Tag: growth

Reciprocity

FabrizioLeave a comment

Ideally, relationships are established in good times.

It is more challenging to do that when the crisis hits, when everyone is occupied saving their neck, when nobody knows what tomorrow will bring. There’s a sense of individualism that grows in dire times, preventing the reciprocity needed to build and cultivate relationships.

The only thing that can be done now then, in this moment of unprecedented unknowns, is forget about the reciprocity and just give. Is there anything you own that could be useful out there? Do you have anything to say that could lift the spirit of those most distressed? Is the message you have to deliver looking at a positive future, or is it dilating stress and urgency beyond the here and now?

Marketers should be careful out there these days, the risk in terms of reputation is really high.

The two options

FabrizioLeave a comment

Are you building thought leadership or are you looking for leads?

It might seem like it’s just a marketing question, but it is actually much more than that.

Are you establishing deep connections or are you greeting everybody and move on?

Are you here to make a change or to share your numbers?

Are you interested in telling a story or in surfacing shortcuts?

Are you creating or copy-pasting?

And the one that I personally prefer.

Are you for quality or quantity?

Certainly, the two can be simultaneously present. And yet, you can’t go all in on both. Eventually one will prevail, projecting your work in very different directions.

Also, the more you stick with one the more difficult it will be to move onto the other. But this is more true when the movement is from leads to thought leadership. So, the idea that “we are going to do quality work when X and Y will happen” is a mirage.

I bet you already knew that.

Frameworks

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Frameworks, matrices, canvas are great tools to organize thinking and guide action.

And they should be approached with two things in mind.

First, you need to understand how they work. To do that you often have to read articles and papers from the people who have proposed the tool you want to use, and possibly also from people who have challenged their usefulness.

This is particularly problematic with models that are very well known and frequently quoted in organizations, such as the 5 forces by Porter, or the S.W.O.T. matrix, or the Competing Value Framework by Cameron and Quinn. People use these without actually knowing what the authors had in mind, or without having any reference to get them started, and as a result they are often misused. Even when a colleague suggests they have all the information you might need to get started, challenge them and dig into the original material.

Second, they are simplification of reality. And so they might not fit 100% to the specific case you are trying to apply them to. They might need some adjustments. And that is one more reason why it is important to study them, so that when rules need to be bent, it’s not going to betray the purpose or the essence of the tool.

Slavishly applying a framework, a matrix, a canva to your business, and doing that by only looking at the superficial level, it’s most likely not going to bring about the change you are seeking.

It is today

FabrizioLeave a comment

When you are a founder or a co-founder at a startup, you ARE a leader.

You might be inexperienced and you might also be not so happy about it. But that is no excuse to not own your responsibilities towards the people in your team. It is no excuse to treat them poorly, to pressure them with your stress, to not be transparent, to act like a friend and like a baby in two consecutive interactions, to shout and lose your temper, to not provide vision and guidance, to be bossy and micro-managing, to pretend people’s growth and development will magically happen.

There’s plenty of help to be sought out there. Coaching, training, consulting, mentoring. Reach out to somebody and let them help you.

You might not feel like a leader today, but it is today you have to start becoming one.

Relationships over ideas

FabrizioLeave a comment

Start something new with a relationship, not with an idea.

Whether it’s a new job or a new project, a new role or a new country, a new company or a new responsibility. Identify the ones who own a stake in what you are going to do, sit with them, and listen. Gather their problems, their expectations, their motivators, their goals, their ambitions. Be friendly and genuinely interested.

With this knowledge, you can shape the work in a way that serves a real purpose. At the very least, you will have found supporters and sponsors for what will come next.