Tag: sales

Broken promises

FabrizioLeave a comment

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:

  • Ensure the input is aligned with what you want to achieve
  • Ensure the input is consistent over time
  • Ensure the input is promoted as success (or failure)

That’s how you keep you and your team sane.

Plans

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How often do plans only feature the place where you want things to end? How often do plans completely disregard the place where you are today, your current resources, your needs and wants, the requests of those involved?

A plan needs some solid basis to be taking you where you want to go.

Safety in crisis

FabrizioLeave a comment

Three things to do in order to establish emotional and professional safety in a moment of crisis at work.

  1. Listen without the intention to say something, particularly when you are hearing you have done something people did not like.
  2. Prepare what you have to say and keep it consistent. Do not improvise, do not go off track, do not share the thought of the moment.
  3. Share your difficulties as they emerge, and be open in asking for help and praising the help received.

Checklist

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A checklist always gets the job done.

It accounts for rules and processes, it ensures that timelines are met, and it guarantees that no critical step is forgotten.

But what a checklist does not do is to consider the emotions of those involved. The stress it puts on them, the uncertainty between one step and the next, the guessing that tends to fill in the gaps.

For that, there’s no checklist that can help.

You’ll just have to be human.

Units

FabrizioLeave a comment

The problem with looking at a small unit to discuss the larger one is that the tone of the discussion is going to be very different depending on the small unit you look at.

Can a great day make the entire month invariably great? And can a poor one make it invariably poor?

Can a bad week make the entire quarter invariably bad? And can a good one make it invariably good?

Can a disappointing month make the entire year invariably disappointing? And can an exciting one make it invariably exciting?

You should your effort into controlling the broader unit instead – that’s made of narrative, of strategy, of purpose. And use that to try and explain the smaller units.

This is what will give you course and momentum.