Why Try To Get Out Of Your Box, When You Can Use What's In It?
The more you exercise your muscles, the stronger you get.
The more your heart races, the more calm you can stay when the pressure is on.
The more scenarios you can put yourself where the tension is high, the better you’ll be able to handle those situations in the future.
The list goes on …
Stay Positive & Some Situations More Means Better
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An Indian Run is when a team jogs in a single file line and then the last person in line sprints to the front. Once she reaches the front, the cycle repeats with the new last person in the line.
I think it’s a mighty fine metaphor for how teams can do better in the work place.
The team gets stronger when those in the back push themselves to the front. It’s one more way the law of averages makes sense.
Far better to turn laggards into leaders than to make the front of the pack run a little faster.
Stay Positive & Start Sprinting
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Their interest in you and your business might have to do with vanity metrics, your ability to turn a profit, and build an email list.
Moreover, their loyalty to you and your business is more likely to do with what you can’t measure: humanity, care, and warmth.
Stay Positive & People Do Business With People
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Not the stories you’re telling …
Not the stories you hope others tell …
What are the stories people are telling each other about the change you seek to make?
Google Home isn’t moving from the early adopter novelty to becoming widely used because Google can run ads year after year. It’s doing it because people are telling stories of it being able to turn their TV off when their remote broke or how it can share an answer a group questioned without singling one person out as the one who will go find the answer and report back.
If stories are just examples of the change you seek to make, then what are those examples?
There are examples, right?
Stay Positive & Design For Them
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Questions like “How was your day?” and “What are you trying to create?” are certainly directed at you. The answers expected are yours. Not the person’s across the table and definitely not your enemy’s. Yours.
But not all questions asked are made for your answer.
Questions like:
The real answers to these questions don’t care what you think they are because they’re not about you; they’re about someone else, which means that your response is less about facts and what you think. Rather, the answers are someone else’s, shared through you. And to get those answers requires copious amounts of empathy.
You’ll run into confusion in answers like this anytime a brand is talked about. There’s the message the brand wants people to believe and there’s the message the target already believes about the brand. Who is right?
Stay Positive & If You Don’t Know Their Answer, Ask Them
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Getting the word to spread is part value-creation and part design.
Of course, it has to be something worth making a remark about to begin with.
But it also needs to be easy to talk about.
Not easy in the sense of few 8th grade words coming together to form a sentence, but easy in the sense of there being something in it for the person making the remark.
You have done the work of creating something of value, now make sure you create a posture among your tribe that their instinct is to spread the word.
Stay Positive & Achoo
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Volkswagen is safe while BMW is fast.
Apple is creative while IBM is smart.
Amazon is convenient while Walmart is cheap.
Coca-cola is happiness while Sprite is refreshing.
Nike is performance while Converse is cool.
Your business is … while your competitors are … ?
Stay Positive & Choose One Word, Just One
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