Author: Fabrizio

Specific

Fabrizio1 Comment

Would you rather buy services from:

  1. A company that promises to improve your workforce efficiency;
  2. A company that promises to reduce the lead time of your projects by 10%;
  3. A company that promises to digitalize your paperwork and automate some of the most tedious of your processes, therefore reducing lead time of your projects by 10%;
  4. A company that promises to give your project managers the tools to digitalize the documents coming from customers and partners, to ensure they move through project lifecycle with digital assignments and approvals, and produce an exact report of what was done, when, by whom useful both for the customers and for your internal finance department. All of this, estimated to reduce lead time of your projects by 10%.

It is a matter of specificity, of course.

There is no difference between product 1, 2, 3, and 4. What changes is the level to which the company providing the service demonstrates to know what you are dealing with day after day.

Moving from option 1 to option 4 requires more data, more research, more effort. And to motivate the investment, just survey some of the websites of your competitors and alternatives: how many belong in every category? A fairly common situation is: 80% use option 1; 15% use option 2; 4% use option 3; 1% use option 4.

So, does being specific pay?

The people you lead

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It is the most difficult thing to understand, and perhaps the single biggest differentiator between a good leader and a mere manager.

The moment you start leading a team of people, your main responsibility shifts to them.

It is not to your boss, it is not to the management team, it is not to the executives, to other departments, to the board or to the company. Of course you also have responsibilities to these individuals and groups. But the main one, the one that defines your role, the one for which you will be measured in your leadership skills is to the people you lead.

Do you know them? Do you know their fears, motivators, ambitions, strengths? Do you know how they feel? Are you ready to have difficult conversations with them? Do you have an idea of where they have been professionally and have a plan for their future development? Do they come to you with ideas? Do you challenge them with problems? How do you discuss with them about their mistakes?

It is an extremely important relationship to build. And you have to allocate time for that before anything else.

Nothing wrong

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I did nothing wrong.

Defensiveness is often the go-to strategy when we are put on the spot. In all honesty, though, we would be more accurate saying I did mean nothing wrong, or even better My intentions were in the right place.

When somebody negatively reacts to something we did or said, something clicks in our mind that forces us to preserve our reputation. It is a natural mechanism, nothing easily preventable, but if you think about it, that “something” is assuming that: 1. we are infallible; 2. if we fail, we fail deeply, as a person, as a human being.

Both are false, of course. And so, next time you feel the urge to say I did nothing wrong, stop for a moment and try instead asking How did what I said felt?, or What can I do better next time?, or even How can I make this right?

It is only by avoiding to take things personally and by expressing a real interest in what the others feel and perceive that we can build strong relationships.

And become, little by little, an improved version of a human being.

It does not matter

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There are always countless reasons to drop a practice.

A bad day. The shouting with your partner the night before. Laziness. Your boss just drops trivial tasks on your desk. Friends never call. That asshole just cut me off. Nobody is ever interested in what I do. It is always raining and the weather is crap. After all, why should it matter?

And so on.

I have dropped more practices than I care to admit myself. Until I realised, few years ago, that practices are not about perfection, good weather, healthy relationships, and praises from strangers.

Practices are about habit.

Practices are about commitment.

Practices are about doing.

And if you do long enough, you still get all of the above (and some more) and it does not matter.

The right time

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How often do you feel confident showing your work?

Probably almost never. Showing your work is difficult. It means opening up to the judgement of others, accepting you might have done something others will not pick, transitioning control from you to the rest of the world. And so, you keep your work hidden. You continue adding to it, refining it, editing it, perfecting it. The right time, of course, will never come.

As many other things, showing your work is a muscle. It can get trained. Do it once, do it twice, do it ten times, and eventually it will become natural.

Start today.

P.S.: A great question to ask when you are this kind of stuck (or any kind of stuck) is always: “what is the worst thing that could happen?“. The point being: the absolute worst thing is probably very unlikely to happen, while the worst thing that is likely to happen is often something you can easily live through. As a matter of fact, you probably have already in the past. Keep yourself anchored.