in this? Does he understand why we're doing it?
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: Are you pulling time away from people, other people in different staffs that maybe don't directly report to you? Have you socialized this idea ahead of time with their manager? Just really, before you go-to-market, you've got to go-to-market internally. And make sure that the organization is backing you up. And hopefully, that will surface some ideas of things that you could do better or things that are going to come back to you.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: Once you've launched the market, you'll say, oh, I wish we thought of that. If you're really doing that back and forth internal process of asking questions, digging deep, doing some more research, and making sure by the time you do have something that all the relevant stakeholders internally are on board, I think you're going to have a lot more success.
PAUL GEE: I'll highlight one risk there because I was thinking, vulnerable wise, I've failed on both sides of this. I failed where I successfully got everyone internally on board, but by the time it got launched, the user needed was no longer there. Because some regulation changed in the industry while we're being perfect with our process. Or OK, we get green light, we get the budget, we speed it to market, and it's good for the users, but the same problem you just highlighted has happened.
PAUL GEE: Where the business wasn't ready to support it, or push it, or really market it. And finding that sweet spot in between-- I don't know how to do that perfectly every time. It does feel like luck. I don't know if anyone wants to hear that. But there's a lot of forces around us that are out of our control that we have to try to balance.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: Definitely more an art than a science. And it is the balance because you could spend a long time doing things internally, and then by the time you've got everyone on board, it's too late.
ALEXA COLELLA: And I think this question too speaks to the first one, which is how can I create a culture of innovation? I think, as we increase our risk tolerance, we also have to kind of normalize failure a little bit. Nobody wants to fail. Nobody wants to be bad at anything. Nobody wants to make mistakes. But if there isn't a culture within your organization where failure is OK and we learn from it, I think you're going to have more challenges with this-- this particular question.
ALEXA COLELLA:
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: Melanie Shaffner has a great question. Can the panel speak to the role of strategic planning slash organizational strategy and innovation? In my small business strapped organization, it seems that when we can vet and evaluate new ideas and opportunities against a solid strategic plan, we make better choices, get more buy in, and have more successful outcomes. That sounds about right. Does anyone have any experience or examples they'd like to share?
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: I think sometimes we think of innovation as a spur of the moment, and strategic planning and strategy is long-term. We don't know-- that's five years in the distance. But making those connections between-- to responding to what's happening right now in the environment and tying it to the overall organizational mission.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT:
MICHELE DOMINIAK: I mean, again, only because the last four years, we've had a really good strategic plan, and management that uses that strategic-- And I think part of that is identifying that leadership is really supportive of the strategic plan. So you can use it as a crutch, if you will, for your product innovation. First of all, let me just say strategic planning is hard. I'm not suggesting that it's not.
MICHELE DOMINIAK: It's hard, and not everybody-- a lot of people don't know how to do it well. But once you are able to have a group of folks, and you recognize that the strategic plan is solid, and that it will be used for all products and processes moving forward, that will help. But it part of this is timing. We talked about luck in the last question. But I think if you can-- again, these may not be the answers you all want to hear-- I think if you can recognize that the strategic plan can help you or not, then it's then it's about timing.
MICHELE DOMINIAK: Do I go in right now until things are a little bit further, a little bit more solid down the road. Or are we in a good place? I know that I'm going to have the backing of leadership, and other co-workers, and volunteers, and go for it. So part of that is identifying that-- the timing of it all. Also at AIAA, I like to tell my staff, we use hope as a strategy.
MICHELE DOMINIAK: It's a joke, but sometimes it's not.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: Angela Gibbs I think had an appropriate follow-up question. Any experience socializing internally within a short time frame? So if you've got something you need to get off the ground-- and I may be paraphrasing here, Angela-- but you've got something you need to get off the ground, and you want to get people on board quickly or it's not going to work, what are the most effective ways to do that?
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: And Alexa we know-- less than three years.
ALEXA COLELLA: Honestly, it just depends on the size of the project. It just depends on the scope of the project, too. Do you have something that's only going to affect your department? That's easier to get off the ground. Because you have fewer people for which are affected by the changes of that project. We are trying to make changes in our own department or-- I just realized I shifted and now you can see on my dinosaurs.
ALEXA COLELLA: We are trying to make some changes in our department to make it easier for information sharing about our journals when we launch new ones. Because right now that information lives with one person, and so that's not always the best strategy when it comes to information that needs to be available for multiple members of staff. So we are reforming that process in such a way that mirrors another process in our press.
ALEXA COLELLA: But that is not a hard problem to solve. It's just one that takes time because there's only six of us. So we can get that off the ground in two weeks-- that's no big deal. But if you have something that you're going to want to get off the ground quickly for a lot of people, that's a bigger challenge. They say that you can pick two-- what is it like, good, fast, and cheap.
ALEXA COLELLA: You can pick two of those things. So I always prefer quality over quantity, or quality over speed, and that's maybe why things take me four years, I don't know.
JESS LUDWIG: I mean, I think a road show, to be really I guess flat footed about it, go to people's department meetings. See if you can get a slot to speak. See if you can wallpaper the kitchen, or Zoom, with a little infographics or things that are going to pique people's interest. It's like, it's what Jessica was saying earlier about maybe doing a little bit of an internal PR campaign in unique creative ways.
JESS LUDWIG: Obviously, it takes resources and time, but it can help.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: Thanks, Jess. I've done some brainstorming sessions where you get people from different departments and you have a moderately agendized brainstorming session. But you've got people from different departments, and you get them thinking about this topic. And you might already kind of know the direction you want to go, OK, but you're still probably going to learn something. And you're going to get people thinking about this idea.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: Another question here. Stephanie Austin said, can you speak to how to manage up expectations for staff resources? Often, new projects are green-lighted without discontinuing projects that have stagnated. We've all experienced that, absolutely. So manage up expectations for staff resources. I guess, yeah, that's helping people say you can have staff for this and this, but not this or pick three.
ALEXA COLELLA: Or I think it's OK to assign time values to what you do. I did the marketing manager for 43 titles, which means that with a vacation a year, I only have time to spend one week on each title. Which means that I get 40 hours for each title. And so by breaking it down and describing the commitment that each process or each task takes, I was able to explain why I needed another staff member-- why I needed help.
ALEXA COLELLA: Because then we doubled that now. We get 80 hours per journal. And so I think, in your case, one of the things you can do is say this is something that takes this much time. This is something that takes this much time. If we're going to do this, we need to figure out a way to make this thing take this much time. Math is hard to argue with.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: It can be argued with though.
ALEXA COLELLA: That's why I'm in humanities.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: Any other thoughts about managing up around those expectations. And I also want to say there is some great stuff going on in the chat. It's so encouraging to see the supportive responses. This is such a great community. I love how everyone is so open, and vulnerable, and sharing what's worked for them and what hasn't. We are just about running out of time. Last call for last questions.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: I think it's pretty clear that we could talk about this for a long time. The panelists, you guys have been absolutely amazing. Such good ideas. I learned so much. I think next year we should do a part two, maybe in person so we can all have cocktails afterwards. Thank you so much to the panelists. You guys put a lot of thought into this.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: Thank you to the SSP annual meeting program committee and to our generous sponsors. A recording of the session will be available later today, and it will be available to everyone who's registered through November. And at least some of us will be in the structured networking sessions over in [INAUDIBLE] starting just about now. So feel free to meet us over there to continue the conversation.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: Thank you so much.
MICHELE DOMINIAK: Thanks, everybody.
ALEXA COLELLA: Thank you.
Segment:0 .
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: OK, well welcome, everyone. Good to see you all. Thanks so much for coming. We actually can't see people. We just see ourselves. But hopefully you're all out there. But we've had a really fun time putting this panel together. I want to go through a couple of administrative things. The meeting hashtag is SSP2021.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: I'd love to see your tweets about the session. You can view the session full-screen by clicking on the theater mode button in the video player. And you can do closed captions at the bottom of the screen by clicking on the CC icon. For this session, we're going to ask that you put all the questions in the full section under the questions for the speaker poll. You can look at those and add a +1 if you would like to see a question promoted.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: The chat will remain active after the session, so feel free to leave comments or questions to continue your conversations as well. As our panel with thinking about the session we arrived at four questions to guide the conversation. So each panelist going to take turns addressing these questions, with polls in between. The polls are in the polls tab, and I'll ask you to respond to those throughout the session.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: Feel free to post questions at any time and we'll respond to those at the end of the session. And I'm happy to introduce our fantastic panelists. So alphabetically they are, Alexa Colella, the Journal of Marketing and Strategy Manager at the University of Illinois Press. She is focused on working on ways to elevate the humanities, in general, and assessing the structural challenges of doing so.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: Michele Dominiak is the Managing Director of Publications at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, where she oversees the business operations for AIAA's digital content and manages publication salesman team. Paul is the Vice-President, Digital Product Management and Strategy, at the American Medical Association. He lays digital strategy development for the AMA Ed Hub and JAMA Network-- home of JAMA, JAMA Network Open, and the JAMA Specialty Medical Journal.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: And Jess Ludwig is Director of Product Management Digital Humanities at Yale, where she leaves product development for a suite of text and data mining digital scholarship tools. I'm Jessica Lawrence-Hurt. I'm the Chief Marketing Officer Cadmore Media, a video publishing platform, and we're very happy to be a sponsor of this years excellent SSP event. So as you can see, we have people from large and smaller organizations, commercial and non-profit, University Press and Associations, Humanities and Sciences.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: So there's a wide range of perspectives, and hopefully you'll come away with new insights that's applicable to your situation. Setting the context a little bit, publishing teams that societies and associations have been creating new products within books and journals, although perhaps not always taking a hard look at existing products before adding more. But 2020 forced many organizations to really examine their portfolio, and how it was impacting revenue and whether it was actually meeting their audience needs.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: As we heard from the Delta Think Team yesterday, there's been far more emphasis this year on big-picture strategy and getting back to the core elements of who we are, what we do, and who we serve. Some results of that have been to discontinue products that aren't working anymore, to reinvent them for new times, and/or looking outside the traditional bucket of books and journals for new ways to serve their target audiences.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: Video and multimedia, podcasts, webinars, training resources are all examples of expansions we're seeing in product portfolios and not just among large organizations. So let's dive ahead, and please go ahead and submit your response to the first poll question. What is the most significant barrier to innovation at your organization? These are anonymous.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: So first question-- how do I, an individual, help create a culture of product innovation? And what are the reasons for doing so? Jess, why don't you kick us off?
JESS LUDWIG: Thanks, Jessica. It's so great to be here with all of you today. Product innovation is about making connections and finding patterns. So you are looking at cross behaviors, conversations, data. So being open to, and fostering collaboration through-- sharing ideas, consulting broadly about product ideas, finding opportunities to present your research. Those all cultivate trust, which helps build a culture of openness and transparency.
JESS LUDWIG: Which can then lead to discovery and really does support that culture of innovation. So all of those actions are totally impossible on the individual level-- to advance that innovative culture. And I'll hand it over to Michele now for her ideas.
MICHELE DOMINIAK: Thank you, Jess. So, this is going to be fun, because I'd like to see 100 plus participants use the Raise Hand icon. Who here has actually had a customer or a member to tell you, your people, I wish your website was more like Amazon's. Right? Precisely-- just keep ticking that up. So the question of what are the reasons for doing so-- I think that's about as baseline as you get.
MICHELE DOMINIAK: And I want to be snarky in my answer to customers and members saying, well, we don't have the money like Amazon, but I hold back-- so FYI. So we're no longer in a situation where we can't afford to innovate. And especially with all of us here, which is why you're here, with the pandemic, we've all had to innovate. And we've all had to do it real quick, or lose opportunity.
MICHELE DOMINIAK: And many of us, I'm sure, are lose-- 2020 was a rough year, I'm sure. And 2021 is proving to be a challenging year, if for nothing else, revenues have been affected, and how we do things, and staffing, and resources-- I'm sure all of us are like, oh my god, resources. We don't have enough people. If for no other reason, we have to figure that out. But the other thing too is, in terms of helping create a culture of innovation, the one thing that I've tried to work with my teams and others staff-- make it fun.
MICHELE DOMINIAK: It doesn't have to be a huge project. Again, how many times have we been pulled into a meeting that's like two or three or four days for a huge think that requires lots of tasks and it doesn't go anywhere. Like the next week, you don't hear anything about it. So I'm not just saying that for AIAA, we're guilty like I'm sure everybody else. It doesn't have to be that big.
MICHELE DOMINIAK: It can be small. It can be a process. It could be over lunch. It can be tiny. So if innovation is something that you feel your company is not doing well right now, start very small and make it fun. Don't make it such a huge thing. So I will shut up now or I could go on.
MICHELE DOMINIAK: Paul.
PAUL GEE: Thanks. I guess I'll flip it into a question, too. That was a good idea, Michele. So how many people have been parts of projects where you completed functionality, or you launched a product and found out it didn't actually meet the needs of the original goal? And what did that do to your-- how many have been a part of that?
PAUL GEE: We all have. And one of the things that does is it defeats the feeling of innovation and makes you feel defeated. Like you shouldn't have even started. And so I try really hard to empower those that are required to perform the tasks, whether it's analysis tasks, or visioning tasks, or just the coding tasks, to understand why they're doing it.
PAUL GEE: And that's sort of a challenge for myself. Can I make it so that everyone feels empowered to ask why? If you know why you're doing something and you can really answer that-- not just to make money. Or because blockchain, it's a really cool thing and everyone else is doing it-- those are really bad reasons. What will the user get? How will it change your business-- whether outside of the monetary range.
PAUL GEE: What does it mean for the mission of your business, or the values of your group? And why would you do this if someone else wasn't asking you or telling you to do it. It lets the innovation actually be true innovation, no matter how small. I think rather than being a ticket taker and just sort of processing tickets at the desk.
PAUL GEE: Oh, I'm sorry. Just keep your hand up. And Alexa, you're next up.
ALEXA COLELLA: Hi. Thanks, Paul. So I'd just like to echo everybody else. I think these things like trust in culture and making it fun, and then also making sure that your why is at the center of everything you do, is a really important thing. And I come from one of the small organizations-- one of the non-profit organizations. And thus, this is obviously not universally true, but it's a fairly risk averse organization.
ALEXA COLELLA: And one of the ways that I have found that makes a really big difference in our culture there is trying to make everybody feel a part of this overall goal together-- the cohesion. We're all very siloed-- we all have different jobs, and not everybody wants to be the big idea person. Some people want to do their job-- whether it's copy editing, or production, or any part of it.
ALEXA COLELLA: I think how we do this is just by really making sure that we listen to people, and talk to people, and figure out how they're affected, and really bring them into the process in such a way that we create a community out of collaboration. And everybody can really, really play their part. And I think part of the question too, was why. And I think there's a range of reasons for this. You know there's good and bad reasons, too.
ALEXA COLELLA: Ultimately, if you find that your organization is not one that is agreeing with you in terms of wanting to innovate and collaborate, maybe that's not your organization for you. And you have to figure that out. But at best, you could have a really big influence on making an impact on your organization, and making it more agile, and flexible, and innovative. And I think that is really profound.
ALEXA COLELLA: I think-- OK.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: Yeah. All right, thanks so much, Alexa. Those were some great points. I want to check in with the poll. So this was, what is the biggest barrier to innovation at your organization? And, not shockingly, 37% of y'all said culture of risk aversion. That doesn't shock me. 33% said too many older products taking up resources.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: That also sounds familiar. And then 27% lack of processes in place. Only 2% said leadership hasn't made it a priority, or other, so that's encouraging. I feel like, if anything 2020 has done, it's really motivated leadership to spend more time thinking about product innovation and to rebalance their portfolios. So that's good.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: Go ahead and answer the second poll question. What impact did 2020 have on your organization's tolerance for risk? And while you're doing that, I'd like to ask the panel to talk a little bit about why you should evaluate your organization's risk tolerance before you try to get buy in on your great idea. Michele, you want to kick us off?
MICHELE DOMINIAK: I can certainly try. Also, because Jess is such a professional. Hello, everybody. I'm happy to be here. Thanks Jess for saying that, wow. So I'm just going to be blunt. Those who know me know tact is sometimes not my best suit. So bottom line, CYA-- and for those who don't know what that is, Jessica will be putting that definition in the chat-- she didn't know that.
MICHELE DOMINIAK: But truly, CYA-- because let's not waste everyone's time. So part of that is, if you're not aware, the stakeholders-- it will affect the follow through of your stakeholders. So we don't want to waste other people's time, we don't want our time to be waste. So they have to believe that what they're putting into it is worth their time and effort. But it's interesting that leadership was the lowest percentage.
MICHELE DOMINIAK: That's actually not what I was expecting to hear on that poll. So that's kind of fantastic. That being said, I find in my many years of other jobs, and also with AIAA, that leadership tends to be up here, and they have the high-level stuff. The work gets done at the lower levels, and those are the people that make your stuff happen. So if those folks are even risk averse or don't have complete buy in then you're still spinning your wheels.
MICHELE DOMINIAK: So Paul, would you like to take a stab
PAUL GEE: Thanks, Michele. And I'm also happy to be here. I-- very similar, I think that the worst thing for morale is when people don't have the ability to finish their work. I've been on projects that I worked on for two years and then we switched gears because it just wasn't set up correctly. And that was a bad day. I think it makes you really hesitant as someone who is in the trenches doing the job to want to pick up the next project.
PAUL GEE: And so as a stakeholder in projects or as someone who is kicking them off-- making sure that we have the tolerance for risk, and that we're going to finish it, is super important. It drives that risk assessment, the cost assessment. It goes back to the morale of the employees and the culture they create and being able to do more and more things that are more and more excited. And Alexa, what about you?
ALEXA COLELLA: I'm also happy to be here, just so you know.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: We're all ecstatic.
ALEXA COLELLA: Thank you so much. Yeah, I agree with both Michele and Paul. Again, this very much depends on the organization. If you are already set up for new projects-- you have an R&D department, or you have an R&D committee where you have these processes laid out, it's a little bit easier because there is an expectation that things will change. And I think risk tolerance and change aversion go hand in hand.
ALEXA COLELLA: And I'm going to tell you about a time where I absolutely failed at this. I was starting a new project at the press, and I thought it was a great idea. I thought it was amazing. I thought everybody was going to love it. And so I just kind of pushed it-- I don't want to say pushed it through-- but I didn't really get the buy-in in from everybody that would be touching it.
ALEXA COLELLA: And it was a really big mistake. And it's still, to this day, is a project where I'm really proud of the idea of the project, but I don't know-- it would have been such a more powerful development if I had done that foundational work of trying to explain and get buy-in from others. And maybe not everybody would have agreed with that. But I think people would have felt respected. And if you have a very siloed organization it makes sense to work with those affected departments and collaborate in these scenarios.
ALEXA COLELLA: Because with any organizational structure, the affected members of a change will often-- and should have a little bit more input on how that change is implemented. And not just because it affects them the most, but also because they probably know the most about that technical corner of your organization. And so I think that kind of inclusion of other people on staff that don't necessarily do the exact same thing as you is really, really important.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: That's great, Alexa. Thanks for being vulnerable there. And that's so true. Often the people closest to the situation are the last one asked to participate in how we can do better which I hate to see.
ALEXA COLELLA: Huge oversight on my part. [INAUDIBLE] to Jess.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: Jess, did you want to wrap that up for us?
JESS LUDWIG: Sure. I love what Alexis said about respect, because I've dealt with some very anxious stakeholders. And the way to diffuse it was to say, what are you anxious about-- like direct questions. Get it all out on the table. And then do some scenario plans. I feel like that helps people feel more comfortable. So what happens if things explode-- we have plan B, C, or D. Even if you never act on those plans, it's really helpful to have them in your back pocket.
JESS LUDWIG: It makes people feel more comfortable. And then you're managing that risk over the course of the project. It's not like one conversation. You kind of remember, all right, I have this really anxious stakeholder. I got to go back and let her know what happened. I'm going to let him know what the status is here. So it's just a really helpful conversation for the whole product development process.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: I like to tell people being risk averse is actually quite risky.
ALEXA COLELLA: This also works with children too. Just so you know.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: I didn't come up with that myself, unfortunately. So going back to the poll-- what impact did 2020 have on your organization's tolerance for risk? 56% more willing to try new things. This is what's called seizing an opportunity. 11% less willing to try new things. That doesn't surprise me. I actually thought that would have been higher because it's been a rough year.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: And I'm not surprised. I would have thought actually more people would have been like, whoa, let's put the brakes on everything. 32% said no change. So I think that's pretty-- oh, it's going down. It's going down to 30% though-- no change. Yep, up to 60% more willing to try new things.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: So this is really a great time to kind of seize this opportunity. So go ahead and respond to the last poll question about processes for research and development. And another important question to think about when we're talking about new product ideas, is validating the concept-- or as I like to say, is anyone going to buy this? Paul, I know you have some thoughts on this.
PAUL GEE: I mean, this is tricky. Because you can validate it a million times and still be wrong. But you just do it over and over again. And I think that until you release a product, I don't think people understand what it is. Especially if you've done something where you heard their intention, and you're responding to that intention, but not necessarily to the solutions that they whiteboarded at the beginning.
PAUL GEE: Going back and repeating it-- even when you get the head nods-- asking for more input, bringing it to users, getting that validation. Every point of data you get along the way that tells you whether to tweak or change, or if someone asks a question, in any way, responding to that feedback immediately. And if you can't answer the question, something's wrong.
PAUL GEE: It tells you stuff too, about what you don't know, what you're making up, and what your whiteboarding, when you really should be building. So I would just say, repeat, repeat, repeat, and listen, listen, listen. Alexa?
ALEXA COLELLA: Yeah, I agree with that too. And this also goes back to the last question, which is about risk averse and risk tolerance. And my personal opinion here is that every organization needs to have a mechanism for R&D. And if you don't, you need one yesterday. And my organization doesn't, so there's that. I've been talking about it, we've been wanting to start it, it's been on our plate for a long time, but I just want to go out there and say that we're still working on that, too.
ALEXA COLELLA: But the reason that I say that-- every organization needs a mechanism for R&D-- is because I have watched our organization, I think, have less success with R&D, simply because we don't have the mechanism for it. Whether it's a committee, or devoted funds for it, or people actually in those roles, if you have a really well-off organization.
ALEXA COLELLA: I think those things are really important. That you have people in your organization that are sitting there and saying, it is my job to talk about and think about ideas, and put these through the paces, and see if they work, and work with the people who are affected. And have some expectations for the people that are doing these things. I just think that it's super important.
ALEXA COLELLA: The model that we are planning to use-- we had started thinking about this prior to the pandemic. This is one of those things where I do feel like it's more successful in person, but I don't have any data to back that up-- is to have a committee, because we probably don't have people that we can dedicate to this. But in that committee, if someone has an idea and it's not somebody who's on the committee, they rotate into the committee until we can solve this problem or launch this product.
ALEXA COLELLA: Because they should have an integral role in moving it through. One that they can feel like they really get some ownership of. So now it's just an example. But outside of that, I think it's just continuing to ask questions, and continuing to reevaluate that. OK, so I'm going to turn over to Jessica.
JESS LUDWIG: Yeah, I agree with what Paul and Alexis said. You don't really know what the product is until it launches sometimes, and that it maybe turns into something you hadn't even planned. So the more you can create those feedback loops-- it takes a lot of time, but the more you can talk to people-- go to your members, show them an idea. It doesn't have to be perfect, and just get some initial feedback. The more that you can bring that customer into the conversation, or the member into the conversation, that's been helpful.
JESS LUDWIG: Because it makes it less abstract for people who are building the product. And so really, tactically-- customer journey maps, empathy maps, personas, going back to the persona-- reminding people this is who we're building it for, and doing that on a regular basis has helped. And I think doing a SWOT analysis-- if you're looking at OK, here are some similar products in the market.
JESS LUDWIG: Here's how we stack up against those. And then like going to your expected user and asking them what they value. That sometimes helps quantify the value. And maybe if you're looking to sell a product, you can assign specific monetary value to those attributes. Just some tactics-- hand it over to you Michele.
MICHELE DOMINIAK: I mean, the three of you-- I'm taking notes over here feverishly because they're all brilliant. The only thing that I have to add, is that we always try to ask the same three questions at the start, in the middle, in the middle, in the middle, and hopefully at the end. And that is-- will it make money? Will it increase or retain, for us, membership-- because we're a society organization.
MICHELE DOMINIAK: And will it extend the organization's brand? If it can do all of those things, fantastic. But even if it hits on one of those things and that one of those things is part of the intention of the project, process, whatever, then we feel like we're hopefully achieving our target. So again, just repeat-- wash, rinse, repeat, for those kinds of things.
MICHELE DOMINIAK: So-- Jess.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: Those are such great, great questions to ask Michele. And yeah, I would say that's the kind of thing where one out of three ain't bad. Looking at the results for the last poll-- does your organization have a formal process for R&D? This is my favorite-- 41% said, sort of. Which sounds about right. So that's good, that's better than 34% who don't.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: For the 8% who don't know, I would suggest finding out and the answer's probably no, and maybe you can have a part in putting one of those processes in place. And I think you've heard from our panelists, it doesn't have to be a real formal thing either. It could just be some loose kind of guideline. Well actually, that kind of ties in to our next question-- how can we leverage all these processes and learning?
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: It's a lot of work. You've done all this work. Let's not throw the whole thing out and start fresh with every new product that we want to do. How can we nurture existing products and keepthe innovation going? Alexa?
ALEXA COLELLA: Ooh, I feel like going to be a little bit of a downer with this one, and say that I think that legacy operations, and treating them as legacy operations, is often a huge reason why I think organizations see failure with those operations. Everything we do should be re-evaluated on a regular basis. In my role, I re-evaluate everything that I do all the time, because there's always got to be a better way to do it.
ALEXA COLELLA: I don't think there's anything that we do that we've reached the best way to do something. Because we're still learning more and more about how these things work with other things, and how they intersect, and are they inclusive-- I think is a big one. I think a lot of the way we do things, we don't realize how excluding we are being. And so I think, if we constantly re-evaluate everything that we do, not only are we going to find some really innovative ways to improve upon those things, but I think we will find more efficiencies, more inclusive ways to do the things that we do, and-- sorry, just totally lost my train of thought.
ALEXA COLELLA: I want to end it with that.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: So being consistent--
ALEXA COLELLA: Yeah, well a nurturing an innovative environment is all about consistency. And I think having that consistency of saying, I'm doing this thing. Is this the right way to do it? How could I do it better? Is there someone I could ask who could give me advice on how to do it better? Should we be doing this better? I think, in all of our organizations, we can do this Raised Hand thing-- raise your hand if there's something in your organization that you feel is really outdated.
ALEXA COLELLA: We all have it. So I think one of the best ways to go about nurturing R&D and new products and keeping this innovation going, is also how to try to improve on old processes. I'm done.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: Thanks, Alexa. Jess, I know you have some thoughts about this.
JESS LUDWIG: I mean, it just builds on what Alexa said around iterating. It is a consistent, constant process. Product development and innovation are iterative. And I think sometimes we forget that, organizations forget that. They're like, OK, we've got it out, and then now what do we do? It's like, the runway is much longer. You really have to think about how are you going to maintain, care, and feed that product.
JESS LUDWIG: Or maybe you're not, but let's have a plan for that at the outset and really, really think about what ongoing levels of commitment look like. Because I've had situations where I've had to switch development teams mid product, where we've had to stop and start development, and it's a real drag-- obviously on innovation, but it's also a drag on morale, and just resources, and the product.
JESS LUDWIG: So the more they can plan ahead the better, but still be a little flexible. And then I think when you think about how other products are made, maybe there's a way to creatively re-evaluate a workflow, to Alexis' point of constantly look at things and question them. Sometimes we're sort of led to a certain workflow for each product and we consider them in silos instead of thinking, oh, we just did this here.
JESS LUDWIG: Maybe there's a way that we could build these products like this and then we branch at some point, or do something more creative along those lines. But I think Michele has more ideas and better ideas than I do, so I'll hand it over to her now.
MICHELE DOMINIAK: I don't, actually. But thank you. No, I was just going to say-- we've all said it here, so my apologies-- but it really is trial and error. And so let's talk about having a mechanism for R&D. I think that I am certainly guilty of this. Where I say, well, I'll just pull a small team together, the people that I know I can work really well with. We'll hammer this out in like four hours.
MICHELE DOMINIAK: It'll be brand new. It'll be shiny. We'll win huge bonuses because everybody will love it, and it will save AIAA. Turns out, that's never happened. And also, it just takes a lot of time. But, if you think it's going to take X amount of time, multiply that at least by three.
MICHELE DOMINIAK: And out of those three times, out of those times three, just make sure that what worked, what didn't work-- that iterative process. Eventually, you'll get what Alexa is trying to do and have a mechanism for R&D, which is brilliant. We don't have one by the way either. So that is absolutely something that we need to do better at.
MICHELE DOMINIAK: But I think that just patience, don't beat yourself up. We're all talking about self-care and all that kind of stuff. But truly don't beat yourself up, because these things are hard. They don't seem hard, they seem duh, but they're not. And then trying to get a small team, or even a large team, to come along with you is even harder. So those are my comments.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: Thanks, Michele.
MICHELE DOMINIAK: Sorry, Paul.
PAUL GEE: From my perspective, this has to do with inventory, I guess. Existing products pile up the more you start to innovate and launch. And everyone has a cap budget. Doesn't matter how big it is or how small it is. If you can't have products that users don't find bugs with every click on, you shouldn't have those products, and you shouldn't be building new ones yet. You want to make sure that every product you have you're proud of, because your brand's on it, and users are going to it.
PAUL GEE: If users aren't going to it or it's full of bugs, it's a good time to sunset the product or relaunch it. And if strategy drives you away from that product, then it's already-- there's no reason to keep it alive. But I've found that it's often harder to kill products than it is to launch them. And they drag down an entire staff. So trying to find a way to continually manage your products, make sure you have capped number of bugs, and a way for people to report those bugs, and you count them honestly.
PAUL GEE: And if something's untenable, turn it off and move on to something that it keeps people feeling like they're proud of the brand, their products, and what they're doing on their day to day.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: Thanks, Paul. That is so true. It's not as sexy as coming up with new products, but it kind of allows for that ideation to keep happening. Like cleaning the coffee pot. You got to descale it once in a while so you can have good coffee. Just came up with that on my own. So, as you can see, we could keep talking about this. But I would like to get into some of these great audience questions.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: First one I saw, Christine Orr. Hi, Christine. She was asking if there are any ways to get up to speed quickly in coming up with product innovation processes? Any tips about that?
ALEXA COLELLA: Every time I have tried to do new things it takes like three years. So I don't know if I'm the best person to say this. But I think, having learned from my past missteps in this, before bringing this formally, it's good to have little capsule discussions with people in the organization. It's good to get a sense of what their hesitations are, like Jess said earlier, to help understand what the anxieties are.
ALEXA COLELLA: Because people aren't going to come out and be like, I'm really anxious about this very niche thing. And express it like that. I think it's really important to kind of understand the landscape of challenges before you get into the actual work of development. I don't know if that's helpful. So I'm going to let somebody else take that, but yeah, that's what I got.
ALEXA COLELLA:
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: I think it might also get back to, I think Michele, it was her saying earlier about you don't have to make it a big thing. Just do it over your lunch, have one of those FedEx shipping days. Or maybe not have this whole huge process in place before you can start making incremental changes. So sometimes the big idea is the enemy of actually getting anything done on a smaller scale level. I don't know it anyone else wanted to respond to that.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: Certainly a valid question. Heather Stein said, how do we get researchers to care about more than the PDF? Publishers work on adding value, but getting researcher bandwidth is such a challenge. Yeah. I don't know how you get people to care about anything. And I'm in marketing.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: That's about that.
MICHELE DOMINIAK: Sorry, Heather. This doesn't really answer the question. It's more of a question to answer your question. So isn't that fun? Is it more of a chicken and the egg kind of thing? Where, for example, as a publisher if we say-- and for all those publishers I'm using this as strictly an example-- if we say all journal articles authors must include their data sets-- must.
MICHELE DOMINIAK: Required, as opposed to, meh, if you want to, or they're-- so I understand that comes with a lot of baggage. But then as an example, does that create then interest in caring, if you will? Maybe. I think it depends on how we tend to care and feed for those authors anyhow. But my question would be, I don't know the answer is, if it's a chicken and egg thing, what would be the biggest draw there for researchers maybe?
JESS LUDWIG: Yeah. I have an example that may not answer the question either. And it's not exactly related to publishing, but back in the day I worked there for the Public Broadcasting Service. And people only cared about prime time. They really did not care about the companion websites we were creating that had all these great resources, and lesson plans, and were great experiences-- curated resources that extended the life of the broadcast. So I think that became the value added, it sort of said your program is not only in prime time now it's available 24/7.
JESS LUDWIG: And I'm wondering if there's a discoverability question there. If there's maybe some value there around additional exposure or getting the research more widely seen, or discovered, when we move beyond the PDF. But it may be totally irrelevant-- an irrelevant example. They're just thinking about the value. What did that producer care about?
JESS LUDWIG: They cared about how many people were watching during prime time. And if you expanded the access, that became valuable.
PAUL GEE: So I could say how I think you do it. In 2007, it became this thing in a bunch of our heads where I was working at the time like, how do we kill the PDF? I don't think we can kill the PDF. Researchers need it, they need something portable. They're going to save it, they're going to store it-- who cares. You drive other things that users want. Users want multimedia, they want audio. It's a different use case.
PAUL GEE: They want mobile versions of your website that are easy to get in into through toll-free links or other ways. They want email and they want social as follow measures. As our mobile and our social traffic grew to about 25%, to 30%, social and email drove mobile. And mobile drives dips in and out of websites away and less reliance on PDF.
PAUL GEE: And our PDF metric went way down. There's a bunch of other things, but there are no complaints around that. And it wasn't a strategy to get rid of the reliance on PDF. In fact, the aggregate number of PDF users is higher, but the overall site users are so much higher that the percentage of the total is low. And that flips the model from what the stats were at least 10 years ago.
PAUL GEE: I don't know if it's the same for all content and all purposes, but if you're driving value away from the research flow, the PDF becomes just a portion of the traffic.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: Robin Baldwin has a question. It's kind of the opposite. Heather is like, how do we get researchers to pay attention to all this other great added value that we offer. And Robin Baldwin is saying something I think anyone who's worked in association has struggled with this. How do you deal with new product ideas and projects that volunteers want to see happen, but may or may not meet member need?
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: So these are people who want something, and they're advocating for it. And you've got to be nice to them, but you don't necessarily want to take on this huge project without doing some research at the very outset. Has anyone had to deal with that?
ALEXA COLELLA: Currently taking advice. No, actually yes. So we have an organization that we work with. I won't name it, but it's a society, and we publish their journal. And they want every library in our state to subscribe to the journal. And I think that's really great. However, I can't make people subscribe to something. So all I can do is incentivize it.
ALEXA COLELLA: [AUDIO OUT] we are currently working on a project to do something of that sort. But it takes the right conditions. I don't know that I have any really great advice for somebody coming in saying, I have this great idea. I'm a member. I do the sustaining. I'm a member for life. Can you implement this?
ALEXA COLELLA: Unless there's a way to implement parts of it or-- The best advice I have is try and see that as an important goal, because part of your membership wants it. And try and figure out a way-- how to dovetail it into existing products or even new ones-- aspects of it.
PAUL GEE: I agree. What I tended to do like-- everyone's gotten that requester that keeps requesting the same thing and you can't do it because you don't have the budget. But they're tenacious and it keeps coming in. Whether it's a single individual or a whole portion of your organization.
PAUL GEE: People just want to be listened to and to have something happen. It's the right thing for the right amount of time and money that's the hard thing. And if you find yourself spending more time saying no, at some point you just cave and you build something. And you can either build something good, or what I call passive aggressive development, where they get exactly what they ask for and they don't like it.
PAUL GEE: I think that inventorying every request and calling it a parking lot gives you the idea that it's coming-- or it's just sitting there, it's waiting. But then you start to see themes that you'd over a year, you might see 20 different requests that you thought were different and we're all annoying, but they all have a positive aspect that you do want to do. I don't know what that is, but when you see that moment you can give them all back something at once.
PAUL GEE: And it might be a little different then when they asked for it, but you can, oh, I could justify that through AdSense, so or I don't know what it is. And you figure out how to do something that's a little less than the passive aggressive approach, which still happens sometimes, because that's the way life is.
MICHELE DOMINIAK: I'm writing down passive aggressive development. Just not necessarily as something in my toolkit but-- The only other thing I'll say is that-- and this is terrible because maybe it's an excuse-- but I will say, well, in the past 10 years or so, AIAA leadership has been really very focused on-- I hate the buzzword, but-- the whole strategy. The intention of where we need to go for the next five years.
MICHELE DOMINIAK: We're just kind of focus on five years at a time kind of a thing. Because we have it happen all the time, when a volunteer who is in a very small community in aerospace, thinks their stuff is the most important stuff, and will have tremendous effects on the whole community, we have to step back and say, great idea. However, here is what the board approved strategy is for the next five years.
MICHELE DOMINIAK: And while this is certainly beneficial to your community, I don't know if it necessarily fits within the strategy. So I've used that a couple of times. And that does seem to work on occasion. And again, going back to the three questions that we always ask-- and again, you have to phrase it a little bit nicer when you talk to members-- but brand, money-- which no one ever wants to hear except for staff-- and whatever the other one was, now I can't even remember-- brand, money, and membership.
MICHELE DOMINIAK: Usually they're on board with the two, the membership and the brand.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: It'll help me, Michele. It'll help me. Isn't that enough?
MICHELE DOMINIAK: Right, you might want to rephrase it a little bit there.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: Meg Marland White has a question near and dear to my heart. Even the best conceived and executed product can fail to be commercially successful or find an audience due to lack of effective go-to-market strategy. Yes. Since we're showing vulnerability, I can say I have been in this place. I have too, Meg.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: Can you talk about how not to fall into that trap?
PAUL GEE: If you never launch a product you won't have that problem.
ALEXA COLELLA: Yeah, I mean, we'd all be lying if we said there wasn't a little bit of luck involved. Do you know who you talk to-- who your networks are? You can have the best idea and if no one hears it, and someone else comes up with it-- whose idea is it? I don't have a great one.
ALEXA COLELLA: I'm useless on this panel guys. I think that trying to climb a certain amount of disseminability I think is a really important aspect of it. Obviously the more people that know about it, the better. But there is always a time and a place for things and sometimes you can have a great idea, and it's not the right time or place.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: Sometimes in my experience, to get to the internal workings of your organization and sometimes the go-to-market strategy is wanting because it hasn't been appropriately shopped internally. And so you're not getting the resources you need to have a really strong go-to-market plan. You might need extra financial resources. Well, has the CFO been involved in this? Does he understand why we're doing it?
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: Are you pulling time away from people, other people in different staffs that maybe don't directly report to you? Have you socialized this idea ahead of time with their manager? Just really, before you go-to-market, you've got to go-to-market internally. And make sure that the organization is backing you up. And hopefully, that will surface some ideas of things that you could do better or things that are going to come back to you.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: Once you've launched the market, you'll say, oh, I wish we thought of that. If you're really doing that back and forth internal process of asking questions, digging deep, doing some more research, and making sure by the time you do have something that all the relevant stakeholders internally are on board, I think you're going to have a lot more success.
PAUL GEE: I'll highlight one risk there because I was thinking, vulnerable wise, I've failed on both sides of this. I failed where I successfully got everyone internally on board, but by the time it got launched, the user needed was no longer there. Because some regulation changed in the industry while we're being perfect with our process. Or OK, we get green light, we get the budget, we speed it to market, and it's good for the users, but the same problem you just highlighted has happened.
PAUL GEE: Where the business wasn't ready to support it, or push it, or really market it. And finding that sweet spot in between-- I don't know how to do that perfectly every time. It does feel like luck. I don't know if anyone wants to hear that. But there's a lot of forces around us that are out of our control that we have to try to balance.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: Definitely more an art than a science. And it is the balance because you could spend a long time doing things internally, and then by the time you've got everyone on board, it's too late.
ALEXA COLELLA: And I think this question too speaks to the first one, which is how can I create a culture of innovation? I think, as we increase our risk tolerance, we also have to kind of normalize failure a little bit. Nobody wants to fail. Nobody wants to be bad at anything. Nobody wants to make mistakes. But if there isn't a culture within your organization where failure is OK and we learn from it, I think you're going to have more challenges with this-- this particular question.
ALEXA COLELLA:
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: Melanie Shaffner has a great question. Can the panel speak to the role of strategic planning slash organizational strategy and innovation? In my small business strapped organization, it seems that when we can vet and evaluate new ideas and opportunities against a solid strategic plan, we make better choices, get more buy in, and have more successful outcomes. That sounds about right. Does anyone have any experience or examples they'd like to share?
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: I think sometimes we think of innovation as a spur of the moment, and strategic planning and strategy is long-term. We don't know-- that's five years in the distance. But making those connections between-- to responding to what's happening right now in the environment and tying it to the overall organizational mission.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT:
MICHELE DOMINIAK: I mean, again, only because the last four years, we've had a really good strategic plan, and management that uses that strategic-- And I think part of that is identifying that leadership is really supportive of the strategic plan. So you can use it as a crutch, if you will, for your product innovation. First of all, let me just say strategic planning is hard. I'm not suggesting that it's not.
MICHELE DOMINIAK: It's hard, and not everybody-- a lot of people don't know how to do it well. But once you are able to have a group of folks, and you recognize that the strategic plan is solid, and that it will be used for all products and processes moving forward, that will help. But it part of this is timing. We talked about luck in the last question. But I think if you can-- again, these may not be the answers you all want to hear-- I think if you can recognize that the strategic plan can help you or not, then it's then it's about timing.
MICHELE DOMINIAK: Do I go in right now until things are a little bit further, a little bit more solid down the road. Or are we in a good place? I know that I'm going to have the backing of leadership, and other co-workers, and volunteers, and go for it. So part of that is identifying that-- the timing of it all. Also at AIAA, I like to tell my staff, we use hope as a strategy.
MICHELE DOMINIAK: It's a joke, but sometimes it's not.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: Angela Gibbs I think had an appropriate follow-up question. Any experience socializing internally within a short time frame? So if you've got something you need to get off the ground-- and I may be paraphrasing here, Angela-- but you've got something you need to get off the ground, and you want to get people on board quickly or it's not going to work, what are the most effective ways to do that?
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: And Alexa we know-- less than three years.
ALEXA COLELLA: Honestly, it just depends on the size of the project. It just depends on the scope of the project, too. Do you have something that's only going to affect your department? That's easier to get off the ground. Because you have fewer people for which are affected by the changes of that project. We are trying to make changes in our own department or-- I just realized I shifted and now you can see on my dinosaurs.
ALEXA COLELLA: We are trying to make some changes in our department to make it easier for information sharing about our journals when we launch new ones. Because right now that information lives with one person, and so that's not always the best strategy when it comes to information that needs to be available for multiple members of staff. So we are reforming that process in such a way that mirrors another process in our press.
ALEXA COLELLA: But that is not a hard problem to solve. It's just one that takes time because there's only six of us. So we can get that off the ground in two weeks-- that's no big deal. But if you have something that you're going to want to get off the ground quickly for a lot of people, that's a bigger challenge. They say that you can pick two-- what is it like, good, fast, and cheap.
ALEXA COLELLA: You can pick two of those things. So I always prefer quality over quantity, or quality over speed, and that's maybe why things take me four years, I don't know.
JESS LUDWIG: I mean, I think a road show, to be really I guess flat footed about it, go to people's department meetings. See if you can get a slot to speak. See if you can wallpaper the kitchen, or Zoom, with a little infographics or things that are going to pique people's interest. It's like, it's what Jessica was saying earlier about maybe doing a little bit of an internal PR campaign in unique creative ways.
JESS LUDWIG: Obviously, it takes resources and time, but it can help.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: Thanks, Jess. I've done some brainstorming sessions where you get people from different departments and you have a moderately agendized brainstorming session. But you've got people from different departments, and you get them thinking about this topic. And you might already kind of know the direction you want to go, OK, but you're still probably going to learn something. And you're going to get people thinking about this idea.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: Another question here. Stephanie Austin said, can you speak to how to manage up expectations for staff resources? Often, new projects are green-lighted without discontinuing projects that have stagnated. We've all experienced that, absolutely. So manage up expectations for staff resources. I guess, yeah, that's helping people say you can have staff for this and this, but not this or pick three.
ALEXA COLELLA: Or I think it's OK to assign time values to what you do. I did the marketing manager for 43 titles, which means that with a vacation a year, I only have time to spend one week on each title. Which means that I get 40 hours for each title. And so by breaking it down and describing the commitment that each process or each task takes, I was able to explain why I needed another staff member-- why I needed help.
ALEXA COLELLA: Because then we doubled that now. We get 80 hours per journal. And so I think, in your case, one of the things you can do is say this is something that takes this much time. This is something that takes this much time. If we're going to do this, we need to figure out a way to make this thing take this much time. Math is hard to argue with.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: It can be argued with though.
ALEXA COLELLA: That's why I'm in humanities.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: Any other thoughts about managing up around those expectations. And I also want to say there is some great stuff going on in the chat. It's so encouraging to see the supportive responses. This is such a great community. I love how everyone is so open, and vulnerable, and sharing what's worked for them and what hasn't. We are just about running out of time. Last call for last questions.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: I think it's pretty clear that we could talk about this for a long time. The panelists, you guys have been absolutely amazing. Such good ideas. I learned so much. I think next year we should do a part two, maybe in person so we can all have cocktails afterwards. Thank you so much to the panelists. You guys put a lot of thought into this.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: Thank you to the SSP annual meeting program committee and to our generous sponsors. A recording of the session will be available later today, and it will be available to everyone who's registered through November. And at least some of us will be in the structured networking sessions over in [INAUDIBLE] starting just about now. So feel free to meet us over there to continue the conversation.
JESSICA LAWRENCE-HURT: Thank you so much.
MICHELE DOMINIAK: Thanks, everybody.
ALEXA COLELLA: Thank you.
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