Tag: sales

Scams

FabrizioLeave a comment

There’s an increasing amount of people that sells get-rich-quick schemes. They leverage weakness and dissatisfaction, and they abuse platforms that don’t care about quality, or well-being, or best interest. Their quid pro quo is usually something like “give me a few hundreds euros to enroll in this class and this person will teach you how to make thousands of euros every day”.

I know it sounds great. I know it’s appealing. I know it’s a difficult time, and it will probably get more difficult before it gets easier.

But those are scams.

The only way is the long, impervious, boring, frustrating way of doing.

So take the urgency of those fake gurus and channel it towards a practice. Start now.

Equinox doesn’t speak January

FabrizioLeave a comment

A positioning statement is not for everybody.

It’s supposed to divide, in order to conquer. It’s supposed to draw a clear line between trite practices and a new way. It’s supposed to be met with opposition, disdain, surprise, resistance – first of all, from those who are supposed to approve and support it.

If a positioning statement does not do that, it’s not a positioning statement.

This IS a positioning statement.

Love it or hate it. That’s the whole point.

Supporting

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If you are going to interview for a startup, between 30 and 100 employees, spend your focus probing one thing: what is the role of the founders?

That’s a critical phase for a founder to change their role: from guiding force to supporting resource. All the energy, the motivation, the knowledge, the urge that has led the founders to start the company needs to be passed over for it to scale, and the only way to do that is if the founders are capable to take a supporting role and let go of things, responsibilities, decisions.

It’s not really a matter of roles or of titles, but a matter of attitude. Look at three things.

  1. The tenure of the people who have joined the startup in the second phase, from 15 to 40 employees. If they leave soon, particularly if they have previous experience and success, that’s a sign the founders are still very much in control.
  2. The way the company spends money to train and promote (promising) employees. If there’s little to no money invested in personal development, salary adjustments, perks and benefits, that’s a sign the founders are still very much in control.
  3. The dynamic of the leadership team, the people who manage people. If there’s separation, factions, silos instead of unity, togetherness, mutual projects, that’s a sign the founders are still very much in control.

It’s important, because when founders act as a support to a growing company, it can be a beautiful opportunity. When they aim at retaining control, instead, well that’s not for everybody.

Cascade

FabrizioLeave a comment

What you do at the top will cascade to the rest of your organisation.

It’s not what you say. Not what you think. It’s not your ideas or your intentions. It’s not your principles or your mission statement.

It’s what you do in the LT meeting and in the board room.

Because you are in control.

P.S.: this is valid even for very small organisations. A family, for example.

Easy and difficult

FabrizioLeave a comment

Managing projects is easy, managing people is difficult.

And that’s not because projects always succeed or achieve what they were supposed to achieve, but because they are made of tasks, timelines, deadlines, deliverables, priorities. All things that, one way or the other, even in the most difficult circumstances, are defined and controllable.

People are not.

People have no limit and they cannot be controlled. They have values, feelings, triggers. They establish relationships and break them. They are motivated and demotivated. They need to talk and to be listened to. They want to progress, take on new challenges, and they panic in the face of change.

We know how people are, because we are people too. And that’s what scares us and makes managing people so difficult.

Exactly the reason why, in a situation of crisis or uncertainty, most management resorts to assigning more tasks, asking for more visibility, setting stricter deadlines, and cracking down on inefficiencies.

Because managing projects is easy, while managing people is difficult.