The excitement of an overachievement can ruin the chances of the following run.
If the result was brilliant, why was it? What happened that made it so? Who was involved, what were the circumstances, what is likely to change? How similar is all of that to what will happen next?
All questions to answer before taking the overachievement at face value and decide that it is the new normal.
Companies talk a whole lot about individuals and they don’t talk enough about systems.
That person is not performing.
That lady is challenging.
That guy is always late.
That colleague never comes to the office.
That hire was a mistake.
And to be honest, if it happens once in a while, those statements might also be true.
But most companies spend too much time in what is not so different than gossiping, when often problems are in the way things are done, the way people are managed, the processes everyone is asked to follow.
We have made marketing a commodity. We have made it about scale, repetition, numbers, algorithms. We have made it a matter of point-to-point measurement and one-way funnel.
And now we worry that a machine can take our job?
AI will replace you if you think that marketing is a “if this then that” statement, if you look at a blog post only in terms of keyword density, if you consider an ICP something to bend at your own need.
For all the others, we still very much need you.
It’s not the rise of the robots that frightens me.
It’s the rise of all those corporatists who have forgotten that humans matter.
George Tannenbaum, Rising. Falling. Choosing.
I think there might be an opportunity there.
That’s a sentence that destroys focus, motivation, productivity. Because it is true, there probably is an opportunity here, there, and everywhere in between. And that’s not a good reason to pause and go pursue it.
Everyone who is about to get promoted to a higher role that requires them to manage people, should sit in a meeting and demonstrate that they can:
If they talk too much, if they interrupt others, if they ignore the person who is silent, if they don’t ask open questions and listen, if they go back to the same topics every other meeting.
They are not fit for the role.
You've got this 