Right

Search for the right job. Search for the right partner. Search for the right people. Search for the right customer. Search for the right team. Search for the right time. Search for the right opportunity.

And it turns out that “right” is determined by the work you put in.

So instead of searching for an ideal, build your own ideal from the ground up.

It takes awareness, relentlessness, and acceptance.

It is worth it.

Good and bad

The reason why I find this and this (and this) worth of my attention (and money), while I find this, this, and this (and this too) trite and unattractive, is not that the former are good and the latter are bad.

It’s that the former target a specific audience to which I apparently belong.

I don’t believe in good and bad marketing, but I do believe in effective and non-effective marketing. Know who you are selling to, know what you are selling, and make the match.

All the rest is non-effective.

Fraud

Perhaps thinking that 88% of digital ad clicks are fraudulent is an exaggeration. And perhaps it is true that digital ads are so cheap that at the end of the day ad fraud is not a big issue.

But at some point, as marketers, we will have to acknowledge the big hallucination we are living through.

Influencers can buy fake followers by the truckload — roughly 20% of them are fake. Approximately 40% of Donald Trump’s followers are likely bots. Social media platforms are rife with cats and bots: Facebook admits to shutting down billions of fake accounts on its platform every year. Even app store installs are fake. Bots/click-farmers download 1 in 5 iOS apps. On the Android platform it’s 1 in 4.

Scott Galloway, here

Might this be one of the reasons why CMO tenure is at the lowest in more than a decade?

And when is the last time you have had a digital ad ignite your buying process?

Exploring feedback

Feedback is such a popular topic nowadays that managers are pretty much forced to give some.

And so, they resort to “good job!” – or the equivalent “great job!”, “terrific!”, “fantastic work!”.

If you are getting that, take the time to make your manager’s life a bit more challenging. No need to worry, you are just asking them to do their job.

Ask them.

What did you find good in what I did?

What do you think could have been better?

How would you have managed that situation?

How does this relate to our high level goal?

Where do I grow from here?

Crisis #2

There are moments of crisis in every group, in every team, in every company.

And if you lead, you ought to try and turn the crisis into an opportunity to strengthen the bonds.

Confirm with your people what the purpose is. The vision, the long-term game, the utopia you are heading towards despite the temporary setback.

And then agree on what the tactics are, what you are going to do today that’s going to take you all closer to the purpose.

The two parts go hand in hand, and that’s where most leaders fail. They either move from one tactic to the next, in the hope to find a purpose. Or they use tactics that are taking them away from the purpose, with the excuse of trying to address the crisis (“we will do what is right once the crisis is over” is not a very effective narrative).

When purpose and tactics are aligned, here are three important questions to answer to keep everyone informed and cared for as you get to it.