Tag: empowerment

More important

FabrizioLeave a comment

The moment you realize you care more about the outcome than about the process, is the moment you have to reassess how you spend your time.

If getting likes is more important than taking pictures.

If cashing the bonus is more important than the work you do.

If growing your audience is more important than writing.

If being acclaimed is more important than what you have to say.

If hitting the goal is more important than how you get to hit it.

That is the right time to look at the second half of your sentence, and honestly answer the question: “Am I enjoying that?”.

Most likely, you have mistaken a dopamine hit for actual pleasure and accomplishment.

It can happen, and you can do something about it.

Concerted

FabrizioLeave a comment

Imagine you meet with some peers. The purpose of the meeting is to decide on changes that will impact many. You keep the meeting secret, and secret are also the follow up conversations that aim at defining the details. You go about it for a while, and then you and your peers go public with a big reveal. Now that the change is public, you go back minding your own business, expecting that everyone else will adapt and adjust accordingly.

I wonder how it would end.

I also wonder how common this situation is in organisations all over the world.

Your effort to promote change is failing because you want change imposed rather than concerted.

What makes us miserable

FabrizioLeave a comment

Acceptance is not about taking what makes us miserable, shutting it in the closet, throwing away the keys, numbing the feelings that inevitably it will keep us giving, and pretending as if that does not exist.

Acceptance is taking what makes us miserable, understanding it, putting it front and center for a while, making friend with it, finding a way to go about our days despite it. Until eventually it will go shut itself in the closet by itself.

The former approach will make misery expand and take new forms. The latter will make it go away once and for all.

Two different ways. Two very different outcomes.

Asking to change

Fabrizio1 Comment

Change is difficult enough when it is us starting it. If we are asked to change for a cause that is not ours, that becomes a whole lot more challenging.

Consider two things.

Those asking for you to change should be less than those supporting you for who you are. When this is not the case, you might have to reconsider your circle, because the unbalance is probably taking a lot of your focus and energy.

Those asking for you to change might either be giving you a kick in the right direction or pulling you in their own direction. While we sometimes need the former, as we might be unable to see the change we need, we very rarely will benefit from the latter.

All their lives

FabrizioLeave a comment

People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole.

If you work in marketing, you have certainly heard this quote by professor Levitt. But that is not true, because nobody wants a quarter-inch hole in their wall. They might want to install some shelves to keep things organized, or perhaps they want to fix the furniture to the wall to prevent it from falling, or they might want a tool that makes them feel more comfortable and ready when there is some work to do around the house.

The point is that you should never stop at your product, nor you should stop at the first thing people do with your product.

Go further, understand their motivations, accompany them on the journey they are taking, and you will be with them all their lives.