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How much do we expect them to know?
THIS is one of the best marketing hacks to test everything we post, publish, share, and advertise. Do we use our buzzwords like they're speed bumps to slow traffic and delay engagement? Does our elevator pitch actually take 2 minutes instead of 20 seconds to communicate something of value to others? What about pre-screening with dozens of questions, options, exclusions, and all the fine print that's not only required by legal but also necessary for our fragile and insecure egos? Or confusing them with anything more than one - AND ONLY ONE - call to action - forcing our audience to burn calories just to decide between all the options? It's our job to advocate, to know, and to empathize, not their job to know about us, how great we are, or understand all our insider language and programs and services before we can help them. So look at your marketing and ask this simple question: How much do I expect them to know? TBU - true but useless.
How much of what we research and analyze is TBU - true but useless? Diagnosing the problem is our first move - our default - when evaluating our work and measuring outcomes... outcomes typically falling short of expectations. We study what went wrong in order to avoid it next time. And still things go wrong next time. Sound familiar? Since we're not being paid to fail thoughtfully, maybe there's an different way. I have a two-part alternative to try: Do more of what works, and manage expectations. This is instead of following the gapers-block of staring at the bloody crash of our failed idea, find what did work (even if it's not particularly important to us or a significant part of what we attempted), and do more of that. In turn, this will force us from obsessing about our grand plan and learn from executing with our customers or audience - and learn from them what works. This is what managing expectations modestly asks of us. Knowing what went wrong is often TBU - true but useless - and doing more of what works is often our only alternative to avoid repeating our mistakes. Reverse engineering success is so, so difficult.
Working back from our real outcome means changing habits - habits and practices and 1% changes we do NOT see as obviously leading to success - and just don't seem worthy of some well engineered SMART goal. (Not a fan.) Ignoring what we know in order to see a way that can't be mapped from the start is a change too far for most. Refusing to connect all the dots involves too much trust for many of us, and being willing to do small, good things in greater volume and frequency for longer than we've ever done new things before takes as much courages as stamina. Motives matter, but which motive matters the most depends - everything from anger (we're going to change the world because this or that sucks) to love (we're in this with empathy and philanthropy - for the love of humanity), it doesn't matter what our motive is, just that it matters more than what kind of motive we feel. And measuring the right things - not just the end goal and not vanity metrics - takes great story-telling... a story we're willing to tell and retell about our future, not our past. Period. Leading change (not just managing change, although managing usually obsesses about little things it also often ends with manipulating those little things), takes an investment in checklists just as much as an investment in BIG IDEAS or mission-minded Why's? If you know what the goal is and exactly how to get there, you're a manager that's replaceable, not the 'no experience necessary' worker you manage. This is why a leader works for their direct reports and not the other way around. Reverse engineering success takes a crowd, a team, a tribe - I don't care what you like to call it, but it's people who we want to be with and like to be seen as that will carry us along without a map or estimated time of arrival. Work/life balance is for other people - bosses, the rich, trust-fund babies, but not for the workforce.
And that time between paychecks is called life - but most in today's global workforce are living paycheck-to-paycheck according to Gallup's State of the Global Workplace Report that tells one-third self report being engaged in their work, and one-in-five admitting they're not at all engaged or value the work they do. So we do the minimum, only what's necessary to avoid getting fired or hurting our own self-esteem - and we do not volunteer to do more. If you’ve ever enjoyed teenagers, you know firsthand the native passive-aggressiveness of, “Just tell me what you want me to do!”
Different worlds… different expectations (or an imbalance of expectations)… and in frustration they yield… give up the effort to understand (which was more on our end than theirs because we were trying to teach them a lesson), and exasperatedly demand, “Just tell me what you want me to do!” We don’t realize the truth of the adage, “I can’t learn you anything” but that doesn’t stop us from trying. And we’ve probably made the situation worse by saying something like, “Do you understand what you did wrong?!” This scenario is a daily occurrence… especially for marketers. Maybe it’s our pride in our product, our mission, or our organization’s culture that we are sure others should understand, appreciate and respond to, so we make all this part of our marketing. Or maybe we’re shy or insecure and we don’t want to presume what our audience or customers should do… so we offer multiple options and confuse them with all their options. But telling people what to do is exactly what marketing is – showing the end, the goal, the outcome, and giving them one and only one way to get there – us! As one famous marketer taught me – this is a mistake we all make until we don’t. And they quickly added: ‘sales’ is not a goal, ‘some’ is not a number, and ‘soon’ is not a date. So how should we market if it’s marketing we’re doing? Back to our teenagers… instead of ordering they clean their room (something which they’ve shown no aptitude for), we offer a stop along the way like making their bed or putting away everything blue. It’s incrementalism with the promise that it will create a destination. And it works. It helps create trust... and trust is what makes marketing marketing! Because goals and destinations (especially our goals and destinations) don’t motivate those who are not us. We all start from zero... and the move to one is the hardest (thank you Peter Thiel).
So here's the first shot - creating a development move that works. Start with a value proposition to engage a generous community (not just those with silly money, but those who use their money to tell the story of who they really are - and that's just about everyone). Get your stakeholders on board - anyone who has already given wants to be right so give them a chance to be right by sharing their friends and network. Be loud, not perfect - volume equals VOLUME, and the sooner you share, post, publish, and send, the sooner your message turns from noise into something meaningful. But first - always first and always the hardest part - it's about them, never about you. They change the world because they believe it needs changing and they're the one who can make it happen... finally. Good marketing - do you know what it is when you see it?
It will do one of two things - sometimes at the same time in different areas of our work. It will drive new interest and engagement to help do more of what's working for our businesses and organizations. Good products, good services, and good customer service will be even more obvious and we'll love the injection of energy and engagement to do more, sell more, and serve more. And/Or, it will show what's wrong, what's missing, and what we've taken for granted. If we have an inferior product, lackluster customer service, or misplaced attention the new attention good marketing generates will make it difficult to hide. We'll be exposed and something will have to change - either in us or in our marketing. There's an expression - Be careful what you wish for - and that's never been truer when it comes to our marketing. When is a story not a story?
No, this is not a riddle and I don't have a witty response... just a story. A friend asked a favor - please read this - and added the comment, "I'm not seeing it, but I know I'm missing something - can you see it?" This is THE editorial challenge - so much more than proofing - good editing means seeing what needs to be seen. It means knowing what you don't always know. And it's difficult. So the piece shared with me was ABOUT stories - 3 pages of axioms and aphorisms and meme-worthy assertions about the power of stories. So what was missing? A story - any story - any prompt or allusion to a story - anything story-like. And, yes, I believe stories work. I'm not a doubter - I'm a believer. A believer who needs a story to believe in a story. And then I'll live happily-ever-after... and so will you! Random thoughts that keep me sane...
Marketing departments and consultants will spend you money. Marketers will drive sales - not by selling, but by building brand equity. If seeing your marketing makes you happy - that alone could be a problem. If engaging with 100% of your leads makes you happy - that alone will discover customers. When you buy, post, publish as a placeholder for business virtues you're just trying to stop wildfires from burning down your brand. Believing organic is always purer, better, and more genuine than paid means you don't think your spend on your marketers has value. Happiness is the new 'pain point' for lead generation, but 'pain points' without happiness are always, just 'pain points.' (Just listen to how many marketers use the new buzzword: 'pain points' and let me know what you think!) But how do I get started?
You have a great team, a focused mission statement, and provide a wonderful service - but you don't have an audience... partners... supporters... customers... and you don't know where to start! Oh, and you don't have the budget to buy an audience, so you have to go organic. But we don't have to be jealous about those who do buy lists, and demean paid channels and claim the greater virtue of organic reach (remember, we're still being paid or paying our team to rely on organic reach - nothing's really free or easy). This move - from zero to one - is very difficult. Here's a 1 - 2 - 3 to get started... 1. Volume = VOLUME - so post, share, like, comment, respond, create, and repeat again and again. If you share one post a week, make it two, then three, then seven - every single day of every single week. Why? Because more content equals more attention with time and consistency and effort. 2. Ask, don't tell - the audience you hope to reach doesn't "need to understand" anything - that's your job to understand them. So ask as a first step in marketing and conversations: "Are you ___?" "Do you ___?" "Is it difficult for you to ___?" This is your hook. 3. Give, don't take - providing value is the heart of successful marketing from the start. Instead of always selling, always looking to take, or telling yourself you'll be generous when you can afford to be generous, try giving the gift of your service, your product, your network to enrich your new audience, customers, partners, or supporters. Giving works because of an odd notion called reciprocity. Interested in that? I'll share that story next, so come back for how you can use reciprocity to go from zero to one in your marketing. "A habit cannot be eradicated, it must instead be replaced." - Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit
No... Money is not the problem.
We just don’t allow ourselves the thought that our giving may actually hurt instead of help… …it would be too painful to pull back the curtain to reveal the Great Oz isn’t so great after all. And we’ll sleep better at night if every story has a happy ending, every hungry child is fed or adopted, and every pass-through rate is acceptable to the auditors. This is the old world of fundraising. It’s a horror movie of needs and problems, a shell game of solutions, and that personal touch to signal that when you’ve responded to the latest appeal you’ve done enough to feel good about being you. That’s the old world… and here’s the new world. Need is not enough – it never was, but I never asked for more and you didn’t think you’d get money from me if you gave me more than constant, dire, systemic need. Needs do not justify generosity, need doesn’t earn entitlement, but what’s good and what works is enough to create a generous community. Success is not just getting-by, not just moving the problem a day, week, or even years into the future, but it’s sustainable. Why? Because like nature, problems abhor a vacuum. So narrating success is essential in the new world, not just ‘being there’ or ‘making-do’ or even being faithful in spite of the endless, unbreakable, systemic prison of problems. Money is not the problem, although you’d never know that the way nonprofit’s talk or function. Fiscal year and calendar year deadlines and appeals turn doing good into artificial organizational survival or gaming the IRS instead of creating the opportunities that are the neighborhood of doing good. Deficit culture or the starvation cycle of nonprofit budgets build-in failure, frustration, and futility, instead of R&D, building capacity, and being able to afford hiring and compensating good people who thrive instead of sacrifice to be part of doing good things. Being a ‘cause’ is so much less than being a ‘because’ – and more than a cliché this is the difference that gains confidence and moves from the low-hanging fruit of designated (controlled) giving toward undesignated (unrestricted) generosity. We can’t create willingness, and manipulated emotional engagement is not a means to an end (think poverty porn), so finding opportunities for doing good is not forced but followed. The savior complex of relief work make an unholy alliance of power structures that exploit need for organizational arrogance, but following after the willingness to experience the difference of good makes for service organizations that actually serve – they’re second at best. In the new world of giving that helps instead of hurts is more than teaching how to fish. Is it might be more like stocking the empty pond with fish? Or even finding people who are hiring those who can fish and those willing to fish? (I’ll leave more of playing with the metaphor with you – enjoy!) Haxiom #5 – Reject truisms
Say no to “the customer is always right” and “we know more than our customers” truisms because both assume too much. The former assumes too much expertise on behalf of givers, the latter on behalf of the organization. Since nonprofits are not typically offering a standardized product but offering solutions to those who give they couldn’t possibly know (nor the nonprofit necessarily) what would be “right” without knowing what is offered. And this is realized only in a process of mutual discovery, in an ever-closer relationship that allows each to understand mutual needs and what can be done together to realize a value proposition of importance to both. Hax describes this seismic shift as the 180° change from product economics to customer economics – striving to grasp their profitability or benefit by means of adding value to their lives (perceived or real – it’s theirs to consider). So the metric of giving is no longer based on market share or a static budget need but based on share of their capacity (consultants selling segmentation should be celebrating this turn), and the CAC (cost-of-acquiring a new customer) is weighed against their LTV (the individual’s lifetime-value). Mission-driven organizations are rarely at the mercy of “the customer is always right” truism, but fail to test metrics of value. And celebrating all the donor-centric, donor-facing marketing by nonprofit consultants still hasn’t scratched the surface of Hax’s Total Customer Solution. Instead they still tend to insist their mission is virtuous and timely because needed, and the giver “needs to understand” what the nonprofit is telling them about the way the world really is. This is a genuine and perennial failure that explains so, so much. One final anecdote to reinforce the 180° turn Hax is navigating… The staff of a stable (and therefore frustrated) educational nonprofit returned from a retreat with a new ‘plan’ for fundraising. They found something called a giving pyramid – you may have seen it or even used it to set another year’s goal. They planned on raising $200,000 this year if they got 20 people to give $1,000, 10 people to give $10,000, and 4 people to give $20,000. But the problem was they currently boasted only 20 active givers with any consistency – just 20 different people who had given less than $20,000 total over the past year. All the freshly retreated staff saw was the glorious $200,000 goal. They didn’t see that they didn’t have the people to make it possible… or even how to begin. Their time would be better spent exploring the existing givers, their motives and then focusing on their networks (real or perceived). Why do they give? What does their giving do for them? And how does their giving to this educational nonprofit explain who they are? For more on Arnoldo Hax and The Delta Model - https://lnkd.in/gMymQvvR Having a choice is the difference between buying and being sold.
And marketers who get this right are successful marketers. But choice does not mean overwhelming with options and more information, your case for support, a market study, or overcompensating for uncertainty with a kitchen sink approach. Choice works for you and your customers when its designed. Why does the appearance of freedom and the exercise of agency work better than the ‘throw everything at the wall and see what sticks’ approach, or the ‘take it or leave it’ and only one call to action? Here’s a good story from Charles Duhigg’s Better, Faster, Smarter – a good but exhausting book on productivity. A study of nursing homes tried to discover why some seniors thrived while others withered and deteriorated physically and mentally in these homes. Good question, right?! The reason? Seniors who flourished made choices that rebelled against rigid schedules, pre-set menus, and room décor – rules set by the administrators of the nursing homes to help staff and take away the burden of choices from residents! Researchers named the thrivers “subversives” because they adopted a pattern of small rebellions against the status quo. In one home with a pre-set menu, residents began each meal by trading food items in order to construct meals of their own design instead of passively accepting what was served. One old guy (I love this guy), said he regularly gave his cake away because even though he liked cake, he would “rather eat a second-class meal that I have chosen.” In another home, residents rearranged furniture to personalize their rooms – even using crowbars to move furniture bolted to walls. The administrators thought they were being nice when they called a meeting of residents and told them they didn’t need to move furniture themselves, that the staff would do it for them to which they all complained they didn’t need assistance or permission – they’d do it themselves. These are not world-changing things, but even small acts of defiance are psychologically powerful because it showed they were still in control of their lives (just ask someone who has tried to stop their aging parent or grandparent from driving and relinquish their license). And here’s how the power of choice – even in small things – had exponential effects – the subversives walked about twice as much as other seniors, they ate about one-third more, they were more interactive and ‘owned’ interaction with their doctors – taking medications, visiting the exercise room, and maintained better relationships with family and friends. They lived longer, reported they were happy at a higher rate, more engaged and intellectually sharp. So take a good look at your marketing and see if you offer even the appearance of choice... is it there, and would you make the right choice? “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don't know which half.”
We don’t know if it was John Wanamaker or Henry Ford or Lord Leverhulme or J. C. Penney who said it, but I’m sure they’d all agree. Paying for something you can’t see when your business is manufacturing or selling tangible products can be frustrating. I get that… Investing time and energy in what isn’t what we produce or do but somehow no one will know what it is we produce or do without it is a necessary evil at best. If you’re in any other field but marketing, you get that… Some even take the quote further with appropriate snark asking ‘Only half?!’ And I get that too… And it doesn’t help that marketing’s defensiveness has hidden what’s important behind what appears to be an impressive metric like Likes. I was reminded of this recently when a billboard, bus, and bench advertiser bragged about their CPM (cost per mille, or cost per thousand impressions)… multiples built on counting cars, averaging occupants, pedestrians, commuters and density rates promised millions and millions of impressions - eyes, they said with emphasis - accompanied by an average annual income for surrounding zip codes and a cost of less than 1/1000 of a penny per impression (daily). All I needed to do was to convert impressions into leads into customers into returning, satisfied customers and my CAC (cost of acquiring a customer) would create a rich LTV (lifetime value of my customers). This just didn’t persuade me… like it wouldn’t persuade people like Wanamaker. Unapologetic marketing is different. Not satisfied with silly metrics, whether old school billboards or vanity metrics cluttering social media management, unapologetic marketing is focused, critical, and yet agnostic. Focused. Everyone is no one in particular – not your customer, best customer, audience or influencer. “Aim at nothing and you’re sure to hit it” is the first adage of segmented marketing. Our job is to find those who need what we offer. Critical. Knowing what value it is we offer is the mystery most marketing miss, and therefore our marketing misses attracting, cultivating, and converting customers and audiences who will in turn champion what it is we produce or do. Agnostic. Knowing what we don’t know is the mission of unapologetic marketing. We don’t know what will work, so we execute instead of obsessing over strategy. Yes, we start with current 'best practices' but if that's our ceiling and not our floor, we're lost. Our preferences, messaging, and even favorite colors or expensive branding and rebranding don’t matter. Only execution matters. Oh, and one more thing… unapologetic marketing is sales without sales. (We’ll tackle that next.) You want good, qualified leads - I get that.
But the way most of us try to get them hurts rather than helps. Here's what I mean... I ran across a lead-qualifying questionnaire from a company with 32 (yes, thirty-two) unique questions - all required, and many soliciting personal information just short of Social Security number. This captures a concept called 'self-selecting out' - and most potential leads will learn very quickly they don't qualify for OUR criteria. We do this because we want someone else to do our job for us... and if a customer jumps through all our pre-qualifying hoops then we deign to contact them. So we ask dozens of questions hoping to receive only the qualified leads that convert. And what we're really doing is asking someone to do our job for us. It's not healthy when someone does our job for us, and it's probably one of the BIG reasons we don't get the leads we hope to get. The alternative questionnaire asks for basic information (name, email, maybe phone, and probably location), and 1 (yes, one) filter question. Just ONE filter question - so basic, so ordinary in how we provide goods or services that it is our primary binary. So, what is your primary binary? It is NOT asking if someone wants to buy this or not. It is NOT about if they can afford this or not. It IS do they want to solve the problem that your goods or services solve. This is your primary binary and it is the best (and only) filter question. "You don't deserve my money... my time or my attention... just because the problem is so significant and you're so sincere."
I've said this to so, so many businesses, organizations, and nonprofits in my consulting and work, and it's always a hard pill to swallow. And with all the appeals and campaigns and Giving Tuesday and stick-it-to-the-IRS and give before December 31 asks appearing in my mailbox and inbox, I'm reminded of it daily. Here's what it looks like... You see, there's this big, systemic, problem - so big it's obvious and undeniable (so don't you dare deny it - and just to make sure I'll tell you more and more about it). Now, look at this kid, or mother, or family (there's a ranking order of pity-pictures nonprofits use and that's the basic 1, 2, 3 if the Vice President responsible for the final product is following the script). Oh, and did I tell you how bad this problem is? Well, even if I already did, I'm going to do it again because I'm insecure but sincere enough to care and I'm sure I'll win you over with my exploitive empathy ("exploitive empathy" is a thing - and copywriters use it a lot). So, give. The end. (And maybe a P.S. because we all read the P.S.) But what's missing? Why I should care?! You think you've told me, but never said why this is something I value - you've just said how bad things are and blah, blah, blah, everyone has problems and everything is bad. I've read hundreds of appeals and proposals that overwhelm the reader with the problem but never get to the solution - like is the problem solvable and am I (the giver) able to do it? I assume since you're asking me for money, you're going to be my in-between since that's your only reason to exist. But you're telling me why I should care about you, not why I should care or value those you serve. You're asking for my money to do your work - so act (and talk) like it's my money that does what it is you do. Shrink the distance between my writing a check or clicking a button to 'Donate Now' and a real solution to a problem I care about. And have a revenue-rich year-end all my nonprofit friends! "I saw your _______ and noticed some serious problems and errors."
That's the opening line of a recent cold-call email from a vendor selling their services. No further explanation. No offering of 'for example...' - nothing but the fear-inducing "serious problems and errors"! So, I just had to ask - "Does this really work for you? Does this fear-pitch get responses??" It became apparent this was just a pitch. They had no specifics about my ______, just a generic deck of 'common' serious problems and errors. And I was disappointed. The alternative? Give me something - for free. Show me you actually took the time to engage with my ______. Otherwise, your sales is just too-salesy. Cold calling is tough - I get that. So when I asked if this pitch worked they said, "Well, it got you to reply didn't it?!" Enough said... "But that doesn’t sound like me!”
If sounding like you worked you wouldn’t have the problems you do. It's one thing to 'find your voice' while staying 'on message' - if (and only if) that 'voice' has an audience - connects, engages, elicits a response. But to insist on our personality, our voice, or even our preferences when no one seems to be listening or cares is not communicating. It's ego. Creating and styling a 'voice' for an emerging start-up, launching a nonprofit, or rebranding in an attempt to get attention is what I've done over and over and the most common problem faced is the reluctance to care more about audience than yourself. It's not integrity to insist on 'sounding like myself' - because if that worked you wouldn't be struggling. People would be listening if you naturally communicated with empathy instead of defensive self-justification (ouch, that one stings). Taking a cue from this summary of Mr. Fred Rogers and the Rogers Rules - or Freddish - do you notice the repeated word? It's there - it's everywhere. Rephrase. If we're talking but our audience isn't listening - that's not on them, that's on us - to rephrase. Yes, goals are fake.
Many goals are set as easy gets and some of us do those simple, repeatable tasks just so we can write them down on a to-do list. Cheap wins, and typical of "I've done what I had to do" passive-aggressiveness we should have outgrown in early adulthood. And we've heard about stretch goals - pushing our known limits and challenging our own Peter Principle ceiling. But these goals can be abused (and most often are) to do more with less (or at least the same compensation). It's what we're paid to do, isn't it? It justifies our salary - if anything does. And goals don't guarantee or even create good or better work. If it's late, don't wait.
That just, almost, fresh idea we get just before the deadline shouldn't make everyone and everything wait. Set fixed deadlines with flexible scopes. In reaching the fake goals we set we will have firm deadlines, but the scope of work included will have to be flexible. Be early, not just on time. Reverse engineering from the deadline ahead to today should make everything we do early, never on time. Do what's done. When the deadline arrives, do what's done without regret, without hesitation, and without apology. Don't force the new on the old. Always be moving forward instead of constantly asking teams or customers to adapt to the new or change to version 7.4 because you've determined versions 7.1, 7.2, and 7.3 weren't good enough. Do more of what works. Stop diagnosing what doesn't work and obsessing about failures and double-down on successes. Best practices are the floor, not the ceiling. A great place to start, but a horrible aspiration to labor under. Now isn't better, and later isn't best. Ego is no excuse for action or delays, no guarantee of success or failure, and no reason not to be early for a deadline. Calm energy is a better company culture. Constantly sprinting because "the sky is falling" is not a culture worth defending. We don't know until we know. Experience, history, and track record don't guarantee success, they just give us a place to start and change. A/B Testing doesn't work. There, I said it.
Sure, it helps us decide between two ideas or options - and gives us a binary choice between two opinions... but those two opinions are all that we could come up with, imagine, design, or settle on. Maybe (often?) it's because the heavy-handed editorial process we rely on to arbitrate safe and safer ideas leads us to a cliff where we'd have to actually risk something - like our egos - and instead of asking "Is this the best I can do?" we ask fate and flip the coin of A/B Test. The alternative? Start with different, not safe or safer. And an editorial process will always defend a regressive trend. Yes, A/B Testing makes money for marketers and marketing departments and consultants. And it always mollifies insecurity with an external arbiter. But it's never a guarantee of success and it's always a guarantee of falsely confident mediocrity. So if you're aiming for mediocrity - then A/B Test... by all means.  "Fight forward, not back" - advice around long before Sam Obisanya's father Ola shared this wisdom in the final season of Ted Lasso, Season 3, Episode 7 - The Strings that Bind Us. Typically used as an encouragement to overcome bitterness, resentment, and an unforgiving way of living in the past, it's interesting that in Sam' situation it was his entering a public and political debate on a ongoing and unsettled topic. What got Sam into trouble was not that as a footballer he stuck his nose in politics, but that he thought he was an equal because he had equal access to an audience and equal access to social media. For marketers and comms professionals (and we have a lot of opinions but not always good filters), we should know better than most. But FOMO gets the best of us. Here are a few of the older take-away's from "fight forward, not back" that can help those of us trying to ride the coattails of social relevancy in an age of politicizing everything except politics. No one looks back - except gapers and those who thrive on schadenfreude - especially in our social media channels - and unless that's your primary audience (or where you want to find them), ignore them. Yes, things are said and posted that make us angry, and for other things we just need to be present as an ally so show our eyes are open because being seen is a significant component in the power dynamic of signaling (and signaling has both positive and negative connotations). So what? No all public and political debates deserve a response - and the world can live without your opinion (unless that's how you generate your direct revenue streams - and 99% of us don't). Always and only punch-up. This advice is the heart of learning to compete better - not just compete, as in fight, everyone and everything. Too many nonprofits and tight-sector markets believe they should be monopolies and everyone else doing exactly what they do should cease to exist and bow to their excellence. This is ego, not a sound business and marketing model. But if you have some delta that #1 or #2 in your sector doesn't do, or can't do, or doesn't care to do, then punch-up and say 'they' don't care about that delta - it's all you've got really. But if you start punching-down on others, you just look petty, insecure, and like a bully. One final take-away - fighting back takes you off your mission, but fighting forward can give you a moment of clarity when you take refined and even more focused steps toward your goal. Some of us just avoid all fights hoping we'll be ignored - that's fine, but we'll be ignored. Some of us are only looking for fights because we don't know what the hell we're doing or why we're doing it - that's sad... have fun with that! But some of us learn to see more clearly how to find what's ahead, not by burning bridges but by continually building new bridges. "No one joined _____ to sit in meetings." That's the rationale behind Shopify's Kaz Nejatian, Vice President of product and COO's memo greeting Shopify team members in 2023.
You've probably heard the basics - "Recurring meetings with three or more people, all meetings on Wednesdays and meetings with 50 or more people outside of Thursdays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. will all be cancelled." First, it's temporary - for a few weeks to see the impact, downside, and measure productivity. Instead of pronouncing what is better for all, Shopify's memo offers the chance to see what can be different. It's creative, not protective! Second, it's an obvious choice to free-up productivity hours - "The e-commerce colossus says it will mean 76,500 hours previously set aside for meetings can be used for other work." Do the math - every time you and your co-workers sit in a meeting for 1 hour - multiply the per hour compensation for all involved - that's what your paying to hold all your meetings. Let's be modest and say Shopify's average per hour rate is $35 multiplied by the 76,500 hours freed-up and you've added $2,677,500 of productivity-pay time back to the business. Do your own math and see how much you're paying to hold meetings that could easily be memos! Third, because this policy came 'from on high' - each person has cover - a CYA where they don't have to reject meetings and make it seem like they can't do their work (there's an implicit aggrandizing, 'I can do it all - and have meetings all day - why can't you!?' in our busy meeting schedules). For too many of us meetings = importance. Fourth, the goal is to improve the quality of time working not just the amount of time working vs. time in meetings. Nejatian said: "Uninterrupted time is the most precious resource of a craftsperson, and we are giving our people a 'no judgment zone' to subtract, reject meetings, and focus on what is most valuable." And fifth, this new no-meetings approach is a strategic response to reinforce the value and productivity of remote work - not to end it. Many frustrated people-managers are demanding an end to remote work. "The new approach to meetings comes after the company scrapped a plan to move some of its staff into a sprawling 243,000-square-foot office space in downtown Toronto in December...." Instead of 'deciding' what must be the best case scenario, Shopify justifies this move from a people-productivity metric. Or, to put it bluntly, they seem to understand the 'human' in human resources. So instead of refusing to learn anything from the COVID work-environment, Shopify is negotiating the new normal of the workplace and productivity. Of course, they're doing it to revive their flagging valuation - but is there a better reason to justify a no meetings policy?  If you want something done give it to a busy person.
You've heard this counter-intuitive wisdom before - but to see it in action is something different. Understanding our organization's culture and advocating for culture change are at the heart of Kevin Oakes Culture Renovation - an excellent and in-depth narration of navigating culture change. Here's a quick-takeaway (and it's how I jumped from Oakes's excellent narrative to my world)... Imagine you're managing a sales team - or any team using performance based metrics - and there's some unevenness undermining your efforts to build a performance driven culture. (Not so hard to imagine, is it!?) The all-to-common default is to throw better, hotter leads to those who are underperforming and expecting our over-performers to be able to convert less-likely leads. And this is a great reason for our over-performers to leave because of poor performance management. It uses a mechanism instead of coaching and development to solve a problem - and this isn't management... or it's just mis-management. The alternative is not to just over-burden over-performers and reward under-performers, but create the space where a vacuum can either draw others along or move them out. This might be the harshest of my take-aways from Culture Renovation - some culture change includes (necessitates) the exit of hanger-on-ers - not babysitting them as projects or misguided management. Not all of our businesses embrace a performance driven culture, and that's a problem of another kind in industries like public service and the nonprofit world. Now in fairness, the action-paths of Oakes's Culture Renovation do include some deconstructing as well because renovation always involves demolition but it never confuses it for success. Here's the pathway summary of Culture Renovation - it's worth the read... - Listening - Keeping - Behaving - Identifying - Measuring - Communicating - Exiting - Picturing - Collaborating - Co-creating - Training - Relating - Rewarding - Changing - Leveraging - Mobilizing - Branding |
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August 2023
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