Tag: fear

Out of curiosity

Fabrizio2 Comments

To stop you from checking emails when you are not supposed to, think about the following.

Are you checking because you can take a meaningful action or out of curiosity?

If knowing the content of a mail now changes the way you act (compared to what you’d do if you would check at the appropriate time), that is a meaningful action.

In all honesty, there are very few cases where this is true.

Our opinion is not stronger if we share it now or tomorrow. Hearing some feedback is not going to make us change now, and probably it won’t tomorrow. Checking now if that email we have been waiting for has finally arrived is not going to give us a headstart on tomorrow’s work.

More often, it’s curiosity that drives us. It’s the dopamine hit we get from knowing something, even though it does not affect our possibility to do something about it. It’s like scrolling your social media timeline out of boredom.

We can train at keeping that impulse under control.

What they do need

FabrizioLeave a comment

Just adding to Seth Godin’s list.

I’d like my Android phone to know when it is a bank holiday in Finland, and ask me the day before whether I still want my weekdays alarm on.

I’d like any social media to use the timeline to display what I am actually interested in (i.e., the stuff I follow), rather than second guess my personal taste.

I’d like advertising platforms to ask me whether I am looking to buy a car, what type of car, what budget I have, instead of interrupting my daily flow with generic car ads, when I have already bought a car two months ago.

I’d like LinkedIn to understand I am not seeking for employment when Finnish is a requirement, and therefore stop matching my profile with job ads that are completely in Finnish.

I’d like the Google Assistant to answer my questions as an assistant would, rather than listing what they have found on the web (thanks, I can do a Google search on my own).

I’d like Outlook to still send me an email notification for updates to events I have already accepted, instead of sending them directly to the trash bin.

At some point, companies stop serving the needs of their customers and start pursuing revenue only. If we stop idolizing their success, if we free ourselves from the need to become the next billion dollars deal, we realize that there are infinite challenges that demand the attention of our organizations. And we can perhaps manage to take a tiny, little piece of a market.

Here is to the many definitions of success.

Commit to delivering

FabrizioLeave a comment

What do you value most?

Being right or getting things done?

If you spend time proving you are right, searching for evidence to argue against others, making sure everyone understands and recognizes your contribution, hoping that others will fail, things will be slow.

If on the other hand you are committed to delivering, being right becomes a nonproblem. You accept things and let go of things for the sake of a greater purpose.

It won’t take long to realize you can’t have both.

Impulse

FabrizioLeave a comment

The impulse to control, dictate, micro-manage is strong.

We just have to think carefully at what happens when we do it.

Example: a colleague is planning to send out an important email. You submit to the impulse and ask to review it first. The colleague obliges and shares a draft with you. You once again submit to the impulse and, since you do not really have time for this, give them some broad feedback about tone of voice and points to make. They edit the draft and send it back. For the third time, you submit to the impulse and go deep with comments, edits, and formatting. They end up sending your version.

The results.

  1. You are exhausted and you have lost the chance to focus on something that was truly your responsibility.
  2. They are demotivated, because they are probably good to write an email on their own.
  3. The outcome is most likely not going to be what either of you expected, adding to exhaustion and demotivation.

That is a lot of negativity spread around just because you once sent out an email that – in that particular context – turned out to get a pretty positive response.

Get out of the way.

The price you want

FabrizioLeave a comment

You have a good product, some customers, and then you start losing opportunities because they say you are too expensive.

Two options.

You cut the prices (discounts, special offers, etc. fall into this same category). It’s a risky game, of course everybody else can follow you there.

You work on perceived value. And you can go about it like this.

  1. Express value – Many times features are disguised as value, often mere functional value, so you need to start digging what the customer really wants.
  2. Reframe value – It might be that the problem you are solving is not worth the price you are asking, so you need to figure out if there is a deeper feeling, ambition, desire that you can leverage.
  3. Work on brand – Your story, your tone, your appeal can make your product desirable and unlock a fear of being left out.

Cutting prices is short-term (and short-viewed), working on perceived value takes resources and time.

The sooner you start working on 1, 2, and 3, in parallel, the better positioned you will be to ask the price you want.