Tag: relationships

Converge

FabrizioLeave a comment

Customer focus is not a marketing thing.

Every day, in every situation, we deal with customers. Sometimes it is people paying us money for a service or a product, more often it is a person we feel might be better off with a different perspective or performing a different action. Of course, calling all of them customers is reductive (and inaccurate), but the point is, you do not need to be a marketer or a sales rep to understand and appreciate the importance of customer focus.

If you want change, you need to read their minds, feel their pains, participate in their efforts, respect their ambitions, and craft your message in such a way as to converge with their world view at the right time.

All that is left is being stuck. And nobody is driven by that.

On holiday

FabrizioLeave a comment

If you are about to go on holiday, the only obligation you have is to make of it a holiday for real. There is no urgency, last minute call, over time email, quick question, sudden change of plans, discomfort of your boss that makes it worth it change this.

Protect your time off and recharge the battery, your work will benefit from it.

Right

FabrizioLeave a comment

Right is not a good way to describe your work and the work of your team.

Innovative, passionate, committed, engaged, consistent, challenging, concerted, exciting, inspiring, intentional, purposeful, additive, reinvigorating, ameliorating, thoughtful, driven. These are all better words to use when you talk about what you and your team are trying to achieve.

Do not settle for right, it is quite a capricious term.

No matter what

FabrizioLeave a comment

Once you have interiorized the fact that most of what happens is beyond your control, there is still value in doing the work, in waking up to change the world, in putting effort into making things better.

Accepting is not the same as giving up. Accepting is understanding that despite our superior qualifications, our impeccable work, our relentless commitment, our strongest will, things might not turn out the way we want. And live with it as we live knowing that the day will follow the night, without letting this simple fact impacting our worth and merit.

This is actually the only way we can ensure we will pursue our purpose no matter what.

Two stories

FabrizioLeave a comment

If you ask two people to describe the same meeting – or any other social happening they participate in -, you will most likely get two different stories. Sure, there will be some points in common, and yet many of the details will appear as if they do not belong to the same shared experience.

This is even more true the more history there is between the two people, and between them and the others attending the event. We all build our own narratives, and our mind is happier when it can focus just on things that confirm the narratives rather than disprove them. It is not uncommon to talk to two halves of a long term relationship, and find their versions of what happened in certain circumstances are quite opposite: one wanted to show affection, the other interpreted rejection; one thought there was a deep discussion about a certain matter, the other is sure the thing was never even considered in the realm of possibilities.

We need to accept this reality.

And we need to overcommunicate when it has the potential to harm something we hold dear. Negotiating shared meaning is a conscious effort, and it’s possibly the only way to avoid turning to each other as strangers one day or the other.