Tag: change

Agent or spectator

FabrizioLeave a comment

The fact with difficult conversations is that you can delay them, but you cannot delay the negative effects of the situation that made them necessary in the first place.

If a colleague is under performing and you have to pick up their slack, silence will not improve things. If your boss is not giving you what you demand, silence will not make them change. If the team you are working in has a toxic culture, silence will not make that more digestible.

Also, more likely than not, eventually the outcome you fear and that justified the delay is going to materialize no matter what. That colleague is probably going to be fired anyway, your boss is going to get rid of you, or you are going to get rid of them, the team will have to make some drastic changes one way or the other.

So, at the end of the day it is mainly a matter of being an agent of change or a spectator. The former makes you waste a lot less time, and you have no time to waste.

Tired

FabrizioLeave a comment

As a general rule, writing less rather than more is a wise decision.

And when you are tired, writing less rather than more should be an imperative. When you are tired, ideas gets fuzzy, reasoning falters, words get mixed up. Adding another sentence, another paragraph, another page will not make your argument stronger.

Of course, it is also possible to not write at all. Go get some rest, and get back to what seems the most urgent matter of the moment when it does not seem as urgent anymore (a night of sleep has this power).

Businesses would benefit immensely from this practice.

Care enough

FabrizioLeave a comment

Your colleague does not know how to proceed with their project, there is not much you can do about it.

The executive team has made a decision about a new direction for the company, there is not much you can do about it.

That member of your team is demotivated and you are pretty sure they have started looking for a job, there is not much you can do about it.

The agency is not delivering the quality of work you were expecting for the price you are paying, there is not much you can do about it.

Customers do not understand what you have to offer or why they should care, there is not much you can do about it.

Except, of course, there is.

There is always something you can do about it, provided you care enough. A pep talk, a note, an alternative, a plan, some learning, real positivity, an email, a smile, some words of encouragement, a lot of influencing, long term commitment, a sincere interest.

So, when you go for inertia, at least own the decision: “I am sorry, this is just not important enough for me right now to try to do something to change things”.

Timing

FabrizioLeave a comment

It might be that after the hyped launch, the excellent marketing execution, the promise of a new way, the vision of a better future, and much more, Hey.com is just asking too much of its audience.

Because investing time and money in a channel (email) that most people consider as that tiny room in their house nobody ever opens, full of unorganised crap you should have trashed years ago but never did, is a huge ask. We can probably all live with that type of mess in our lives. It is stressful, it is impractical, it is clunky. But we can still go there once or twice a day to see if anything worthy happened (usually not), and then go back to using more modern and comfortable means of communication for the majority of our interactions. Who cares if there are 1,346 unread messages, junk messages, when we will never ever pay any attention to them?

And so, Hey.com might just be misplaced in time, based on the assumption that we actually care while we do not. There is no great product, no flawless on-boarding, no inspiring mission that can revert this.

Hard work

FabrizioLeave a comment

Hard work, they say, will lead you to success.

But hard work is not working 14 hours a day, weekends included, allowing yourself little sleep, few acquaintances, overworking your team members, writing three paragraphs when one would be enough, replying to all incoming emails within minutes, taking more tasks than you can handle because a promotion is in the air, eating crap because you have no time, a constant status of busyness.

We should stretch the idea of hard work along time and understand that hard work is consistency, determination, showing up with no regard for the reward. Hard work is long term.

Hard work is practice.