Tag: relationships

Everything you say you’ll do

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There are not many things you are asked to do when you lead other people.

Certainly, making sure your team has the needed support. Financial, political, and technical support. Also, truly listening to and caring for your team members, including helping them find a career trajectory they are comfortable with. Finally, taking difficult decisions when things stall or risk to stall, possibly with the aid of a transparent and candid process everyone in the team understands and trusts.

And then, of course, there’s everything you say you’ll do. This is as important as the three points above, as it sets the tone for the type of relationship you are going to build with your people. If you start not delivering on things you yourself have taken ownership for, even worst if you are not open and don’t explain when that happens, why that happened, then the relationship is going to be weak and feeble. And it will be very difficult to turn that around.

Good thing is, you choose what you promise. Choose mindfully.

Value is how, what and why

Fabrizio3 Comments

There are three dimensions to value.

The first one is about the product, the “how” dimension. At this level, you are talking about how your product can help, how different features can be used, the technical specs and everything that does depend 100% on your team. There’s a whole lot of companies that stop here: “our product is amazing, buy it!”; “we have the fastest solution for X, subscribe!”; “our patented Y is disrupting IT, take a free tour!”. And so on.

The second one is about the customer, the “what” dimension. Here, you are talking about what your product delivers that is valuable for the customer. In general, and I am paraphrasing the approach of Inflexion Point here, there are five kind of value a company recognizes: more revenue, less costs, saving time, avoiding risk, and meeting targets (e.g. brand awareness, reputation, customer satisfaction, etc.). A bunch of companies end up here, and so you have “our product is the easiest way to get your back-office processes under control” (time saving); “we are the leader in delivering outstanding customer experiences” (meeting targets); “if you want to forget about fines, you have to try our newest solution for compliance” (avoiding risk).

The third one is about the world, the “why” dimension. Not the world as a whole, the world that delimits the prospect, some would call it “market” (I believe it is a bit reductive). Of course, every company is happy with more revenue, less costs, saved time, avoided risks, and met targets. And yet this is about understanding why these things are important to the customer you are targeting, and which one is more important than the others. Perhaps your target customer has just experienced an increase in direct competition from new entrants: “Our product is an easy to use tool that gets you up to speed, allowing you to compete on a level field with X and Y”. Perhaps they have been subjected to increasing regulatory scrutiny: “We have worked with companies like yours, and they have struggled to keep up with ever changing rules. Here is what we have to offer..”. Perhaps their customers have been empowered by technology: “With our product, you can forget about manual tasks and wasted time, so that your employees can dedicate all the needed attention to your customers and their demands.”

Very few companies manage to get to the third dimension. It takes work and appreciation of what your customers are struggling with and why. Sometimes, that means actually getting to a level of understanding that can open new venues for your prospects. Things they had not thought about before meeting you and your product, new solutions to an old problem never tackled because thought secondary.

How do you get to the “why” dimension? Clearly, start with your customers.

Walk the walk

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It’s tough demanding somebody to do something you are not doing yourself in the first place.

Try ask your kids to spend less time in front of the screen when that’s all you do as soon as you have a moment of free time. You can play the “I’m-the-adult” card for a while, and yet in the long run your request loses significance.

The same thing is valid in organizations. You might ask your team to be innovative and come up with new ideas, and you can still hide behind the urgency and contingency of the moment to always opt for the safe path. Yet eventually you’ll lose the commitment and they’ll bring their creativity elsewhere.

It’s as easy as that.

Leading juniors

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When you hire somebody junior in your team, there are few things you need to make sure of in order to have this person develop, perform and be more than a cheap source of labor.

Allocate time to support them. In small teams, this can be complicated, and yet a junior member is most likely not going to learn and develop independently, and surely that is not going to happen in a way that can be beneficial to the company. Give them the appropriate attention, guide them, if necessary match them with a mentor, or an advisor, somebody you trust and is committed to what you are trying to achieve. Invest in their learning (online courses are great, peer group even better), and be absolutely sure they are not feeling on their own on a difficult journey.

Set some boundaries to their responsibilities. And make sure what’s in the job description is achievable with the support mentioned above. It’s funny to see how many students or new graduates are made “managers”, or “specialists”, setting them up for failure already in the way they are presented. It’s ok to be a “junior”, or a “coordinator”, or a “responsible” for a while, and then grow the list of responsibilities as more confidence is acquired.

Understand the way you behave will shape theirs. Contrary to more experienced people, who might have their own style, their own work routines, their own rhythm, junior employees usually don’t have any of that. You have the chance to help form such things, and you better do it consciously and with a clear plan. Think about the type of person you’d like to have in your team five years down the road, the type of colleague you’d be glad to work with, and then be mindful about how you measure their performace, how you talk to them, deliver feedback, give them guidance.

Time for a change

Fabrizio1 Comment

You are at a party.

You have been nervous lately at the idea of coming to this party, so while you drive there you rehearse some situations in your mind. You prepare interesting stories, a couple of funny anecdotes, think about how to invite people to your own party next week, and mentally remind faces and names of the people you’ve heard are looking forward to meeting you.

As this happens in your mind, confidence builds and you enter the main room with your chin up high. You walk to the bar, and a guy standing there politely asks: “How are you?”. “Well, thanks. Actually, the most funny thing happened to me this afternoon..”, and you continue for about ten minutes telling your little story.

The nice guy disengages from you to rejoin his friends, and you notice the host a few steps away from you. You approach her and the group she is talking to, and you overhear her sharing that she’d had a problem with her car, and she’d had to walk back home for 10 kilometres, leaving the car on the side of the road. Fortunately, you know everything about cars, so what better chance? “As you describe it, it sounds like a problem with the carburator. I have a list of three things I do weekly to avoid problems with the carburator. First, …”, and you continue with your advises for a perfect carburator maintenance routine for the next five minutes. As the group slowly disperses.

Just after you’ve put something in your stomach (the food is not great, but at least you got to share with some bystanders the story of how you have overcome the challenges of combining work and study, and managed to graduate with distinction), you spot one of the people that you’ve heard wants to meet you. You rush to her with steady steps, and after a quick intro, you invite her to join the party you are giving at your place a week from now. “It’s to celebrate my recent promotion”, you explain, “I am inviting as many people as possible, so that together we can celebrate this unbelievable achievement of mine. Just think I have only been with the company for five months!”.

The party continues, and after the initial confidence, anxiety surfaces once more, as you have the feeling people are trying to avoid you. Why would that be? Did you perhaps choose the wrong stories to tell? Or the wrong words? Is your place too far away from the city center, and people will not join your party for that reason?

You are beaten, and you can’t make sense of what is going on.

Here is how most marketing feels today. Self-centered, obnoxious, bogus and irrelevant. Time for a change?