Tag: change

Against denigration and disregard

Fabrizio5 Comments

We attach labels to people and groups of people, partly because we try to make sense of what we do not understand, and partly to reinforce our identity and belonging to a different group.

“People that are born in that period are weak.”
“People that work in that team are lazy.”
“People that come from that geographical area are dishonest.”

Even if we assume that these types of labels have some truth behind them (they usually do not and are more of a reflection of our internal insecurities, yet humor me for the sake of the argument), the best and more effective approach would be to first understand the deeper level of the manifestation that inititated the labelling, and then try to imagine and build an environment in which the deeper reason can either be leveraged or addressed.

So, for example, if we believe that a group of people is particularly weak, on a deeper level this might mean that they are better in touch with their own feelings and emotions. As a reaction, we could try to figure out a way to make sure that their improved understanding of their selves could be employed and put to good use.

If we assert that a certain team or department is lazy, it might be because they do not have the tools necessary to effectively do their job, or because their team lead is not sufficiently motivating. As a reaction, we might want to try to facilitate their tasks and work in any possible way, or look for another manager.

This happens very seldom. The easiest and most common reaction to labelling is either denigration or disregard. Denigration is where every form of extremism is born: we reinforce the labelling by supporting it with every evidence we might find, and we feed it to the public forum every time it is possible. Disregard is instead working around the group and their characteristics, building walls to keep them out, pretending they do not exist.

It takes a great deal of awareness and courage to act differently when we catch ourselves in lazy labelling.

There is no such thing as a free social media platform

Fabrizio1 Comment

We are hitting our heads against a wall.

For years, we have believed in the myth of “free”. Listening to music was free, watching a video was free, posting your piece of content was free. Whether you were an individual or a company, you could get in front of a fairly wide audience with a very small investment of energy and time, and essentially without spending any money. And of course, as we were getting blinded by the allure of “free”, we forgot about a very important fundamental.

There is no such thing as a free lunch.

Even when things appear to be free, they are not.

While we have not paid a dime to publish and distribute our content for the past decade or so, we have most likely contributed to the impoverishment of our society and to the extremization of the public discourse.

Furthermore, as marketers we keep banging our heads against the wall every time a platform curbs our potential to reach our audience (current or wanted). We might just understand and accept that those platforms do not exist to allow us to spread our message to whoever we want. And instead we first spend weeks over weeks complaining about how our posts used to get 1000 and now gets 200. Then, we try to game the algorithms, we hack a bit further to try to squeeze more, we ask strangers of dubious reputation to publish or click on links just to try to increase our content’s rank, we use shortcuts to boost metrics that have absolutely no business relevance.

The basics of marketing have been the same for decades, and if we manage to stop our head just for a second, we can see that is what still matters nowadays.

  1. Understand who your audience is.
  2. Ask what they need help with.
  3. Match your product or service to the help needed.

The rest is noise. It distracts us from achieving things that matter and from delivering meaningful change.

On getting stuck

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One week ago I got stuck.

I had 98 blog post published, and was about to write number 99. The night before, I had prepared a LinkedIn article to celebrate post number 100. I was quite proud of the result, and I felt on a roll with writing. I started thinking that perhaps I could regularly write longer articles, both on LinkedIn and Medium. Who knows, with a bit of luck I could also publish on some of the local webzines, just to have an additional outlet for the need to share my ideas.

And I got stuck.

It was the first time in more than three months writing every day I felt like I had a completely blank mind. No ideas. I started writing two or three times, on two or three different topics. Some paragraphs, I actually got a post almost complete, and then I realized it was not good enough. I deleted it and started from scratch. The blinking cursor was a terrible countdown.

I breathed. I remembered the reasons why I am doing this. And I took a break. I also told my wife I was stuck, and that helped elaborating the frustration and the dissappointed. After about twenty minutes, I went back to the computer and I wrote blog post number 99.

There are so many elements of resistance in this brief moment of panic. I had set an unimportant target that put pressure on me (the blog post 100 meant I could publish my first article on LinkedIn); suddenly, I had started overworrying about the quality of my posts, and of course I had immediately turned hypercritical (the deleted post would have probably been good enough on a different day); and eventually, my mind shut down completely, refusing to produce any idea to put into words.

These type of moments happen all the time you have to use consistently your brain to achieve something that matters. Be aware and kind to yourselves, and remember that more often than not, taking a deep breath and a break will get you unstuck.

Messages that spread and stick

Fabrizio1 Comment

Few days back, I was skimming through a book I found at work (Lencioni’s The Advantage), and I found a very appropriate metaphor for how communication works in the workplace. According to the author, it’s like in the old sketch where the wife is mad at her husband since he never says that he loves her.

“I told you once when we got married”, he retorts. “I’ll let you know if things change!”.

Very often, this is how people communicate in a professional setting. There is a meeting in which something is announced and it is expected for everyone to be on the same page and working toward the same goal. An email is sent to inform of a major change, and employees are supposed to know of the change, of what it implies for their work, of what repercussions it will have on their department, and so on. In more informal settings, it is not unusual to hear of a manager informing a team member in the office kitchen that the project the team was working on has been postponed, and then imagine that they would know exactly how to react to that and what to focus their attention on next.

Interpersonal communication is complex and fragile. Even more so when multiple people are involved. If we have a message that touches many and needs to spread and stick, we should follow few generic rules.

First of all, be ready to repeat. Nobody likes to be repetitive, and yet that is the best way to have a message stick. Neither does anybody like to be boring, and that is why we should avoid a “copy-pasting” effect and find different ways to deliver the core message we want to share. The core message – it could be summarised with “what” and “why” – needs to be very clear to the messenger. It might sound trivial, yet think about the difficulties many experienced people have in elaborating on the reasoning behind their decisions.

Then, be ready to experiment, with different channels and different formats. People have variegated ways to absorb information. Some like to read, some prefer a face-to-face interaction, some like meetings, some informal conversations, some need a visual representation of what is being discussed. Be bold, do not stick to what is usually done in the organisation. It’s worth it if you believe your message is really important. And try to put some video in the mix, particularly if you want to reach wide.

Finally, be ready to ask. Any type of communication is usually accompanied by the assumption that we have been understood and action will follow. That is almost never true. Ask if people have got it, if they are clear on the different implications of your message, touch base with them after one, three, six months and see if they still remember the “what” and the “why”. And if you have a doubt, go back to repeat and experiment until you are more than sure.

I know it sounds like a lot of job, yet we all need to embrace our role as Chief Reminding Officer when we have something we deeply care about to share within our organisation. If we do not do that, we risk to be rowing the boat by ourselves, and that is much tougher in the long term.

Leave some empty space

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We used to have three hangers on the wall of our hallway, mainly to hang the kids’ outdoor clothes. We soon realized they were not enough, as some of the clothes inevitably ended up on the floor. We added two, and yet a jacket or some outdoor trousers were still continuosly out of place. We now have seven (and a wicker basket), and you can imagine it is still tricky to walk in our hallway without stepping on a hat, a pair of gloves or a reflective vest (very much needed during the dark winters in Finland).

The fact is, we tend to fill the space we are given. In an unusual application of Parkinson’s law, if we have an additional room, we end up buying more stuff to put into it. Similarly, if we are given more and unexpected time, we probably end up wasting it with activities we would not have done otherwise (social media, anyone?); and if an organization is gifted with growth, it most likely invests it in achieving even more growth (more personnel, more offices, more complexity).

What if, instead, we would leave some empty spaces in our lives? What if the next time we have five extra minutes before the following appointment, we just sit down and think? What if we say no to that customer, or to expanding to a new market, or to launching yet another product line, so that the people that are already in can actually enjoy the moment of success?

Would that be so dramatic? Or would we be more rested, prepared and galvanized for what comes next?