Cargo cult around and within us: IT HR and marketing
Most recently, I stumbled upon another DevRel discussion in “Flight Debriefing,” in which I heard the strangely familiar word “cargo-cult.” Then it also emerged in the Telegram-channel Alexey 23derevo Fedorov. Then somewhere else ... All this led me to believe that a cargo cult embraced the minds of people in all spheres: from HR to design, from choosing a diet to making a decision on choosing a framework or a professional tool.
About the diet, perhaps, we will not speak, but I would like to discuss the problem of irresponsible professional decision-making. Even lower in the text I will talk about how we in the JUG.ru Group are trying to deal with this phenomenon, and in the comments you can tell me what a bad / good I am, and at the same time share your observations: have you noticed a tendency towards “cultism”?
There is no code under the cut, there are no seals and there is nothing about development. But there is a bit of thought about marketing, HR, the philosophy of consumption and decision making. And there is an announcement of our open seminar Cargo Cult , where Boomburum , for example, will speak .
Have you ever wondered where the legs of a modern cargo cult grow from? I'll start from afar.
')
In 1976, Erich Fromm wrote the book To Have or To Be , in which he criticized theconsumption culture that was already raging in the west. In short, the concept is: there is a mode of possession (consumption) and a mode of contemplation (experience). And if you strive to “possess”, you risk missing the opportunity to “experience” it and vice versa: not trying to “own” something, but trying to contemplate / experience it, you develop as a person without overgrowing entities.
So, one of the most important concepts of the book for me was a funny thought: you can consume not only food, goods or real estate, you can consume everything: travel, books, education. You can go to college to simply get a diploma, and you can - to master a new field of knowledge (and eventually also get a diploma, why not): in the first case, you “consume” education, in the second you are worried. The main difference between consumption and contemplation is that possession leads to the accumulation of “achievements” or objects, and contemplation leads to development and new experience.
Actually, a modern cargo-cult in business grows out of a consumer culture: let's set up accounts in social networks / a corporate blog on Habré / our DevRel / let's switch to Vue.js - just because others have it. Let's look at these examples more closely.
The most beautiful and classic example: accounts in social networks. Every company has a public account in VK, a Twitter account, a Facebook profile and so on. The problem is that no one can ask why these profiles, no one can clearly answer. A classic example of "owning" - we have social networks, look. But there is usually nothing to look at there: some monotonous announcements, offtopic posts and partner messages.
In fact, the transformed form of cargo-cult in business answers the question “Why?” Not “Because others have it,” but “How could it be different?” (You can not have accounts in social networks!). For some reason, in marketing - a business area that is responsible for informed decision making - it is not customary to make informed decisions.
To kill in yourself the cargo-SMMschika, just answer for yourself the question: what do they give you social networks? What experience for business and for the audience do you create? It is easy to answer it, after all, it is a choice of several options:
To understand whether the social networks are suitable for each of the items, you should answer a dozen more questions for each. However, today it is not about the SMM.
Blogs, including here on Habré, are also a great example of a cargo cult. Last year, I spoke at HR Meetup with the theme of blogging on Habré, and TechMedia colleagues talked about the same thing (you can find it in the playlist). It’s worth discussing here: the questions asked from the audience were mainly aimed at getting a “pill”, a ready-made solution.
All these questions are fundamentally uncorrupted, that's why: tying the meaning of your work to the metric, you lose the meaning. To answer the question of what rating to strive for or write about, you need to understand for whom you are writing a post. And for what.
To hire one specialist, you do not need 200k views, you need one correct view and good content. If you want to show what a good product you have, you need not only advantages, but also comments from real users under the article. If you want to support the team and give it a say - just try to help them cope with the negative, but do not think about the metrics. Most often, the goal of blogging lies outside the blog, and you need to think about it.
And the pros, the views and the number of “bookmarks” are assessment tools, and if you make them your goal, congratulations, you are a cargo blogger.
And another example from the life: the conference JUG.ru Group. On each there are sponsoring companies that stand with booths. Do you know what question we hear most often? Almost a quote:
We are always ready to suggest what tools help to solve certain tasks, we can tell why the mitap at the stand is good, and the practical jokes are bad, why do the tasks and why sometimes there is nothing to do at the stand . But we can only help those who understand why a stand is needed. Specifically.
To kill a cargo organizer in yourself, just think about what you are doing. What is your booth for a participant, what is it for you, what do you want to get after the conference, what emotions to evoke in people. And how to do this is a completely different question, solved by the situation.
So what do we have? Cargo cult in business is born when you start thinking “how” to do something without first answering three questions:
Why did I write this article? Initially, this was supposed to be the announcement of our open seminar "Cargo Cult". But, starting to write, I led the post to a completely different steppe, and here we are.
When asked how, do not try to repeat what others are doing. "You are not Google," as you know. And not the Windows of the Century. And not the JUG.ru Group. Start exploring classic approaches and fundamental models to solve your problems. Here are a few examples from which you can start, if you have an understanding of what is working with the market / consumer:
As soon as you instrumentally understand where you are, you will simply find the right tools. At this point, you will say that the post is empty, that I have only touched upon all the problems, without particularly revealing and not giving ready-made solutions. This is intentional. If you are interested, we will continue this topic in the blog, and if you are not eager, then come on February 27 to our open seminar Cargo Cult .
Alexey Fedorov, Alexey Shevelev, Sergey Khudovekov from Paper Planes and several other speakers will speak at the seminar. They will talk about marketing, branding, marketing in HR, blogging and that's it. No tacking, case studies and success stories.
Register here .
About the diet, perhaps, we will not speak, but I would like to discuss the problem of irresponsible professional decision-making. Even lower in the text I will talk about how we in the JUG.ru Group are trying to deal with this phenomenon, and in the comments you can tell me what a bad / good I am, and at the same time share your observations: have you noticed a tendency towards “cultism”?
There is no code under the cut, there are no seals and there is nothing about development. But there is a bit of thought about marketing, HR, the philosophy of consumption and decision making. And there is an announcement of our open seminar Cargo Cult , where Boomburum , for example, will speak .
Consumption mode
There is such a thing - “cargo cult”. This is a situation in which a person or a group of people is trying to reproduce something seen, heard or read, without understanding the principles of his work. Such people will get their tambourines, jump around kanban boards or dashboards, graphs, reports, documents, decks with cards, wiki systems, in general, will produce some strange rituals with strange artifacts and prove to everyone how good their tambourine is. and how beautiful the thing they jump around.
Have you ever wondered where the legs of a modern cargo cult grow from? I'll start from afar.
')
In 1976, Erich Fromm wrote the book To Have or To Be , in which he criticized the
So, one of the most important concepts of the book for me was a funny thought: you can consume not only food, goods or real estate, you can consume everything: travel, books, education. You can go to college to simply get a diploma, and you can - to master a new field of knowledge (and eventually also get a diploma, why not): in the first case, you “consume” education, in the second you are worried. The main difference between consumption and contemplation is that possession leads to the accumulation of “achievements” or objects, and contemplation leads to development and new experience.
Actually, a modern cargo-cult in business grows out of a consumer culture: let's set up accounts in social networks / a corporate blog on Habré / our DevRel / let's switch to Vue.js - just because others have it. Let's look at these examples more closely.
Cargo cult in marketing and HR
Social networks
The most beautiful and classic example: accounts in social networks. Every company has a public account in VK, a Twitter account, a Facebook profile and so on. The problem is that no one can ask why these profiles, no one can clearly answer. A classic example of "owning" - we have social networks, look. But there is usually nothing to look at there: some monotonous announcements, offtopic posts and partner messages.
In fact, the transformed form of cargo-cult in business answers the question “Why?” Not “Because others have it,” but “How could it be different?” (You can not have accounts in social networks!). For some reason, in marketing - a business area that is responsible for informed decision making - it is not customary to make informed decisions.
To kill in yourself the cargo-SMMschika, just answer for yourself the question: what do they give you social networks? What experience for business and for the audience do you create? It is easy to answer it, after all, it is a choice of several options:
- Increase coverage, introduce new people to your project / product;
- Increase engagement, get people to interact with you in isolation from the product;
- Get feedback directly from people, be available;
- Answer user questions, provide support.
To understand whether the social networks are suitable for each of the items, you should answer a dozen more questions for each. However, today it is not about the SMM.
Blogs
Blogs, including here on Habré, are also a great example of a cargo cult. Last year, I spoke at HR Meetup with the theme of blogging on Habré, and TechMedia colleagues talked about the same thing (you can find it in the playlist). It’s worth discussing here: the questions asked from the audience were mainly aimed at getting a “pill”, a ready-made solution.
- How many advantages should a post have?
- What post to write to get 150k views?
- How often should I post?
- Which post to be the first to post a blog?
All these questions are fundamentally uncorrupted, that's why: tying the meaning of your work to the metric, you lose the meaning. To answer the question of what rating to strive for or write about, you need to understand for whom you are writing a post. And for what.
To hire one specialist, you do not need 200k views, you need one correct view and good content. If you want to show what a good product you have, you need not only advantages, but also comments from real users under the article. If you want to support the team and give it a say - just try to help them cope with the negative, but do not think about the metrics. Most often, the goal of blogging lies outside the blog, and you need to think about it.
And the pros, the views and the number of “bookmarks” are assessment tools, and if you make them your goal, congratulations, you are a cargo blogger.
activity
And another example from the life: the conference JUG.ru Group. On each there are sponsoring companies that stand with booths. Do you know what question we hear most often? Almost a quote:
We want a stand, but do not know what to do on it. Please advise!
We are always ready to suggest what tools help to solve certain tasks, we can tell why the mitap at the stand is good, and the practical jokes are bad, why do the tasks and why sometimes there is nothing to do at the stand . But we can only help those who understand why a stand is needed. Specifically.
To kill a cargo organizer in yourself, just think about what you are doing. What is your booth for a participant, what is it for you, what do you want to get after the conference, what emotions to evoke in people. And how to do this is a completely different question, solved by the situation.
Cult Destroyers
So what do we have? Cargo cult in business is born when you start thinking “how” to do something without first answering three questions:
- What i do
- Why am i doing this
- Who am I doing this for?
Why did I write this article? Initially, this was supposed to be the announcement of our open seminar "Cargo Cult". But, starting to write, I led the post to a completely different steppe, and here we are.
When asked how, do not try to repeat what others are doing. "You are not Google," as you know. And not the Windows of the Century. And not the JUG.ru Group. Start exploring classic approaches and fundamental models to solve your problems. Here are a few examples from which you can start, if you have an understanding of what is working with the market / consumer:
- SOSTAC planning;
- Analysis of the competitive environment for Porter;
- Balanced Scorecard Norton-Kaplan;
- Build Quality Function Deployment.
As soon as you instrumentally understand where you are, you will simply find the right tools. At this point, you will say that the post is empty, that I have only touched upon all the problems, without particularly revealing and not giving ready-made solutions. This is intentional. If you are interested, we will continue this topic in the blog, and if you are not eager, then come on February 27 to our open seminar Cargo Cult .
Alexey Fedorov, Alexey Shevelev, Sergey Khudovekov from Paper Planes and several other speakers will speak at the seminar. They will talk about marketing, branding, marketing in HR, blogging and that's it. No tacking, case studies and success stories.
Register here .
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/349566/
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