Search Results: being seen
The Human Touch
filed in Meaningful Work, Success
The woman on the other end of the line at the call centre hesitates. The change in her tone of tells me she doesn’t know the answer to my question. She hesitates. I hear the doubt in her voice. She’s having to go off script, and she’s terrified. She’s trained to answer only certain queries as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Her job is to funnel people to the right email address and move on to processing the next incoming call. She doesn’t know what to do next. And she hasn’t been encouraged to say: ‘I don’t know.’ or ‘I’m not sure, but I will find out for you.’
Our greatest fear when we are anxious or dissatisfied is that we will not be seen, or worse, that we will be ignored. What we want in those moments isn’t the right answer, right away. We want empathy—to be treated with humanity.
When our systems are designed to deliver and do the opposite communication breaks down. We fail everyone in situations where we prioritise efficiency over humanity. It isn’t just the people we serve who lose when we stop being human. When we are empowered to do work we’re proud of, everyone wins.
Image by Arlington Research
Ideas Worth Keeping
filed in Meaningful Work, Strategy, Success
Sometimes our best ideas come to us when we’re working with constraints. We’ve all seen hundreds of brilliant ideas and initiatives come into being as a result of communities being in isolation around the globe.
Local councils in London are calling at-risk elderly to ask if they need groceries or medicines delivered.
Villages have started newsletters to keep communities informed and together.
Neighbours are dropping care packages at the doors of vulnerable neighbours.
Supermarkets have changed store layouts, putting essential items at the front to cut down on shopping time.
Legoland is hosting live workshops to inspire children who are now home-schooled.
What ideas, routines and rituals have you started in the past few weeks that are worth keeping?
Image by Kelly Sikkema
The Story Advantage
filed in Marketing, Story Skills, Storytelling
How can we get more attention for our idea?
How can we increase brand awareness?
How can we make people notice our work?
These are the questions I am often asked by the people and companies in search of a message that will give them a competitive advantage.
I don’t need to tell you that getting more eyeballs on your work won’t get any easier. Every day new businesses are launched and more videos, podcasts, articles and books are published. There will never be less competition for people’s attention than there is today.
But I’d argue that getting attention and building awareness are misguided goals. Fulfilling careers and thriving businesses are built on more than being noticed. And that’s good news for all of us.
We don’t need to go in search of some elusive message that might gain fleeting awareness. We already have an inherent competitive advantage—our unique, true stories about our life and our work. Those stories, well told, enable us to share messages that build strong ties with the people we hope to serve.
Our goal must always be to do what it takes, not just to be seen—but to matter. We don’t have to manufacture a message to get more attention, we have to create more affinity by getting better at saying what’s true.
If you want to get better at telling your stories, please consider joining us for the upcoming Story Skills Workshop.
Image by Clem Onojeghuo
A Matter Of Marketing
We live in an age when it’s easier than ever to get your message in front of people. Many businesses have a strategy for getting their message seen and heard—far fewer have a plan for being believed and understood.
It’s one thing to get in front of people, and another for them to choose to keep you there.
It’s the market that dictates what matters, not the marketing.
Image by Gerry Popplestone
Who Exactly Is It For?
Alec has been on the road since 4 am. He’s picked up three fares all morning. The arrival of Uber has hit him and other Melbourne taxi drivers hard. According to Alec, the taxi industry has seen a 40% decline. He says he earned as much twenty years ago as he does today. He complains bitterly about the regulators and his bosses—now in his fifties, he reckons he’s too old to switch jobs.
Joey hasn’t been driving as long as Alec. But he understands why many riders prefer the convenience of Uber. He knew as soon as the ride-hailing app arrived in Australia there was no way he could compete on speed or price. So he made a conscious decision not to try being faster or cheaper than Uber, but to find and serve a group of riders he could delight instead. Joey operates a small airport transfer car service. He charges the same rate as a taxi but provides a more personal, upmarket service with the intention of attracting repeat business clients. Joey’s strategy is working. He doesn’t have to drive the city streets finding customers for his service because he’s intentionally designed a service for his customers.
The more deliberate and specific we are about who we want to serve, the better our products and services will be.
Image by Matthias Ripp
The Measure Of Greatness
filed in Success
I will never forget the first assembly at my children’s school in Australia. Our family had newly migrated to Perth, Western Australia. We wanted to settle our boys as quickly as possible into their new life. So, much to our ten-year-old’s disgust, they were in new schools within two weeks of our arrival. There we were on a sunny, but brisk August morning (still trying to get our heads around that fact that it was not summer, but winter in Australia), at our local primary school. We were invited to stand and sing the national anthem by the year six student hosting the assembly. This was new to us. In the countries where we were born and raised we sang the national anthem at big public events or on more officious occasions.
When I was growing up in Ireland we learned the national anthem is Irish and to my shame, I still struggle to recall what all the words mean today. In the UK where our sons were born, we had to sing ‘God Save the Queen’ once or twice in fifteen years. And yet here we were, two weeks into our new life learning what it meant to be Australian. Every child from the age five up knew the words to the national anthem. They were not just mouthing those words. They were singing them with gusto—like they meant them. It brought tears to my eyes. Hearing it still does to this day. Our family never takes the sense of belonging to a country that welcomes people and to a culture that values generosity and fairness for granted.
In the scheme of things going on the world today, sportsmen attempting to cheat in a cricket match seems trivial. But the incident involving Australian cricketers playing in South Africa at the weekend has caused more than a stir back home. It has gotten under our skin and into our hearts—challenging our sense of who we think we are.
The way the most respected members of our sporting community have represented us on the world stage is not how we as a nation see ourselves. We pride ourselves on being fair and playing fair, on doing the right thing for the collective good over gaining a short-term advantage. Our sportspeople are admired and acknowledged for what it takes, not just to get to the top of their game, but to stay there. We are proud when we win, but we are prouder of the way we win. We understand that above all it’s a privilege to have a place on the field. The backlash is a sign of our strong culture and beliefs about what’s fair and right.
A culture with a strong set of values is the backbone of every country, community and company. The shared identity and common goals of any group are what enables it to thrive when we identify more with being winners than contributors our focus shifts. We are driven by short-term goals to create a near-term advantage. We lose sight of what’s important for the prosperity of the group in the long run. We forget that ‘greatness’ is three dimensional and throw our legacy under the bus.
We’ve all seen how a legacy can be damaged or destroyed in the business arena too. Great leaders in any arena are great not just because they hit more runs out of the park, but because they give us something to believe in and belong to. They show us the best of us, reflecting that what we do when no one is watching is who we are.
As James Carse alludes to in his brilliant book, Finite and Infinite Games. The match might be finite, but the game is infinite. It’s our job to do everything in our power to earn the privilege to play again tomorrow.
Image by cmrlee
The Best Of Us
filed in Storytelling, Success
Our youngest son got his first paying job at a fast food restaurant this summer. He’d walked up and down the street handing out resumes for days and got a single call back. He was interviewed over the phone and invited in for trial one evening. He got the gig. Twenty dollars an hour and as many shifts as he could handle taking orders and wiping tables late into the night. The shifts ran from the evening until the early hours of the morning. Sometimes he was barely in bed before dawn. But he stuck with it for the entire summer without complaining. Then one day he mentioned he hadn’t been paid for a couple of weeks. His boss owed him over a thousand dollars in back pay.
My husband and I reacted as many parents would. We were suddenly on guard, wary that our child (who is his own man now) wasn’t exploited. We offered unhelpful suggestions about what he should do next, telling him he probably shouldn’t work more shifts until he was paid. Our boy didn’t blink. Not showing up wasn’t an option. He’d committed, they were short staffed. He wouldn’t let his other team members down.
I remember when he was seven years old and winning prizes for being top in everything at school. The quiet, watchful blonde kid with deep brown eyes, who seemed to make no effort and yet always come out on top. After an assembly where he was awarded a medal for the best piece of creative writing in the state, one of the class Mums approached me. She had two questions. ‘What does he read? What do you feed him?’ I laughed until I realised she wasn’t joking.
People who don’t know our son judge him by his academic performance. He’s evaluated by his grades and ability to ‘achieve’ in the conventional sense of the word. What they don’t often see is the real measure of him. His kindness. His sense of fairness. His tenacity. His wicked sense of humour. His character. The things that can’t be measured. The things that make him, him.
He will probably be picked one day because of how he looks on paper—for his scores or the number of research papers he’s published. Whoever works with him won’t know until later why they are lucky to have him on their team.
Our stories are not defined only by what is seen and known. The imagination can’t always capture the best and the beauty of us.
Image by Robin Jaffray
12 Lessons From The Biggest Hit Of The Year
filed in Innovation, Strategy, Success
Ed Sheeran’s hit song, ‘Shape of You’ was the most streamed track of 2017. The official video is expected to reach three billion views within a year of being uploaded. There’s a lot we can learn from this video where Ed and his co-writers talk about the process of writing a hit song.
12 Lessons From The Biggest Hit of 2017
1. Hits are accidents waiting to happen. You have to put yourself the situations that give you the best chance of doing great work.
2. Creativity is unpredictable. In Ed’s words.’None of us thought that much into it.’
3. Flexibility is your friend. Understanding what’s not working is key to finding what does work.
4. You can’t always think your way to success. Sometimes you have to feel your way.
5. Going against the grain often creates magic.
6. Shifting your focus can help you to view challenges with fresh eyes.
7. Average first drafts are necessary iterations of great finished products.
8. Your perceived flaws and enforced constraints can become your biggest strengths.
9. A strong team trumps a lone superstar.
10.Nobody knows for sure. Everything would be a hit if we could predict what’s going to fly.
11.It pays to allow your work to be seen through someone else’s lens.
12.Don’t set out to win. Set out to love what you do.
Here’s to continuing to learn from our failures and successes.
Image by Kmeron
The Visibility Paradox
filed in Marketing
A bullet point list of tactics to increase your visibility might include; perfecting your elevator pitch, networking, forming strategic partnerships or creating a compelling press release. You don’t need to look far to see that we’re expending a lot of time and resources metaphorically waving our arms in an attempt to be seen. The irony is the best way to be seen is to get better at seeing.
When we become more interested, empathetic and generous, we not only see the opportunities others miss, we also do our best work in the service of others. There will always be a place in the world for, as broadcaster Krista Tippett says, ‘voices not shouting to be heard’. We build businesses we’re proud of by ignoring the noise and getting in touch with our humanity.
Image by Dell Inc
What Are Your Customers Looking For?
We are sometimes in the dark about what our customers want, so we make assumptions or ask them in the hope of happening upon the truth. There is a third way to get closer to our customers—one we regularly overlook. People’s actions and reactions can reveal more about their internal dialogue than their words. When did you last spend time watching what your customers do?
As an author, I spend an unhealthy amount of time in bookstores. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen someone take a thick book from the shelf, feel the heft of it in their hand—then put it back. I can almost hear them thinking they’ll never get through it. Sometimes I get chatting to them and ask them what they’re looking for. Most of the time they don’t know.
Try this. Head down to your nearest department store, cafe, gym or wherever your customers are. Then stand back and watch what they do. Are they feeling garments before they check prices? Are they more likely to make a purchase if they’re alone or with someone? Are they looking for something specific? Do they compare prices with online retailers on their smartphone? Do they buy what they came in for? The list of questions, observations and potential insights are endless.
We tend to think of our customers as intentional, rational human beings—which is why we spend a lot of our time marketing to their heads. We make and market better products and services by working harder to get a glimpse of their hearts.
Image by mgstanton.
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