Category: leadership

Sit down and watch it grow

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One of the most difficult thing when you are in charge is to understand when it’s time to let go.

With the best of conscious intentions, a leader in a growing company may inadvertently generate an endless number of “problems” in order to stay busy, feel needed, and defer the difficult work of figuring out what leadership looks like now that the organization has evolved.

Ed Batista

I have experienced this first hand in different companies. The idea that being busy means being important is something that we all buy into at one point or the other. It is often very dangerous when a company is growing, as the focus of managers and leaders should mainly be on letting go of their duties and their responsibilities, on making sure that the people they manage and lead get the necessary attention, and that the high level strategy and vision gets appropriately translated into day to day actions from their team.

You can get used to this little by little: take something you have built, sit down, delegate and watch it grow without you. It will be liberating and incredibly rewarding.

Discrimination is never a business choice

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If you own a business, I still believe you should be free to decide who you serve. It is unpleasant, inappropriate and unsavvy if you base this decision on traits such as race, religion, sexual orientation, political support, and similar. Yet it is a decision you should be able to make.

On the other hand, you should also be aware of something.

If your decision is discriminatory, you are also contributing to a more closed community. If you only serve people of a certain race, religion, sexual orientation, you should expect a selection in your clientele. And possibly in your staff, in your entourage, in people hanging around your business, in people making decisions about your business, in who’s giving you feedback, in who’s recommending how to improve. And on and on and on.

It might be exactly what you are seeking to achieve, and yet there is no way the type of environment you are building around your business will make you thrive, succeed and, eventually, grow as a human being and as a business leader. You’ll be poorer, in quite many ways, and so will your community.

If you don’t want certain customers for silly reasons, you’ll end up worst off. What you are doing is not conscious, it’s the mere result of the hype on an issue set by some politicians or unthoughtful leaders who care zero about you.

How to win friends and influence people

Fabrizio2 Comments

The very same title kept me from reading How to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnagie for a long time. The idea that friends can be won and people influenced was something I just could not digest. People (and friends alike) would love me not because of some weird subterfuge, but certainly because of who I was and how I behaved.

The fact is, this book is a must read for everybody who wants to know how to make a relationship work. Any type of relationship, though Carnagie focuses mainly on business relationships.

The message is as simple and commonsensical as it is difficult to put into practice: if you want to have meaningful and satisfying relationships in your life, just forget about yourself.

This does not mean you have to obliterate yourself in the presence of others, or that others can do anything to you and you should just accept it and be greatful for their consideration.

It means that the next time you are talking to somebody, you should stop thinking about what’s the next smart thing you are going to say as soon as they make a pause; you should stop wondering about the fallacies of their argument to counter them with your infallible logic; you should stop telling about how wonderful you are and how they should change to match your worldview.

Instead, you could open to the other person in the conversation, do that genuinely and from the heart, focus on what they are telling you and make sure they walk out of the dialogue with a higher self-esteem they had before joining it.

Few points from the book that really resonated with me. And to some extent changed my approach to relationships.

People are not “creatures of logic”, they are “creatures of emotions”. If we really think that by proving the validity of our argument we will win their hearts, their minds and their actions, we are delusional. In this sense, Carnagie says, “any fool can criticize, condemn and complain but it takes character and self control to be understanding and forgiving”. That’s where true power lies.

Avoid interrupting others, even if it is to share an incredible idea you just had while they were talking. Leave them space to talk about themselves, and be sure you are interested and listening. At some point in my career, I realised how I had stopped asking people how they were when meeting them, probably because at some unconscious level I was not interested in knowing that. I have changed course, also thanks to this recommendation. Now, when I get asked “how are you?”, I try to keep my answer as short and to the point as possible, and then ask back “and what about you instead?”. And I listen to the answer, carefully.

I have mentioned this next point already once in my blog, and I consider it my personal key take away from reading How to win friends and influence people.

You can’t win an argument. You can’t because if you lose it, you lose it; and if you win it, you lose it.

Have you ever been so passionately and unconditionally convinced by somebody else who just proved you wrong, to go as far as changing your mind, and actually liking the person? Of course not, and others as well do not appreciate being told they are wrong. Again, this does not mean you should abandon all your opinions and ideas. It just means that it’s not by arguing that you will have other people’s goodwill. Finding common ground and moving forward together is a much better and more sensitive approach.

And finally, give praise to others. Not generic “good job”. Tell them that for sure, and also why they did a good job, what you were impressed with, why, why it is important and what would that mean to you if they would do it again. We love to be praised, and yet we find it so difficult to praise others. Make it a daily habit, if needed, and get used to it so much so that it becomes natural and genuine.

What marketing is not

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The inability to listen. The idea that by interrupting and telling your story people will be amazed. The practice of segmenting into hundreds of small niches to feed them whatever they want today. The ideas of optimization, hacking, ranking, fans and followers. The belief that data is better than interactions. The effort to second-guess needs and wants to stay clear of the risk of asking. The easy shortcut of personalised and automated user journey. The unrelentless focus on growth.

Marketing is not ruining the world. The things above are. And at the same time they set expectations, both for marketers and customers, that cannot be met, leading to inevitable dissatisfaction.

Key insights and themes from the research include:

  • Data is a dilemma. But “big data” isn’t marketing’s biggest challenge. It is actually the “small data” – the data used to describe the small, specific attributes delivered directly from the customer through, as an example, the Internet of Things. 36 percent of respondents believe that small data will be the greatest challenge for the organization.
  • We’ve lost the ability to be human, and we can’t blame the machines. Some 41 percent admit that they are overly focused on driving campaigns, forgetting that they are building relationships. Nearly 30 percent admit they think of their customers in terms of targets, records and opportunities – interestingly an equal amount admit that they are also struggling to define and deliver returns from customer experience strategies.
  • Going small could bring our humanity back. Marketers believe small data will help extract better signal from the noise (45 percent), reveal the “why” behind customer actions and behaviors (41 percent), help focus on the people behind the data to deliver more human interactions (35 percent) and aid in filling key gaps across the customer journey (35 percent.)

CMO Council Research

 

When does feedback matter?

Fabrizio1 Comment

Feedback is important, and as I wrote before the only thing to say when we get it is “thank you”.

Yet, we should not fall into the trap of taking action on every piece of feedback we get. Feedback is about the person who is giving it much more than it is about the person who is getting it. If I tell somebody “you should be more productive”, that simply means that the person does not fit into my idea of productivity. If somebody tells me “you should listen more”, that simply means that from where they stand, they are under the impression I am not listening enough.

Consider three things when you get feedback.

Who is giving it? Is that a person you care about, somebody important in your life? Is that your customer, or somebody your work is not intended for? Is that a friend, a family-member, somebody who knows you intimately?

What channel is it coming from? Did they bother picking up the phone, sharing their thoughts face-to-face, at least letting you know who they are? Or is it an anonymous feedback, something you are reading on social media, the starred opinion of a faceless and nameless reader?

What are they saying? Is it something you are hearing for the first time, or something somebody else has already noticed about you in the past? Is it a piece of advice you can act on, or just an opinion, a feeling, a thought? Are they sharing kindly, from the bottom of their heart, or are they being mean, malicious, trying to elicit any kind of reaction?

Once you have considered all this, of course still say “thank you”. And take action only if it makes sense. Otherwise, move on and continue delivering your best work.