You can explain. You can ask. You can force. You can demand. You can ghost.
But you should never decide for others.
If you decide for others, you are telling them they are not mature enough, strong enough, intelligent enough to make a decision for themselves.
That’s not something to be done lightly.
If things are difficult, everyone is impacted. Those in high positions, those in the middle, and those at the bottom.
And it works in a way so that those at the bottom do not care for the impact on those higher up. Because for them, it is often a matter of survival, and survival does not allow for unselfishness.
The point is that if you are in a situation of crisis and you are on top, do not expect others to give you empathy. Be prepared to be giving it out by the bucketload instead.
Of course, this is triggering for every marketer.
But the reality is that those sentences will continue to be spoken in companies everywhere. And the only remedy to this simple truth, is to be prepared. To have a plan, to have a reputation, to have leverage. Because it is always true that one of the main task of every marketer is to market marketing.
If someone comes to you with a critical remark on something you did, and instead of starting with “what I meant was”, you are capable to start with “I had not thought about that”, you are on the path to becoming a more aware person.
And awareness – of yourself and of others – is where everything starts.
If you manage a company, a team, a project, the most you can do is managing the inputs and monitor the outcomes.
Too much time is wasted, too many promises broken, in the attempt to manage the outcomes. Outcomes are out of anybody’s control. Even those who have already succeeded in the field you are trying to master cannot promise outcomes.
And so, instead:
That’s how you keep you and your team sane.
You've got this 