Category: leadership

Nobody likes

FabrizioLeave a comment

There’s quite a lot of time wasted in organizations doing repetitive stuff that a computer would do best. The technology is already available, yet this change is strongly resisted. For two very human reasons.

First, when you cut on repetitive tasks consistently and over time you get to a point at which you have to start letting people go. Nobody likes to do that. Of course, an alternative would be to retrain the people freed of the burden of manual tasks, but that would be two additional problems: finding a good retraining programme that is useful for the organisation, and convincing the employee who has been in the same field for thirty years that’s the right thing to do. Nobody likes to tackle more problems. And so the problems (all three of them) stay.

Then, implementing automation to cut on unprofitable tasks means taking a step back, possibly slowing down for a certain period, until the benefits of having more time starts to kick in. Nobody likes to slow down. With the illusion of continuos growth, we just have to keep going, no matter what. And growth also gives us the illusion that we can throw money at inefficiency, for example by hiring more, therefore further feeding the moster that is wasted time.

The problem is that sooner or later this kind of slack built around the delivery of value is going to take over, and your organisation will become obsolete and replaceable.

It’s an important conversation to have, and you can’t start having it soon enough.

Your own authenticity

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Consistency and authenticity are about doing what you expect of yourself, not what others expect of you.

Even when something is useless, even when nobody is paying attention, even when 99.9% of people would act differently, even when you will not get any reward. Doing that is what builds your persona, your character, your set of values, your story. And by doing it repeatedly, you are authentic.

Others are unfathomable, they falter, they change, they do not know you and what you are around to do. They know themselves, and they can choose, each one of them, for their own consistency.

Take ownership of your own.

About helping

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Helping others is not always easy, but it’s always the right thing to do.

Of course, “others” does not mean everybody. You have limits, boundaries and restrictions, and being aware of those is very important for your support to be effective. Similarly, “helping” takes different shapes in different situations, and you will find that what you did to help somebody might simply not work to help another.

Start with yourself, get a solid grasp on your own life, and then relentlessly open up to the others and be present. This might sound like a long way, but it might be the only alternative to “let me know if you need anything”.

Shout

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What is it that you have that others don’t?

What can you offer that is unique, difficult to replicate and of value?

What do you have to say that we have not heard a thousand times before?

If you try to get the attention with something that is in abundance, the only chance you’ll have is to shout louder. And that’s a lost game already, as you’ll always find someone who can shout louder than you (perhaps not today, but tomorrow for sure).

If instead your art, product, content, service is different, you have the option to shape your way to your audience, sit down and listen, learn, get better, make it better, and eventually establish a position that is going to be difficult to replace with something else.

It’s the power of relationships, after all.

The perfect excuse

Fabrizio5 Comments

They don’t care.

It’s the perfect excuse, an impenetrable shield when we have something to ship.

It’s perfect and impenetrable because of course they do not care.

Why should they? Why should somebody that is not you care about the job you have to do, the impact you are trying to have in the world, the change you are out to make?

Perhaps, all of that is going to impact more people than anything else before. And yet until the impact has happened, until everything is done and complete, until you’ve moved on to something else (and perhaps even for a little while after that), no one will care.

If we are doing things with the expectation that others will confirm their validity, that they will see how great they are and give us some sort of reward, we are already set up for failure.

Important job is for ourselves in the first place.

It’s the type of job you would do when nobody is watching, when you are left alone, when you have no team and no company. It matters to you, and that’s why you should go ahead and ship it. All the others will give it a look, at best, and then move on with their big thing.