Tag: empowerment

Permission marketing

Fabrizio1 Comment

Permission Marketing is a book (and an idea) by Seth Godin that is 20 years old this year. And yet, its message is still so powerful and actual.

Permission is the opposite of interruption.

With traditional media, people’s attention is constantly interrupted with an advertisement, that basically asks them to focus on something they did not want to focus on in the first place. It is an invasive form of doing marketing, and the customer is powerless as the choice is little: whether you are watching television, listening to the radio, driving home after work, your entertainment and train of thoughts is subjected to messages that are short, catchy and completely not requested.

With the Internet and the multiplication of information (and of promotional messages), Godin argues that there is a new possible way to do marketing. A way that aims at establishing a long term relationship with your target audience. A way that is respectful of and empowering for the customer. A way that is possible because, after all, the Internet is not a mass media, but a niche media, “the biggest direct marketing platform that ever exhisted”.

This is permission marketing. Instead of running ads to the mass, you seek to craft a message that resonates with some people (your audience), so that they consent to hear from you again. Permission marketing has three key characteristics.

  • It is anticipated, as people long for it, they want more. They ask “what happened?” if you stop sending them messages.
  • It is personal, or at least it reflects a need for self-identification, and as such it resonates deeply with the wanted identity of the receiver.
  • It is relevant, as it is supposed to be just what the receiver was looking for.

The message is still relevant, as the way we use the Internet today as marketers is much more similar to the way you would use a mass media.

Our inherent laziness makes us believe that by running ads, everywhere, to everyone, and by scaling them when our budget increases, we can actually be successful. And sometimes, that is the case. Yet more often than not, we end up being ignored.

The ironic thing is that marketers have responded to this problem with the single worst cure possible. To deal with the clutter and the diminished effectiveness of Interruption Marketing, they’re interrupting us even more!

Seth Godin

Permission marketing is a long-term effort (Godin compares it to dating to find a life-time partner, while interruption marketing would be more like clubbing) and it consumes one of the scarcest resources in a world that lives at the speed of life: patience. The final result, though, is the creation of a tribe, a passionate relationship with our people that can last forever. Or at least, until we end up betraying the trust we have been given.

 

 

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.

Sit down and watch it grow

FabrizioLeave a comment

One of the most difficult thing when you are in charge is to understand when it’s time to let go.

With the best of conscious intentions, a leader in a growing company may inadvertently generate an endless number of “problems” in order to stay busy, feel needed, and defer the difficult work of figuring out what leadership looks like now that the organization has evolved.

Ed Batista

I have experienced this first hand in different companies. The idea that being busy means being important is something that we all buy into at one point or the other. It is often very dangerous when a company is growing, as the focus of managers and leaders should mainly be on letting go of their duties and their responsibilities, on making sure that the people they manage and lead get the necessary attention, and that the high level strategy and vision gets appropriately translated into day to day actions from their team.

You can get used to this little by little: take something you have built, sit down, delegate and watch it grow without you. It will be liberating and incredibly rewarding.

Whose dream?

FabrizioLeave a comment

I was tired of living someone else’s dream and not living mine.

This is something we hear a lot these days, as we celebrate leaders and not followers.
It is very good to acknowledge, yet it is probably even more important to have the following clear:

1. what your dream is;

2. what living your dream means (in terms of sacrifices, things to leave behind, compromises to make, and so on);

3. living someone else’s dream is not a subpar option (the dream might be, but there are plenty out there).

Burning or building

Fabrizio4 Comments

There are two ways to approach failure.

Focus on blame. And then put all your energy in arguing, sentencing, punishing, recovering from the missed opportunity, and eventually (only eventually, with what’s left) rush to some practical action.

Or focus on responsibility. Own it, consult for possible solutions, move on to mitigating actions, and genuinely learn from what has happened.

The first approach burns bridges. It aims at making things clear, crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s, shaming those involved, making sure this will not happen ever again. Even when we do not mean ill, the results are the same. And we are a bit more alone, no matter if the failure was on us.

The second approach builds bridges. It aims at creating a connection, finding ways to work together, building resilience and be ready for the next one. It is incremental, and the more you do it, the more benefit you and the ones around you will get from it.

The same thing is valid for change as well, by the way.