The Original
The Grimm Brothers published a story almost 200 years ago called Rumpelstiltskin. If you have read this story you know that a Miller who wanted to improve his station in life lied to the King and said that his daughter could spin ordinary straw into gold. The greedy King immediately takes the daughter and locks her in a tower with a bunch of straw and an ordinary spinning wheel. She is given the command to spin all of the straw into gold by morning or she will be executed.
Of course she can't do this and gives up all hope. Eventually Rumpelstilskin arrives and agrees to spin the straw into gold for her necklace. She readily agrees, but this doesn't satisfy the greedy king. Again on the second night she is given the same command and again Rumplestilskin comes to her aid. On the third night she has nothing left to offer and Rumpelstilskin agrees to do it if she will give up her first born child to him. In despair for her situation she agrees.
The King thinking he has a great thing going here marries the Miller's daughter. She eventually has a child and Rumpelstilskin comes for his payment. He agrees to let her out of the bargain if she can guess his name. Through some stupid actions on his part the daughter hears him by the fire one night shouting out his name. When he returns to claim the child she guesses his name and the deal is foiled.
By now many of you are saying I need to put down the fairy tales and tell you why I developed the tag line. I couldn't help but see as I read this story to my kids the modern translation it had, so let me tell you another version of the story...a modern version.
A Fairy Tale For Modern Times
Once upon a time there was a CEO of a company who was perplexed about how to raise profits for his company. Try as he might he couldn't come up with a way to boost sales. The board of directors was about to throw his sorry butt out of his job when in a desparate attempt to boost his credibility with the board he promised that the Internet would be the gold the company was seeking.
He could turn their ordinary web site into gold. The board of directors being shrewd managers took him up on his offer and locked him away with the ordinary web site and orders to spin this site into gold. Naturally he doesn't know how to do this and despair quickly sets in.
Then our hero arrives. He a is dashing and handsome non dwarfish Internet consultant (hey, this is my story, I will tell it my way). He agrees to spin this ordinary site into gold for a fee to which our CEO agrees.
Our skilled consultant quickly spins this ordinary site into gold for the company. The board rejoices, but being greedy they demand more. The CEO eventually pays up and our consultant again spins more straw (our ordinary boring web strategy) into yet more gold.
Unfortunately for our CEO his budget runs out and he is forced to face the fact that he must admit to the board he can't really spin straw into gold unless he can find something else to pay with.
Our dashing and handsome consultant has two children and is not interested in taking the CEO's kids and besides his name is on the contract so it really wouldn't be fair to ask the CEO to guess it.
To give our story a happy ending the CEO finds more money in his budget because he pays for actual results and realizing he is getting them pays our dashing and handsome consultant to continue doing what he does best, spinning the ordinary straw of the Internet (badly outdated and poor Internet strategy) into gold for its owners. The CEO and company live happily ever after.
The Actual Point of All This
Ok, I know many of you think I need to get out more, so let me explain in plain terms. Many companies and investors were sold a bill of goods back in the 90s that the Internet would totally change the way we did business. In many ways it has. However the problem as with most business problems is that it still relies on solid business principles to work and requires good old fashion work and innovation to realize the true gains.
Looking around the technology landscape one can see all the "straw" that abounds. Straw fills up a lot of space and is expensive to keep and grow, but unless your a horse it doesn't have much value. Many web sites and Internet strategies of today are not unlike this. They are poorly conceived and executed. They become expensive to keep and in the end don't produce much value.
Along comes the army of fake consultants who promise to turn this straw into gold, but alas all they do is make it shiny with lots of fancy flash, floating graphics, little movies, poor copy and charge piles of money to do this. At the end of the day the strategy is still poor and fails to produce true value.
I figured out what was missing. It is not always the technology stupid. It is the strategy behind the technology that creates the value. It is the tactics and techniques of marketing, management, sales, and business that creates the value. I founded my company on this principle.
Like the original Rumpelstiltskin I come along and use this "magic" to transform the straw into real gold. In short I create value using the things that has been producing value since the beginning of time. Giving customers what they need to make their lives and jobs easier. Producing value where there was only straw before. It only seemed fitting to use such a tag line.
Before you hire the next consultant who starts talking about how cool this new technology or technique is start asking yourself the simple questions...
- How does it improve the business?
- How does it add value to our customers?
- How much value does it add?
- Will it improve our bottomline and can we track that?
Michael Temple
