Why Try To Get Out Of Your Box, When You Can Use What's In It?
When you care deeply about your employees or team members, they absorb that and in turn care deeply about your customers and then your customers care for your business. It’s a magical cycle.
But care can come in a lot of forms. It can be pay and events and gifts.
Worth remembering, it can also be about process improvements; making the work smoother or simpler or even just more fun.
Stay Positive & More Fun
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Permission is a necessity for a great marketer, not an option.
Before a mass email, a purchased list, a flyer distribution, consider what can be done to earn the permission first.
What can you give away to get the permission? What can you stand for? Who can you connect with first?
Marketing isn’t free. Awareness isn’t free. Both are earned.
Stay Positive & Seek Permission First
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The loyal are the ones that don’t look elsewhere.
They’re not clicking on job postings. They’re not looking up reviews of other restaurants nearby.
They might keep with you, but the loyal that looks elsewhere isn’t the kind of loyal you want.
You want to be remarkable enough that people don’t click, don’t look.
Which means two things are on you to maintain that kind of loyalty.
The first is a continuous sense of familiarity. Humans are creatures of habit and what you’re doing right that got them hooked needs to be maintained regardless of how tired you might be of it.
The second is a continuous introduction of new. Humans will always be fascinated by shiny objects because they help tell a story. They might not always buy it or try the new thing you’re offering, but they notice and admire it and respect it.
That’s the magic combo of loyalty: old and new.
Stay Positive & Easy To Write, Hard To Execute
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First, what nimbleness really isn’t: it’s not a process, it’s not a culture and it’s not a game plan.
Nimbleness can’t be manufactured, amassed or prescribed.
What nimbleness really is is humanity.
It’s the moment of seeing another person and taking ownership of a situation without any request to do so; it’s being human which is to say that you have empathy and choose to respond to it whether it’s on your task list or not, whether you’ll be rewarded or not, whether the boss will know or not, whether you’re “supposed to” or not.
You can’t mandate nimbleness, but you can surround yourself with people who see others (clients, customers, each other) for who they are: humans.
Stay Positive & Agile
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Any revolution, art, widget and service is bound to be reviewed poorly at first.
And I mean that in both contexts. It will receive poor reviews as well as be reviewed by people who are not your people.
Anything new is attractive to the avant-garde and the avant-garde is picky about what they like that’s new, and so poor reviews flow in. You know the kind. The vegan that dines at a steakhouse and leaves a review about how they don’t care for steak. The chap who tried your kitchen widget, but didn’t work well enough as a door prop.
These reviews are ones to shrug off rather than use them as fuel to change everything you set out to give and deliver.
Trends happen over time, not over night; and they happen when someone sticks with their gift long after the first critics speak up.
Stay Positive & Push On With Your Generosity (And Ignore The Naysayers)
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There’s nothing like increasing your chance of becoming disappointed.
It’s the best way to … get what we want, fulfill a dream, help others, create change, shift the culture and grow.
The more chances that we can be told no, the more times that a naysayer or critic can speak on something of yours, the more we risk disappointment, the better.
There’s no better sign that we’re taking leaps that matter.
Stay Positive & Onward Anyway, Right?
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In a short story by Kurt Vonnegut, he writes about a character named Frank warning his friend against following anybody.
“Thinking the guy up ahead knows what he’s doing is the most dangerous religion there is.”
It’s half true as leaders have two core responsibilities.
The first responsibility is where Vonnegut is wrong. Leaders are map makers for others. They share their knowledge of both what worked and what didn’t so others either avoid the same mistakes or celebrate the same wins. Making their path worth following is the point.
The second responsibility; the one where Vonnegut is the most right is that leaders are also trailblazing. They’re trying new things, making more mistakes than anyone else and are constantly dancing with fear, uncertainty, doubt, vulnerability… the list goes on.
So the advice ought to have been, “Thinking the guy up ahead knows what he’s doing si the most dangerous religion there is. But carry on. You’ll learn a thing or two.”
Stay Positive & Lead On
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