Tag: communication

The people you want to change

FabrizioLeave a comment

Some problems would greatly benefit from a more customer centric approach.

One of them is cybersecurity. We all laugh at how silly it is to use “1234” or “p4ssw0rd” as credentials to access any type of service, and we all know we should not use the same password on different websites, or stick the password on our computers. And yet, most people do just that. Because keeping in mind more than a bunch of easy-to-remember passwords is taxing, because not all are aware of password managers softwares (they don’t come preinstalled in your devices), and because even when you install one you realize that the experience is not exactly easy – between syncing across devices, two-factors authentication, master password recovery, and whatnot.

If change in the world is what we seek to achieve, we need to be brutally focused on how the people we want to change go about their routines, what they care about, why they should even bother, and what we can do to actually enhance their lives while change makes it course. Resistance and indifference is the other side of the coin, and in some cases it might mean a whole lot worse consequences than the failure of a business.

People is our most important asset

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For founders and start-ups managers, here is a list of things that’s beyond what you should expect of your employees.

Being loyal to your cause.

Being as excited about your cause as you are.

Doing extra work without being paid.

Doing basic work without being paid (fairly).

Being self-motivated.

Doing work without recognition.

Doing work that is beyond the job description you’ve hired them for, or the title you have given them.

Putting up with your lack of vision, planning, communication, transparency.

Participating in every after-work activity for team building.

Interpreting uncertainty and change as a free pass for mean managerial behaviour.

Agreeing to the fact that your busyness is more important than their busyness.

Finding answers to questions you don’t even ask.

Carving their way into career development.

Learning by themselves.

Accept that somebody with more experience will come in at some point and start telling them what to do.

If people is really your most important asset, you could start by having a honest look at this list. Leave your excuses on the side for a moment, and mark the items on which you are failing your employees. Ask how you can do better. And then do it.

Just a story

Fabrizio1 Comment

Somehow we’ve all bought into the story that marketing is about tactics, hacks, posts, optimisation and measurement.

It’s an interesting story, one that somehow feeds both our need to stay ahead of the curve and our tendency to aimlessly complain when things don’t work.

The genius of Google and Facebook as platforms is that they are impossible to master. Can anybody name a company that has developed long term sustainable advantage from the mastery of Google and Facebook? … They have not become tools, they have become taxes that every one needs to pay.

Scott Galloway, PIVOT podcast ep. 188

It’s an interesting story, yet a story nonetheless.

The reality is very different: it’s made of mistakes in the very same metrics we have become accustomed to measure our marketing success by, it’s made of businesses that make money inflating those metrics with no top or bottom line benefit for the advertisers, it’s made of pointless efforts to optimise the unoptimisable while the platform owner brings the whole thing in a totally different direction.

What’s next for marketing is hopefully a reckoning that it’s not the platform, or the channel, or the single tactic, or the brand new hack that builds a meaningful, long-term connection. What’s next is hopefully a return to the lost fundamentals, and an increased awareness that there’s not a single way to reach that person that matters so much. Always start from them and you will win.

Presenting

Fabrizio1 Comment

If you are preparing to deliver a presentation that matters (to you), consider the following.

Start with the audience and the change you’d like to see (even when you are just presenting results, you are still demanding a change). List them down somewhere and have them visible throughout the process.

Have the deck ready early, at least a week before the presentation.

Little text on a slide is always better than more. Always.

A list is a list even without a bullet.

Allow enough time to collect and implement the needed feedback. If you get feedback too close to the time you are supposed to deliver the presentation (<24hrs), be brave and disregard it.

Write a script for the key points and the transition between slides.

Rehearse the presentation multiple times, keeping the script at hand, but without reading it.

Few hours before the actual delivery, free your mind and take a break from the presentation. Do something else. The deck is ready by now, and so you are.

Good luck.

Everything you say you’ll do

FabrizioLeave a comment

There are not many things you are asked to do when you lead other people.

Certainly, making sure your team has the needed support. Financial, political, and technical support. Also, truly listening to and caring for your team members, including helping them find a career trajectory they are comfortable with. Finally, taking difficult decisions when things stall or risk to stall, possibly with the aid of a transparent and candid process everyone in the team understands and trusts.

And then, of course, there’s everything you say you’ll do. This is as important as the three points above, as it sets the tone for the type of relationship you are going to build with your people. If you start not delivering on things you yourself have taken ownership for, even worst if you are not open and don’t explain when that happens, why that happened, then the relationship is going to be weak and feeble. And it will be very difficult to turn that around.

Good thing is, you choose what you promise. Choose mindfully.