Introducing Ricky Revenue
Face Ricky
Ultimately you have to convince Ricky Revenue that transforming your company makes sense. It’s not that he’s all about revenue. He’s not. Ricky just wants to understand the business case, even if there is line item for it in the budget (and especially if there’s not).
Ricky doesn’t have a bias either way
The only thing he cares about is measurable value. He’s hypnotized by it. Even Norman Naysayers have to debate Ricky based on measurable business value. The best thing about Ricky is that he’s your best friend if you can bring him along with your plan. But he can be your biggest obstacle if you leave him out of the picture.
It’s not that Ricky has to have fancy ROI models or spreadsheets with pivot tables
Sometime he just needs to clearly understand the business opportunity and what the plan is to get there. That may be return but it may be a solid business plan and enough wiggle room to measure as you go. Either way you have to make a clear case.
The last character in this drama
Obviously, the last character in the cast is the person driving the project forward. I’m thinking it’s a dolphin-like animal but I haven’t told @michaelsigler who has created both Norman and Ricky (though a shout out to @LenDevanna from EMC who joked with me about Ricky and gave me the idea). Clearly, we need to do a comic strip. Keep your eye out.
Things people have said about this post
“The best thing about Ricky is that he’s your best friend if you can bring him along with your plan. But he can be your biggest obstacle if you leave him out of the picture.”
Very very true!
Is Ricky a deep sea creature? I’ve met Ricky Revenue many times, he often reports to the COO, or is doing web marketing measurement.
I think Ricky is an Angler Fish. http://www.dangerouswildlife.com/images/anglerfish.jpg
Comic strip! Yes! Isn’t Sig into graphic novels anyway?
[...] If we construe it strictly, this usage profile should mean that no wiki can succeed if it serves less than 100 people (since a fraction of a person would be required otherwise). Some enterprise wikis might cover a much smaller group than this (such as a client-focused knowledge-sharing wiki where the client team is only 50 lawyers or so). However, if a single person were to support more than one wiki, their efforts could sustain 99 people overall. This leads me to the (I think inexorable) conclusion that we should focus our wiki efforts on areas where there are keen contributors rather than those where we could see a significant RoI, but no obvious wiki leaders. This appears a little counter-intuitive, and would need some nifty footwork to convince Ricky Revenue. [...]