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Articles filed in: Success
It’s Not For You
filed in Story Skills, Strategy, Success
‘It’s not for you,’ are four of the most powerful, yet hardest, words you can say, no matter what you have to share, sell or serve.
It takes courage not to be for everyone or to close the door on what at first glance looked like an opportunity.
But when you’re brave enough to put a stake in the ground, you will find your right people. Those people who you can help. The ones who will show up, ready to act—the people who would miss you.
The flip side, of course, is that you need to recognise your people. Those who you can confidently tell, ‘This is exactly what you’ve been looking for.
We do work that matters when we know who we want to matter to.
Image by Yelp
Faith Vs. Proof
filed in Marketing, Strategy, Success
In a digital world, where customers have infinite choices, and loyalty is precarious, it’s easy to believe the more information we give people, the better.
It turns out that the opposite is true. We’re more likely to retain customers, get repeat sales and be recommended by simplifying the decision process.
What people want is the quickest way to discern if they can trust us and our offering.
Our customers don’t always want more proof—often what they need from us is more faith—not just in us, but in themselves.
Image by Sam Wheeler
The One And Only
filed in Success
You will not outthink your competition. Neither will I. None of us will.
We will never outwith, outsmart or even outrun them.
We will not outmanoeuvre, outguess or outdo them either.
The truth is competing is a zero-sum game. We succeed when we make peace with the fact that we don’t need to compete when we know who we are.
Every smart, brave, generous member of the Right Company is building the business only they can build.
This is the last time we’ll be inviting membership applications to the Right Company for 2019. If you want to succeed on your own terms, it might be for you.
Image by Boudewijn Huysmans
Do’s AND Don’t Do’s
Clare’s accountancy clients tell her she’s like a breath of fresh air.
When she started her company, she took time to onboard her clients— walking them through how she could help them, taking a pile of paperwork and other mental clutter with her as she left. Nothing was too much trouble. Clients valued her approach, and her business thrived.
But as Clare’s business grew, her posture started to shift. She was too busy to serve people in the way that had originally differentiated her company. Small mistakes were made, and apologies overlooked. She stopped picking up the phone. As her business scaled, Clare continued to do her job, but she’d forgotten to show she cared. And that made all the difference.
The day came when her very first client decided they should part ways. Clare understood immediately that she’d lost this client because of the one small thing she could have done, but didn’t do.
It’s worth remembering that it isn’t only what we do that people notice— sometimes it’s what we don’t do that determines our results.
Image by Cowomen.
Purposeful Connection
Our new neighbour Bob is renovating the old terrace house next door. Well, when I say renovating, what I mean is rebuilding the entire house from the top down. The roof is off, and there’s not much left but a shell of the existing property.
It’s not the first time Bob has taken on a project like this, and it shows—not just in how he organises the team of builders, but in how he communicates with the people who will be affected by the work. Namely us.
Before work began, Bob’s first move was to invite us onsite to walk us through his plans. His second was to show us the common wall that needs to be rebuilt and to explain how he will fix it for our mutual benefit. The third was to give us his phone number, with instructions to call if we’re concerned about anything.
Bob has taken the time to empathise with us, his new neighbours. He’s anticipated our fears and our questions. He’s made us feel like we’re in good hands. And even though we barely know him, we trust him.
It turns out that we don’t have to build connection and trust on the fly.
We can do it on purpose.
Image by David Siglin
The Inner Scorecard
filed in Story Skills, Success
We regularly measure our status, progress and success against others. It’s no wonder.
We’ve been subjected to comparison since our parents bragged about when we got our first tooth. At school, the race to see who could collect the most gold stars was on from day one.
We are acutely aware of what makes us remarkable in the eyes of others. We have learned to live and work by, what Warren Buffet calls, an outer scorecard—often at the expense of doing what’s right, and what’s right for us.
If what’s on our inner scorecard grounds us, we must get into the habit of understanding and prioritising those things. Inner scorecards are essential for individuals and organisations alike.
What are you proud of that others would find unremarkable?
What’s on your inner scorecard?
Image by Volkan Olmez
Why Next?
My uncle Larry taught me to play chess when I was eight or nine. I learned just enough rules to get started because he said I’d learn how to play, by playing. The thing I’ll always remember is the way he taught me to make better moves. Every time I picked up a piece to move it he’d ask, ‘Why is this your next, best move?’
We’re all good at asking the question, ‘What next?’
In our impatience to make progress, we’ve become experts at looking for the next, new thing that will bring us more of whatever we’re after — more opportunity or more influence, more joy or more money—not necessarily in that order.
But we’re not so good and questioning, ‘Why next?’
We make more right moves when we reflect on how the next thing we’re about to do aligns with our values, and if it’s helping us to get to where we ultimately want to go.
Image by Kurt Bauschardt
Soft Metrics
Traditionally, we measure performance through the narrow lens of hard data.
Sales, profit and cash flow are seen as reliable indicators of how well we’re doing.
But hard data alone paint a two-dimensional picture of success.
There’s nothing to stop us prioritising outcomes we care about, but can’t reliably measure.
We don’t have to forsake ethics for profitability.
We can simultaneously pursue growth and generosity.
What we measure gets managed. And what we manage is the making of us.
Image by neonbrand
The Power Of Describing The Problem
Four hundred Barnes & Noble bookstores have closed since 1997. In the last five years, the chain has lost a billion dollars in market value. But it seems hope is on the horizon. The private equity firm that owns the UK bookseller Waterstones recently bought the company. Waterstones CEO, James Daunt, will move to New York to begin his new role as chief executive of the struggling bookseller.
Mr Daunt has a challenging—some might say, daunting task ahead of him. Where should he begin? Well, it turns out that he chose to begin by describing the problem.
Daunt was quoted in the New York Times as framing the problem like this:
“Frankly, at the moment you want to love Barnes & Noble, but when you leave the store you feel mildly betrayed. Not massively, but mildly. It’s a bit ugly — there’s piles of crap around the place. It all feels a bit unloved, the booksellers look a bit miserable,
it’s all a bit run down.”
We often dwell on the symptoms of the problem, instead of the possible causes. Booksellers could lament that people prefer to shop online or that they browse and don’t buy instore. Symptoms, not causes.
It’s tempting to jump ahead to creating solutions before describing the root of the problem. But we can’t we begin to have honest conversations about how to solve problems before we own them.
Image by Rumman Amin
Shame About The Weather
Some people have no choice but to pay attention to the weather. Pilots, fishers and farmers must make allowances for the state of the atmosphere on any given day. But for most of us, the weather isn’t a problem, unless we believe and declare it to be. And yet, we allow our thoughts about the weather to constrain us in ways we don’t always realise.
Our limiting beliefs about circumstances beyond our control don’t just apply to how hard it’s raining outside. We use often use metaphorical ‘bad weather’ days to justify our actions or inaction.
What if instead of looking for excuses not to do the thing we planned to do, we found reasons to do that, or more and better? How would that change the quality of our work and the impact we could make?
Image by Roberto Trombetta