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The Right Story
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
What makes some bad ideas successful, and why do many good ideas fail? It turns out that there’s no such thing as a bad idea or a good idea. There is only the wrong story or the right story. The right story is one that is trusted. It is believed because it is told by the right person, for the right reasons, in the right way, at the right time, to the right people.
The success or failure of our ideas depends on us telling the right story. We can only do that by being clear about the change we want to create, and why—and then bringing enough of the right people with us on the journey. It’s up to us, the changemakers of today and tomorrow, to galvanise those people we hope to bring on the journey with us.
That’s why I wrote my new book, The Right Story. Not just to help you to persuade people or get better at delivering your message. But also to give you the tools to help you understand what should drive that message.
The Right Story will help you to resonate with your right people and become a more purposeful and powerful communicator. You’re the reason I wrote it. You can preorder your Kindle copy today—paperback copies will be available next week. I hope it helps you and your good ideas to succeed this year.
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Be Ambitious
In our culture ambition is both celebrated and frowned upon—not always in equal measure. Ambition is encouraged and rewarded, but only to a point.
Perhaps it’s not ambition itself that’s the problem, but rather, our narrow definition of it? We aspire mostly to the ambition of accumulation. We want to be more and have more. More accomplished or influential, more wealthy or successful. Preferably all four. But if we’re asked to define success, we’re not always sure what it means to us.
If we’re going to find our calling, do meaningful work and live happy, fulfilled lives we need a more ambitious definition of success.
Be ambitious about the power and potential of your ideas. Be ambitious about the depth of the change you want to create. Be ambitious for the people you love and those you serve. Be ambitious for the people in your community who you’ve never met. Be ambitious for the children in your country who have yet to be born. Be an ambitious advocate for those who have lost hope.
Reflect on what you want. Then go after it with your head held high. And encourage and help others to do the same.
Image by Garry Knight
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Design For The Outcome You Want
filed in Strategy
When a once beloved brand under new management, repeatedly relies on flash sales and deep discounts to boost sales, it’s obvious that the organisation’s goal is to massage the numbers on the next quarter’s balance sheet. The leadership team are designing the business for the outcome they want—short-term growth, on paper. A short-term strategy doesn’t always take long-term effects into account. Discounting, in this case, sets off a chain reaction.
Customers who pay full price one day, only to see products discounted the next, are now educated to buy when products are discounted. There will always be another sale right around the corner, after all. So the brand loses its efficacy because the story the customers believe changes. The meaning customers once attached to the brand gradually erodes until the irreplaceable brand becomes an interchangeable commodity.
Every decision we make has a knock on effect. Today’s decisions impact tomorrow’s outcomes. We need to plan for then and now.
Image by Milo Baumgartner
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The Upside Of Generosity
The waitress supervising breakfast at the hotel was doing a great job of doing her job. The coffee pots and bread baskets were full. Dirty tables were promptly cleared, and not a single customer had complained that morning. She kept herself busy as the minutes to the end of her shift ticked by.
The couple from England who were visiting Australia for the first time stopped the waitress to ask her where the nearest cinema was. ‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘I’m not from around here.’ And in that moment the tourists’ impression of Australia and Australians lost some of its sparkle.
This isn’t just a story about the missed opportunity to serve. It’s also the story of the missed opportunity to find meaning and joy in being of service. The generous gesture (in this case a quick Google search) that costs nothing has the power to change not just the receiver, but the giver too. And when it’s withheld, it costs more than we realise to both giver and receiver.
Image by Kjell Eson
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The Power Of What Goes Unnoticed
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
The two sign installers stand back to assess their work before finishing the job. But something isn’t right. A couple of the large adhesive letters they have applied to the storefront window are crooked, and one of the men calls this out. His colleague agrees. The sign is definitely looking a little wonky. But, he reasons, if the store owners don’t care about fonts, they aren’t going to notice this.
‘Let’s just crack on with it,’ he says.
And they do. But something else is not right—something that skips his attention, as he turns to get the rest of the equipment from their van. His colleague’s smile slips, his shoulders slump. Even though he agrees that the store owner might not notice the sign isn’t perfect. He knows. And that knowing sucks all the joy out of the work.
We are not only showing up for customers. We are showing up to ourselves—to do work we’re proud of, even when no one is watching.
Image by Peter B
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Forget Marketing
filed in Marketing, Storytelling
Forget marketing. Instead, sit down and reflect on what you want your customer to know about why you’re building what you’re building. Tell them everything. Write it down.
Start with how you got to this moment and how your journey to it has equipped you to help them. Tell your customers how you’re going to help and why it matters that you do. Then show them how their lives will be better because of what you created. Remind them what’s at stake.
Marketing doesn’t have to be about promoting and pitching. Marketing can be an honest conversation between two people (or groups of people), who need each other.
Image by Garry Knight
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More Customers Vs. More For Customers
filed in Marketing, Strategy, Success
Every business begins with the founder’s intention about the outcome he or she wants to achieve. Every aspect of its development stems from that original intent.
As businesses owners, leaders and creators, we can adopt one of two strategies. We can build a business with the intention of getting more customers, or we can want more for our customers.
The outcome we want shapes the kind of business we build.
And the flip side, of course, is that when we want more for our customers, we end up being the kind of company more people want to do business with.
Image by Garry Knight
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Why Didn’t It Work?
We’ve been learning by trial and error since we were six months old when we first noticed the effect of our actions on objects. As children we developed skills by learning from our mistakes, paying attention to what didn’t work as well as to what did.
As adults, we are not so keen to see our failures as an opportunity to learn. We might lament about the product launch that didn’t go to plan. The meeting that didn’t pay off. The idea that flopped. But often instead of asking why, we throw the baby out with the bathwater. And in that moment we overlook the opportunity to learn from our failures.
We didn’t learn to build a sandcastle or ride a bike by giving up and moving onto something new right away. We worked out what we needed to adjust, and we adjusted.
The path to success is progressive and iterative. We get there by being brave enough to ask the hard questions along the way.
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Necessary Work
Last week I reached out to two different digital companies for technical support via email.
The first company promised to respond within 24 hours. Their eventual reply was a copied and pasted generic email, that likely went out to every person with a similar issue. It was obvious the busy person dealing with my support ticket hadn’t read my original email in full.
The second company got back to me within an hour. Amy at Mailchimp not only replied to my email, but responded to me with empathy and rectified the problem. In a single email, Amy introduced herself and said she would be happy to help. She’d already investigated the issue and fixed the problem. She walked me through this step-by-step in her email response. Then she signed off by saying if I continued to have problems I could reach out again, then wished me well for the weekend. In the reactive world we live in, this kind of thoughtful response feels rare.
It is. It shouldn’t be.
The reason a company exists is to help. If our systems and processes, our products and services or our work and ideas are not helping, then why are they necessary? Necessary work is not only good for customers and businesses—it’s essential for our individual and collective wellbeing. We are hardwired to help. We can’t thrive when we are limited to doing unnecessary work.
If this email landed in your inbox today, it’s because Amy cared to make it happen. Amy is empowered and equipped to do necessary work because the leaders at Mailchimp built their company with this intention. Every one of us has a similar choice to make.
Image by Marc Thiele
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What Does Success Look Like?
filed in Strategy
Back in the ’90s, when I was pregnant for the second time, our local health authority announced new measures to cut waiting times at hospital outpatient clinics. This was great news for me and other pregnant women who were often juggling appointments with work or childcare arrangements.
Late on in my pregnancy, I arrived for an appointment and handed in my appointment card. The receptionist noted my attendance and invited me to take a seat in the waiting room, among the dozens of other women flicking through worn out magazines or wrestling tired toddlers. I had barely sat down when a nurse called my name. Unbelievably, the clinic wasn’t just running to time—it was running ahead of time! On every other occasion that I’d attended waiting times had been over an hour, often two. The long wait was accepted as a fact of life. Doctors just run late. And yet, that day I was being seen immediately.
The nurse took me into a side room, weighed me, took my blood pressure, tested my urine and documented the time I’d ‘been seen’ in her paperwork. Then she brought me back into the waiting room where I sat for another two hours before the obstetrician finally called me in.
On paper, it looked like the clinic was doing a great job of keeping to scheduled appointment times. On paper, it looked like patients were in and out of the clinic in no time. On paper the health authority was hitting its targets. But in reality nothing much had changed for the patient.
It’s easy to design the system that looks efficient on paper.
It’s easy to show up to a meeting without being present while you’re there.
It’s easy to reply to an email with a generic reply without ever responding to the problem.
It’s easier to treat the symptoms than it is to get to the heart of the problem.
Getting to the heart of the problem and caring enough to fix is way harder. But ticking boxes or papering over the cracks doesn’t meet our customer’s desire to feel seen and heard. And it doesn’t fulfil our need to do meaningful work either. That’s why the energy we devote to getting better at the hard part is worth it.
How we define and measure success changes how we shape the world.
Every one of us has the power to do that.
Image by Orbis