Tag: failure

Here is what we do

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When you go on a first date, you are not expected to discuss the most intimate recesses of your mind, nor your most embarassing habits. At the same time, if after being married to a person for few years you would find it difficult to open up and you would refuse to discuss yours and your partner’s feelings, that would sound strange.

Yet, more often than not, when a company approaches its customers, there’s one level to the conversation: here is what we do.

For awareness: (since you don’t know) here is what we do.
For acquisition: here is what we do (we know you are interested).
For activation: here is (a taste of) what we do.
For retention: here is (more of) what we do.
For revenue: here is (how much) what we do (costs).
For referral: here is what we do (tell others, pretty please!).

This is a strategy that would not work in any kind of relationships under the sun. And we expect it to work in a business setting, because for some reasons people are extremely more rational when they wear a suit than when they are in their pijamas. If we only get the chance to tell them once more about what we do, they’ll certainly be convinced!

How broken is this?


Building bridges

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When you engage in a new connection, expect friction.

You are trying to tie-in two (or more) parts that were separated before, and therefore it is granted there’s going to be misunderstanding, resistance, overreaching and suspicion.

Your role is to not misinterpret all of that as a signal a connection is not needed or wanted. Building bridges is the only way to progress, and you have to keep motivation high and fear low to gather people around a vision, a concept, an idea.

Hang in there.

Skills and opportunities

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What is it that you are good at, and that you genuinely enjoy doing?

What type of companies would be interested in that?

Career and job seeking are areas in which past commitments do great damage. We get stuck looking at our worth through the lens of boxes everybody got used to look at: education, experience, field, language (for expats like myself).

Perhaps we put a lot into those boxes in the past, and therefore we are unwilling to let them go easily. And yet, years pass, things change, roles go by. We know something is not quite right, but as we have already invested so much into our path (and everybody is telling us that was, and still is, the right thing to do), we fail to veer from it.

What is it that you are good at, and that you genuinely enjoy doing?

What type of companies would be interested in that?

These two questions have the power to unlock change. Ask help to answer them. Those who have worked with you know what you are better at; those who have more knowledge of the job market know what opportunities might lie ahead.

The world is yours.

Past commitments

Fabrizio1 Comment

When you are on the wrong track, the wisest thing to do is to change course.

It’s complicated, because even if we often know when it is time, we fail to grasp clear reasons why and we fail to act. It’s that combination of past commitments and unconscious awareness that things are not working. It’s that place where projects and enteprises go to die.

When this surfaces, we should be brave enough to take the commitment out of the equation. Forget about the time we have put in, the energy, the money, the people we have brought onboard, the ones we would fail, the knowledge, the connections and relationships, the opportunities.

If we keep looking back, we won’t move forward.

You are right

FabrizioLeave a comment

When you are in an argument, understand this: as long as the two sides stand firm in their respective positions, no progress is possible.

If you just keep repeating your view, even with different words and from a different perspective, even if in time that view gets substantiated by additional facts and events, even when you get to the point in which you raise the ante certain it’s going to be the final move, most likely nothing is going to happen. Except, the other part is probably going to be even more convinced you are wrong.

Get into every argument open enough to be able to say “you are right”. Accept that the person in front of you is not idiot, delusional and mean. At the very least, try to ask questions to understand what they care about, what’s their sets of values, how is it so that they see the world so differently from you.

And then, try to build on that. Find common ground, things both of you find important, see their arguments as an opportunity for you to learn something, thank them for raising your awareness on something you were totally blind to.

Should that really not be possible, change the narrative. Run from the argument, reach for a topic that is not so directly in contrast with the other’s point of view, focus on explaining what you want to achieve.

Staying in the argument would just be a waste of time.