Category: leadership

What they do need

FabrizioLeave a comment

Just adding to Seth Godin’s list.

I’d like my Android phone to know when it is a bank holiday in Finland, and ask me the day before whether I still want my weekdays alarm on.

I’d like any social media to use the timeline to display what I am actually interested in (i.e., the stuff I follow), rather than second guess my personal taste.

I’d like advertising platforms to ask me whether I am looking to buy a car, what type of car, what budget I have, instead of interrupting my daily flow with generic car ads, when I have already bought a car two months ago.

I’d like LinkedIn to understand I am not seeking for employment when Finnish is a requirement, and therefore stop matching my profile with job ads that are completely in Finnish.

I’d like the Google Assistant to answer my questions as an assistant would, rather than listing what they have found on the web (thanks, I can do a Google search on my own).

I’d like Outlook to still send me an email notification for updates to events I have already accepted, instead of sending them directly to the trash bin.

At some point, companies stop serving the needs of their customers and start pursuing revenue only. If we stop idolizing their success, if we free ourselves from the need to become the next billion dollars deal, we realize that there are infinite challenges that demand the attention of our organizations. And we can perhaps manage to take a tiny, little piece of a market.

Here is to the many definitions of success.

Commit to delivering

FabrizioLeave a comment

What do you value most?

Being right or getting things done?

If you spend time proving you are right, searching for evidence to argue against others, making sure everyone understands and recognizes your contribution, hoping that others will fail, things will be slow.

If on the other hand you are committed to delivering, being right becomes a nonproblem. You accept things and let go of things for the sake of a greater purpose.

It won’t take long to realize you can’t have both.

Impulse

FabrizioLeave a comment

The impulse to control, dictate, micro-manage is strong.

We just have to think carefully at what happens when we do it.

Example: a colleague is planning to send out an important email. You submit to the impulse and ask to review it first. The colleague obliges and shares a draft with you. You once again submit to the impulse and, since you do not really have time for this, give them some broad feedback about tone of voice and points to make. They edit the draft and send it back. For the third time, you submit to the impulse and go deep with comments, edits, and formatting. They end up sending your version.

The results.

  1. You are exhausted and you have lost the chance to focus on something that was truly your responsibility.
  2. They are demotivated, because they are probably good to write an email on their own.
  3. The outcome is most likely not going to be what either of you expected, adding to exhaustion and demotivation.

That is a lot of negativity spread around just because you once sent out an email that – in that particular context – turned out to get a pretty positive response.

Get out of the way.

From the top

FabrizioLeave a comment

There are companies where it is normal to talk about mistakes and failures, and there are companies where all you hear is success, success, success.

Of course, the latter still make mistakes. It’s just that their culture makes it very difficult to go out there and say: “here, I have done this, and I was wrong”. So, mistakes are repeated over time. People feel stuck, learning is at a minimum, frustration rises.

Fortunately, there is something very concrete that leaders can do. They can share their own failures as learning opportunity for their own group.

It always starts from the top.

In context

FabrizioLeave a comment

In it’s most popular form, Goodhart’s law states that when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.

You do not have a healthy company because your revenue increases year after year. Revenue is just one measure of the health of a company, and it should be put in context.

You do not have a great place to work because your engagement score says so. Engagement score is just one measure of how your employees feel, and it should be put in context.

You do not have a terrific team because they meet their targets quarter after quarter. Numbers are just one measure of how well your team is doing, and they should be put in context.

You do not have a successful campaign because you are getting clicks. Clicks are just one measure of the success of a campaign, and they should be put in context.

The point is, measures are easy to game, and the more you put them at the center of every conversation, the more people will be inclined to game them.

It takes time and effort to take the whole picture into consideration. It takes awareness, it takes courage, it takes honesty. It is the only way you can truly assess how you are doing and make adjustments, so that you don’t wake up one day in a place where you had never wanted to go.