Tag: growth

Not how people work

Fabrizio1 Comment

Subject: Such Interesting Mentorship Programmes

Body: Hi Fabrizio, came across your LinkedIn profile and wow you have participated in such interesting internship programmes. I’m just checking to see if you are the person responsible for lead generation. If you aren’t the right person to speak with, can you forward me on to someone more appropriate?

I guess the assumption here is that personalisation is easy. That to establish a relationship it is sufficient to point at some trivial thing, such as the colour of your hair, or the fact we both have two eyes and one mouth. That after quickly exchanging some pleasantries, it is ok to not only go straight to business, but also to ask for further introductions. That the receiver of a cold outreach is nothing but a necessary evil to surmount in the name of the business goal.

Of course, that’s not how it works. Because that is not how people work.

Time to grow

FabrizioLeave a comment

There are many things that are potentially interesting, many opportunities that could change the course of a life, many ways you can go about business that might make your company the new hyper-celebrated unicorn.

Yet, jumping from one to the next will do you no good.

Give one thing the needed time to grow.

Keep meetings relevant

FabrizioLeave a comment

Never walk into a meeting in which you have a relevant role – people expect you to present, to coordinate, to moderate, to organise -, without some careful preparation.

When you don’t prepare, you will either be talking too much or too little, the audience will get bored, the conversation will get all over the place, arguments will be shallow and discussions pointless. And there’s not going to be any concrete outcome. If you are not prepared for a meeting in which you have a relevant role, just cancel it.

This is also a great way to keep the numbers of meetings to a minimum. None of us is paid to prepare for meetings.

Make it about people

FabrizioLeave a comment

Experiences matter not because of the results you are getting, not because of the expertise you accumulate, not because of the final outcome, not because of the knowledge you did not have before.

They matter because of the people you share them with.

Make it about people, sooner rather than later.

That’s a way to cherish every moment of the journey.

Within a stone’s throw

FabrizioLeave a comment

Your urgency is not your customer’s urgency.

You might have a plan, investors that demand that you grow, the idea that 30% year-over-year is the only measure of success, a team that is competitive and wants nothing more than their bonus at the end of the quarter.

But that is you. And honestly, nobody cares.

Think about your customer’s plan instead, what their investors want from them, how they define success, what their team wants to achieve in the next 90 days.

And if your first thought is “it depends”, you might be right. Most likely, though, you are just trying to sell to anybody who comes within a stone’s throw.

Focus. And learn.