What's Missing From this Message: Kevin Mackenzie's BITS Framework

What's missing from this message? Matching models. What do I mean by that? Well, stay tuned for the next episode of What's Missing from This Message. I'm Tamsen Webster of tamsenwebster.com. So Kevin McKenzie was kind enough to respond to my offer on LinkedIn. Kevin to send me his messaging in the form of a website. Uh, if you want to send your own message, you can do that at redthreadme@tamsenwebster.com. But Kevin works on strategy and particularly works with companies on helping them understand what their value is, where it comes from, and all sorts of other things. And if you read deeper into his website, apparently defining value is a pretty sticky situation. And in fact, it has a whole bunch of different meanings for a whole bunch of different people and companies. And From all I can tell, Kevin wants to help companies fix that problem. Kevin also seems to have built a really interesting framework that he calls the BITS Framework, subtitled the Value Interrogation Framework. And so this website is something that helps him explain what that is. So let's take a closer look, shall we? All right. When you first end up on his website, you see right at the top, nice and clean and clear, BITS is the Value Interrogation Framework. And it has this question, "Does your business have a value challenge?" Now I think he probably knows that a lot of people don't necessarily know what he means by that, and so I really like what he's done next. And he gives 4 additional questions that can kind of capture what I would usually call the audience goal question, that question that the audience is asking that's bringing them to your site in the first place. So he goes on to put these 4 questions: How does your business create, capture, and extract value? Why, where, and how does it happen? Where in the create, capture, and extract path are you struggling? How do you sustain value over long periods of time? And then he follows up with, you can only solve for value if you can clearly describe it. Now, lots of like here. I particularly like that last line that you can only solve for value if you can clearly describe it. If you happen to catch my Find the Red Thread video on how to describe or explain your your idea in 30 seconds, this is a pretty good example of that. All right, but let's break down a little bit more what's happening here. Now, the first question I really have for Kevin, and for all of you to ask too, is, is there agreement on what a value challenge is? Now, like I said, I really like the fact that he gives us 4 additional questions to help us identify whether or not we have a value question, but I still think that that would help to know a little bit more about what Kevin means by value, because by establishing what he's talking about value, then he and all the people who land on this page are sure that they're talking about the same thing. It's kind of like making sure that everybody has the same definition of, I don't know, pants going into a conversation. Some people may be imagining one thing and other people may be imagining another. When you've got a word like value, which again, later and deeper in his site, he explains that people don't really know what that is, I think there would be a lot of value to him in defining right up front what he means by value and then says, You know, do you have a value challenge? Or I would articulate this question in a way that is much more along the lines of what his audience is asking, but that's me assuming that his audience doesn't ask the question this way, and they might, so let's be fair to that. So I want to know more about what he means by value so I get a better understanding what he means by a value challenge. And the phrasing on value challenge feels a little unusual to me. It feels like language that Kevin uses, but it may not necessarily be language that his audience uses. So in an ongoing theme of this, what's missing from this message series, I really recommend that you work hard to make sure that you're putting these kinds of questions in the language of your audience. That way they recognize that you are the right place for them. Okay, these follow-up questions though, I think most of them are really good. How does your business create, capture, and extract value? Uh, I think those are That feels like a good question for people to ask, but then what's the challenge of that, right? So if you say, "What's your challenge?" then I want that question that comes after to articulate a specific challenge. Is it that they don't know how? So that's a thought. Why, where, and how does it happen? Okay, again, where's the challenge in that? Where in the create, capture, and extract path are you struggling? Now this is the one where if I had a beef with any of them, it would be this one, mostly because I'm not quite sure if this create, capture, and extract path is a well-known model or framework that just because I'm not Kevin's primary audience, I don't recognize, or is it Kevin revealing one of his frameworks to the audience without them really understanding it? So when you're talking about create, capture, and extract path, that sounds like a model. Is it? If it is, probably a little too early in your messaging to be introducing it. Because again, language of the audience. Finally, how do you sustain value over long periods of time? Now that does sound like it has the heart of a challenge in it. I just want to hear a little bit more about specifically what would my challenge as his potential client or customer actually be. So anyway, I think, you know, to sum up this top part, does your business have a value challenge? Really, I think the thing that's going to help this be stronger is you've got a really great idea here. How do we put it in the audience language? And if we're asking questions, are these the questions that the audience would ask? He's got a great call to action here with let's talk, yay, and then build your value map. Okay, so if the last thing I read was you can only solve for your value if you clearly describe it, then I want the next thing I read to be this is how you describe it. And build your value map doesn't quite have a tie there. So I want something that links those two. So either a piece of text or something that serves as a transition, Or tweak either the kind of statement, the you can only solve for value if you can clearly describe it, or change the Build Your Value Map. I would suspect he could do something super simple like you can only solve for value if you can clearly describe it that starts with building a value map. Boom, great, scroll down, here's how you build your value map. Now you've got a sense of how does all this work together. Okay, now he talks about the BITS Framework interrogates your best ideas in search of value maxes That's a lot of big words. Okay, so I get that BITS is the Value Interrogation Framework and that's part of Kevin's branding for this, but interrogates is not a word that people use regularly. It's a super word, I love it, and yet in this context, I think it probably needs a little bit more context for people to understand. Because if we're talking about describing and then building a map, now you need to draw for me a connection to how interrogation How asking questions is going to help me do that, right? So I just need a little bit more background on this. And in search of value maximization. Okay, well, now it makes me wonder, is that the challenge that we're looking for? Is this really about how can I maximize the value of my company or the value I can extract from my company? Again, if so, let's make those messages a little more consistent so that people can follow the whole narrative arc. All right, imagine value, create value, capture value, extract value. Okay, that's 4 things, and then I see 5 bubbles. And how does that talk and match to the create, capture, and extract path? So this is really where I think that Kevin has such good information, and what's missing from this message is consistency of his models. I think he's thought a lot about this, and I think he's got some great, deep, interesting perspectives on it, but when someone's first landing on their site, it needs to be, we need to start at the inexpert, non-expert explanation of your idea. And so that probably means come up with which, or feature whichever is your simplest model, and then make sure that all the messaging on that page matches that model. We do that so that we don't have what I like to call competing taxonomies. Lots of big words too, but it means that you don't have these models that don't match and that that mismatch won't cause confusion, right? So we want to make sure that when you're talking about processes or frameworks or pieces and parts that everything matches up because otherwise the audience is pretty sure that they missed something and people don't like to feel like they missed something. I mean, I don't. Do you? Didn't think so. Okay. So, we've got imagine value, create value, capture value, extract value. That's 4 things. So, is that the create, capture, extract path? I mean, again, but then it's commercial beliefs, your best ideas, your value hypothesis, value theory, actionable strategy. Okay. Those are also terms that I am not sure that everybody landing on this are gonna understand. It is, I like the flow, I can kind of follow the flow knowing generally what he's talking about because I mean, I understand the meaning of the words, I don't always understand what they're talking about together. But I'm also curious, particularly in this run, about what is value hypothesis and what's a value theory? So if you're gonna introduce a model and you're gonna put words on it and those words are ownable by you, And you really need to make sure that you are defining those words for people so again you don't lose them. Because there's absolute value in saying, "Hey, this person is super intelligent and super smart and they've really thought about this." But you wanna make sure that you're sharing that intelligence with your audience so that they understand and they can track with you. So good ideas here and I'm really intrigued by all of this, but I am concerned that somebody who isn't as interested in what the idea actually means, how long they would stick with this. And that would be, I think, pretty tragic because it looks to me like Kevin's got a really interesting way to help companies figure out this answer to this, I think, value maximization problem. Okay, so next he goes to BITS, the Value Interrogation Framework, gives your team a process and toolset to conceptualize your value, describe your value, source new value, architecture value, Give your strategy a target. One of these does not match the others, 'cause all of them have value except for the last one. So again, if I had a better understanding of what he means by value, then maybe that fifth one would fit a little bit better. But again, without knowing that, I kind of like, well, where did strategy and target come in? So is it a value strategy? Is it? And consistent with what I've been saying before, how does this relate to the questions and the kind of one big problem that Kevin solves? So I have one other question. BITS, B-I-T-S, seems clearly to be an acronym. What does it stand for? I don't see that. So again, that's one of those things that I want to understand a little bit more. He's got these two calls to actions, our services, find out more. And if we keep going, right at the end, we've got a little bit on Kevin himself. Hey Kevin! And this is one other opportunity just to make this a little bit stronger is to tie your tiny little biography that's here, this little short bio here, even more into the messaging of the rest of the site so far. So if your business and if this framework is all about solving value challenges for business, then bring that language, bring those ideas into the bio itself so it all sits fits in. All right, so let's recap what was making this message strong and what was missing from it that will make it even stronger. So what's here is clearly a lot of really good thinking about how businesses address certain questions around value and a process that helps them solve for those questions. So that's very evident to me as I look through this. What's missing from this message is some consistency around a couple things. One, that audience language and making sure that his definition of value and what he means by these questions is consistent with what the audience means. And that's really simple to fix just by giving us a few more definitions as either in copy or as design elements as he's going through. The second place, and this is the place that I really want to focus for what would make this message even stronger, is consistency of the models, of the frameworks, so that we don't have one 3-step model matched with a 4-step acronym. That match with a 4 steps of value, which don't match the acronym, which match up with a 5-step product or 5-step framework that we see. So help me understand as a reader how those things expand so that they all fit together. And if they don't, well, then that needs to be clear too. So when you're thinking about and looking at your message, really be thoughtful about what is the information that's going to make my audience not only unders— understand but agree and act on what I'm trying to do here. And that starts oftentimes with what is the language that they're trying to use, what is the language that they use. If you want to introduce new language and new ways of thinking, make sure that you're tying those new language and new ways of thinking, new frameworks to what the audience already knows, or make sure that you're defining those for them in a way that they can follow. So thanks so much for Kevin McKenzie and his BITS Framework for sending it it here to me at What's Missing from This Message. As I mentioned earlier, if you want me to take a look at your message, see what's strong and what just might be missing from it, send it to me at redthreadme@tamsenwebster.com. Thanks so much for watching.