Why Try To Get Out Of Your Box, When You Can Use What's In It?
We spend a lot of time asking, earning and abusing permission.
We spend very little time giving permission.
Even less time giving permission to ourselves.
To try. To fail. To stretch. To dream. To apologize. To forgive. To lead.
Stay Positive & Permission’s A Two-Way Street
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If you have a caveat to your promise, you have a few options.
You can reveal the caveat after someone has committed to paying for your promise.
You can put the caveat in the front, so they know what they’re getting themselves into as they decide to commit. Preferably, not
Otherwise, you can remove the potential of the caveat becoming an issue at all.
Enable folks to subscribe for one month without auto enrolling them into an annual purchase.
Remove the week on your calendar that people can place orders you know you won’t be fulfilling.
Make the time to connect with someone when you’ve said you’re going to.
In a world with hundreds of other options, they’re a lot less likely to divvy out a second chance.
Not to mention, that the competition is catching up on eliminating pain points on the customer journey, and it’s either working to their advantage … or yours.
The race to removing any potential pain points sure beats racing to the lowest price.
Stay Positive & It’s All About Keeping Promises
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The way we say “ty,” “thanks,” “thank you,” or “endless thanks” sends a certain signal.
How quickly we respond to emails also sends a signal.
Whether we’re the first to speak up in a room or if we’re the last – it sends a signal.
You guessed it, everything we do (and don’t do) sends a signal.
What matters is that we have our signals align more often than not.
Stay Positive & It’s Worth Keeping Track
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Ever found yourself performing a monotonous task, a banal one, assembly-line type of work?
If you can recall, I would bet that you were doing it poorly at first.
It likely took you awhile to find the rhythem, to notice the pattern of least resistance and to optimize your labor so you could get more with less.
And that was for a minuscule task like folding envelopes or cutting wood.
It might be worth being less hard on yourself as you tackle bigger projects.
Even more important, it might be better to be less hard on others as they do.
Stay Positive & It Takes Time To Streamline (But It Does Require Doing The Work)
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There’s no doubt you have a close friend.
No doubt you connect well with a colleague or two.
Your boss likely does a lot for you and so does your parent and maybe a mentor, too.
But no one can advocate as often or as greatly for you than you.
It’s a choice to pick yourself.
Stay Positive & Speak Up, We’re Listening
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The hospital that performs team time outs prior to surgery drastically decreases the amount of incorrect amputations.
The restaurant that does monthly all-hands-on-deck tastings for its employees sells more meals and elevates employee advocacy.
The marketers who hold discovery sessions before a project catch more mistakes before they are made and craft more target-centric content.
There’s a lot to gain from a short (but meaningful) pow wow.
Stay Positive & It Need Only Be A Few Minutes
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Imagine running a subscription service that for years has had the default subscription be monthly. Then you switch it to three years.
Sure, sales from first-timers, habituals and inexperienced folks will increase by 3,500 percent, but at what cost?
Imagine serving a patron a beer at the bar. An expensive one. A big one. And they don’t like it.
Sure you could charge them for it and dump it out in front of them and charge them for another different one, but at what cost?
We can break our hold on integrity for a quick buck, but the cost of doing so (and the inevitable downward spiral that happens when we do) far outweighs the cost of cutting someone slack, of doing the right thing and of having empathy.
Stay Positive & Remember That Golden Rule?
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