Tag: failure

The pledge

FabrizioLeave a comment

Engagement is a pledge.

The deal though is no longer safety, money, and certainty in exchange for work, compliance, and loyalty.

We understand well enough that workers nowadays need to put in something more than mere hours, textbook task completion, checkbox performance. We ask them to be creative, innovative, collaborative, personal, candid, proactive.

What we struggle to understand, instead, is that the way to incentivize that has changed as well.

So, the next time you lead a project, a change, an enterprise ask yourself what your side of the pledge is.

Is it keeping everyone in the dark until the big reveal? Is it making all of the key decisions? Is it allocating five minutes at the end of the next meeting for everyone to share what they think? Is it distributing information to create hierarchies and factions?

Probably not.

Excited by the process

FabrizioLeave a comment

The world is full with emails that lay out brilliant plans.

And it is full (though admittedly less so) with excited replies to those emails, expressing a convinced “I am in!”.

But the difference is in what comes after that.

Some people are excited by the process of getting things done, bringing the team together, convincing the skeptics, repeating the details over and over again, changing their minds, changing other people’s minds, navigating the ups and downs, waking up to failure, presenting in front of a crowd, putting in the work.

Some people are excited by the idea and see all of the above as an insurmountable obstacle.

You are probably part of one group or the other depending on circumstances. Just be aware that it is a choice you can make, an attitude you can change.

Zero-sum

FabrizioLeave a comment

If you want people in your team to truly work as a team, help each other, keep each other accountable, and achieve common goals, then stop leveraging your position of power to get things done.

When you do that, people will think that the only way for them to get ahead is to take from their peers.

Dominance does not set a good example.

Cause and effect

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Not every cause leads to an effect. Not every effect can be immediately linked to a cause.

The fact is, we are not rational beings and we merely use reason to find an explanation to things that have already happened, to decisions that have already been made.

That’s why brands and stories have so much power. They don’t engage with reason and they leverage the most tribal and innate of our insticts.

Belonging.

If your company wants to measure brands and stories, if they want to find the thread that links brands and stories to material results, they are probably missing the whole point. And the opportunity to establish relationships with employees, customers, stakeholders that can determine long-term competitive advantage.

You got to have faith not to miss this opportunity.

Pick your fights

FabrizioLeave a comment

There is no fight you can win without losing at least a little of the relationship underlying it.

And there is no relationship for which you won’t regret having lost even a little piece.

Pick your fights very carefully.