Tag: entrepreneurship

External help

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There are three kinds of external help a marketing department can get.

There is the help that is valuable because it provides a competence that is missing. This is typical when you hire a freelancer, for example. Perhaps you have a small team, you lack some skills, you want something specific done that you cannot do yourself.

Then, there is the help that is valuable because it gets things done. Most agencies fall into this bucket. They do not really deliver mind-blowing results, they might or might not have specific competences, some might actually argue they could have gotten pretty much the same outcome by doing the job internally. But the truth is, the team simply does not have enough bandwidth, or it is not well organised, or its skills are not well mapped.

Finally, there is the help that is valuable because it delivers quality. It might be a freelancer, it might be an agency. But in this case, they are at the edge of their field, they are doing things that not many others know, they are reinventing a particular tactic or the way it is approached. Things might get difficult, because the counterpart is somebody with convictions, ideas, opinions, and they might not be willing to simply do what pleases the head of marketing. They repay these difficulties with an outstanding job.

Now, the fact is that often we approach external help in marketing with unrealistic expectations. And so, when we hire for competence, we do not want to do the project management work that is necessary. When we hire for project management, we are unprepared in feeding the right information at the right time because we do not have them. When we hire for quality, we are not ready to change our assumptions and beliefs, and potentially redefine strategy and tactics altogether.

Who are you hiring to help you out? Are you aware of what that means?

Specific

Fabrizio1 Comment

Would you rather buy services from:

  1. A company that promises to improve your workforce efficiency;
  2. A company that promises to reduce the lead time of your projects by 10%;
  3. A company that promises to digitalize your paperwork and automate some of the most tedious of your processes, therefore reducing lead time of your projects by 10%;
  4. A company that promises to give your project managers the tools to digitalize the documents coming from customers and partners, to ensure they move through project lifecycle with digital assignments and approvals, and produce an exact report of what was done, when, by whom useful both for the customers and for your internal finance department. All of this, estimated to reduce lead time of your projects by 10%.

It is a matter of specificity, of course.

There is no difference between product 1, 2, 3, and 4. What changes is the level to which the company providing the service demonstrates to know what you are dealing with day after day.

Moving from option 1 to option 4 requires more data, more research, more effort. And to motivate the investment, just survey some of the websites of your competitors and alternatives: how many belong in every category? A fairly common situation is: 80% use option 1; 15% use option 2; 4% use option 3; 1% use option 4.

So, does being specific pay?

The people you lead

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It is the most difficult thing to understand, and perhaps the single biggest differentiator between a good leader and a mere manager.

The moment you start leading a team of people, your main responsibility shifts to them.

It is not to your boss, it is not to the management team, it is not to the executives, to other departments, to the board or to the company. Of course you also have responsibilities to these individuals and groups. But the main one, the one that defines your role, the one for which you will be measured in your leadership skills is to the people you lead.

Do you know them? Do you know their fears, motivators, ambitions, strengths? Do you know how they feel? Are you ready to have difficult conversations with them? Do you have an idea of where they have been professionally and have a plan for their future development? Do they come to you with ideas? Do you challenge them with problems? How do you discuss with them about their mistakes?

It is an extremely important relationship to build. And you have to allocate time for that before anything else.

Nothing wrong

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I did nothing wrong.

Defensiveness is often the go-to strategy when we are put on the spot. In all honesty, though, we would be more accurate saying I did mean nothing wrong, or even better My intentions were in the right place.

When somebody negatively reacts to something we did or said, something clicks in our mind that forces us to preserve our reputation. It is a natural mechanism, nothing easily preventable, but if you think about it, that “something” is assuming that: 1. we are infallible; 2. if we fail, we fail deeply, as a person, as a human being.

Both are false, of course. And so, next time you feel the urge to say I did nothing wrong, stop for a moment and try instead asking How did what I said felt?, or What can I do better next time?, or even How can I make this right?

It is only by avoiding to take things personally and by expressing a real interest in what the others feel and perceive that we can build strong relationships.

And become, little by little, an improved version of a human being.

The right time

FabrizioLeave a comment

How often do you feel confident showing your work?

Probably almost never. Showing your work is difficult. It means opening up to the judgement of others, accepting you might have done something others will not pick, transitioning control from you to the rest of the world. And so, you keep your work hidden. You continue adding to it, refining it, editing it, perfecting it. The right time, of course, will never come.

As many other things, showing your work is a muscle. It can get trained. Do it once, do it twice, do it ten times, and eventually it will become natural.

Start today.

P.S.: A great question to ask when you are this kind of stuck (or any kind of stuck) is always: “what is the worst thing that could happen?“. The point being: the absolute worst thing is probably very unlikely to happen, while the worst thing that is likely to happen is often something you can easily live through. As a matter of fact, you probably have already in the past. Keep yourself anchored.