Tag: entrepreneurship

The right thing

Fabrizio1 Comment

When we do the right thing we often tend to think in terms of output.

I spoke of the injustice so they would see and fix it.

I called out that person for their behavior so they would be punished.

I studied hard for this exam so I would pass.

I have shared my experience so you would not make the same mistake.

But doing the right thing is more of a matter of input.

It is your values, your story, your purpose that you feed into the thing to make it right. What happens after should really not be that important.

Your phone

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If you keep your phone on your desk while working, you get distracted.

If you turn it down, set it to silent or vibrate, you still get distracted.

If you put it somewhere else in the same room, you still get distracted.

If you leave it in your bag or in your coat, you still get distracted.

If someone separates you from your phone, you still get distracted.

And this means that you have increasing difficulties both when trying to access knowledge that you already have and when facing new problems that require new information (see Ward et al., 2017).

The most reliable way to avoid this is to train in being intentionally distant from your phone. It might sound as a difficult thing to do, and still nurturing a habit of doing without distraction can give a concrete and tremendous competitive advantage. Professionally, personally, and even sentimentally.

Today is a great day to start.

The greatest illusion

Fabrizio3 Comments

Here is an extract from the lawsuit that is rocking social media, particularly interesting for marketers.

253. For example, as a result of Facebook’s unlawful conduct and harm to competition alleged above, advertisers are harmed by a lack of transparency about Facebook’s reporting metrics, inability to audit Facebook’s reporting metrics, unreliable metrics due to Facebook error, and the prevalence of fake accounts. In addition, they are unable to ensure the same ad is not shown to the same person across media platforms. Without accurate information about performance, advertisers cannot accurately assess the value of their ad spend on Facebook’s properties.

Full text here

Of course, we have known this for a while now, right?

The great illusion that social media has created for marketers is that they can be mastered. And if we are not deeply mad about all this, as professional marketers, then we are complicit. After all, it is easy to be fascinated by views going up, likes spiking, shares sky-rocketing when all that matters is plateauing.

Measure the impact on the business.

The rest is just the greatest illusion ever created.

Feel, think, and behave

Fabrizio3 Comments

If you tell me you will increase my productivity, that’s an idea that comes and goes very quickly.

If you tell me you will cut the time it takes me to translate my research into deliverables for my stakeholders, that’s a much more difficult idea to shake off.

If you tell me you will improve my efficiency, that’s an idea that comes and goes very quickly.

If you tell me you will provide a platform where I can store, search, and analyse all customers’ feedback, that’s a much more difficult idea to shake off.

If you want me to be interested in an apartment, and all you show is the floor plan and the energy consumption, you would probably be much more successful if you would take me on a tour of that apartment well furnished and decorated.

If you are asking me to buy a new car, you should not stop at the pictures and the range of colours it comes in, but you’d better give me the keys and let me drive it for a couple of hours.

Doing marketing is easy.

Doing marketing that changes the way people feel, think, and behave is not.

And it is the most beautiful thing in the world.

About your story

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Why are you doing it?

Is it to get back at someone?

Is it a form of revenge?

Are you in it out of boredom?

Or perhaps because you feel you have no other chance.

Is it because someone is pushing you?

Or maybe because of someone else’s dream (a younger you perhaps).

If one of the above is the case, chances are that it will not work. Whatever you are doing, whatever you are up to these days, whatever you are planning for tomorrow will most likely fail if why you are doing it is because of others. In any shape or form.

Build a story from your experience, your practices, what you delivered, your purpose instead. And make it about it.

It will be your story. And it will make all the difference.