Tag: team work

Crisp

FabrizioLeave a comment

Writing long email messages is a disservice to your audience and to yourself.

Your audience does not have time for long, they will at best skim through the message and forget about it the moment they close it (hopefully they will not decide to follow up with another message). You will fail to get through to them, your idea will be diminished, your questions and concerns drowned in adjectives and adverbs, and you will inevitably feel the urge to explain yourself, to add more, to elaborate, in short to add to the confusion.

The time you take to make your message crisp is time well spent.

The spiral

FabrizioLeave a comment

What are the things you absolutely need to get done today, this week, this month, this year?

What are those things, and why, what purpose do they serve?

If you do not have answers to these two questions, if you shrug them off with a “too many” or “they are important”, it is very likely you are not going anywhere. And when you go nowhere, you end up taking on more. An endless spiral of unimportant and unpurposeful.

When someone asks you how are you, focused is a thousand times better than busy.

Mediocre

FabrizioLeave a comment

When many people have to agree on something, the final result will be mediocre.

That’s why you should design your company in a way that assigns responsibilities clearly, and then truly delegate everything that is not on your table.

It takes gut to do work that matters.

Distinctive

FabrizioLeave a comment

When things do not go as planned, and you have to break the news to those who have helped, to those who have offered their ideas, their energy, their work, there is one thing that can make it worse.

Blaming the change of plan to others.

Of course, it works in the moment. It pushes away the shame for the loss, the difficult conversation, the necessary argument.

But as you regroup and start delivering against the new plan, no one will feel committed.

Find a reason to believe in instead, and motivate the changes with passion. Even when it was not you making the call, especially when it was not you making the call. Nobody likes change, but everyone is willing to accept it, if it makes sense.

Long term is always more important than short term. That is the distinctive sign of leadership.

Damages

FabrizioLeave a comment

Scoring a point, winning an argument, having it your way.

They might all seem like great things, except the damages they make are often greater than the satisfaction they bring.

If you find this difficult to grasp, think back at the last time you failed to score a point, you lost an argument, you did not have it your way.

What you felt back then is the same your counterpart is feeling today. And you know for a fact, it is not a feeling that it is easy to shake off, not a sentiment on which it is possible to build a strong relationship.

And so I guess the question would be: is it worth it?