Tag: entrepreneurship

Managing disengagement

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You can’t just let disengagement be. You have to manage it.

It’s easy to manage motivated people, people you like to work with, people who are talented and constantly deliver good work. It’s more challenging to manage those who are disillusioned, who have have little ambition and feel out of place, who end up meeting all requests with silence and a nod.

And you can’t just let them be. Because disengagement spreads and it touches everyone it meets.

It’s likely that disengaged people will end up leaving. It’s your responsibility to manage the transition. To ensure they get the best deal out of it. And to ensure that they don’t leave disengagement behind.

No customer

Fabrizio1 Comment

Beyond the headline below, there is a committee.

There is marketing with an idea. There is sales with a preferred way to tell about the product. There is the executive team with their years of tenure and the history of the organisation. There is product with a use case, and product marketing with the results of market research.

And of course, there is no customer.

Hook

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Every product presentation in B2B and Saas goes like: here is our product, here is what it does, here is why it is different, do you have any questions? And the audience feels like being at a party where the host only talks about themselves.

Why not try instead: you start your day at the office with a cup of coffee, and instead of *normal situation that causes pain*, this happens. Followed by a detailed description of how the new way of working looks and feels like, from the perspective of who you are talking with.

We know how to tell a story. We just need to stop pretending that when it comes to business people do care about different things. They don’t. They are people. And at least at the beginning, you have to hook them with something that is relevant to them.

What is keeping you?

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That thing that’s keeping you from delivering on your promise – to yourself or to someone else. Is that an excuse or a reason?

People – ourselves included – have little tolerance for excuses. If we keep repeating them over and over again, they do not become more acceptable. They simply make the relationship more difficult.

Understand the difference and take a stand.

Fun fact: we tend to hide excuses, burying them inside long monologues or beyond a volatile interpretation of data. Reasons, on the other end, emerge whenever we need to strengthen a connection.

Fine print

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Company principles and values should be literal and absolute.

Saying that you care about people is a powerful statement. If you then put that in practice only when people do what you want, not so much anymore.

Saying that you foster collaboration and learning is a powerful statement. If you then do that only after everyone has achieved their own personal goals, not so much anymore.

Saying that you pursue innovation at all costs is a powerful statement. If you then keep quiet every time someone makes a mistake, not so much anymore.

Companies add fine prints to culture statements all the time. Employees figure that out in no time, and they get disengaged.

Start from how things work, from what is actually happening, from reality, and work your way up.

It’s the only way to build an effective culture.