Secure the only spot at the airport that sells water and you can basically stop bothering about how you do business. It doesn’t really matter how good or bad your service is or how clear or confusing your communication is, business is almost unavoidable.
For everyone else, clarity in your communication (what can people expect) and providing great service (delivering on what they expect) turns out to be invaluable.
Which book didn’t you write but could have?
Which speech didn’t you give but should have?
What’s the blog that doesn’t exist although you could write it?
What’s holding you back?
“One of the biggest strategic mistakes you can make is to fail to make the most of your victories. Yet even brilliant leaders sometimes make this mistake. One reason they fail is if they are obsessively searching for the Next Big Thing.
– Jim Collins
What’s not to like about the Next Big Thing, right? I mean, wouldn’t you just love to launch one?
One of the misconceptions about Big Things is that they would just appear and immediately take over the world.
That’s hardly how it works in real life. The iPhone was a niche product when it launched. Facebook was only available at a single university when it launched. Tesla (which is yet to become an actual Big Thing) launched with an expensive niche sports car.
Most Big Things have actually started small and grown big over time … by rigorously observing what worked and what didn’t and then amplifying what worked and fixing what doesn’t.
When you constantly chase the Next Big Thing, you constantly start fresh (read: small).
Instead of asking what else could work, it might pay to regularly ask what’s already working and then amplify that.
(And, of course, there’s a smart distinction to be made between consistency and stagnation.)
The hero’s podium is a notoriously difficult place to be on.
It means that all eyes are on you. Your job is no lesser than to save the world. You need to show courage, overcome evil forces, and lead us the way into a better world.
It’s no wonder that so many leaders feel uncomfortable taking that position on a stage.
The good news is that you don’t actually have to because no audience needs a hero. They already have one.
It’s themselves. Everyone in the audience is the hero of their own life. They don’t show up to cheer for another hero. They want you to cheer for them.
Step off the hero’s podium and leave it to your audience. All you need to do is to share your wisdom with the heroes. You can leave the decision of what to do with it to the audience. They are free to use it to overcome their struggles and thrive to achieve their desires. You’re doing them a favor.
Status updates are supposed to quickly inform everyone about the status of a project.
Too often, though, these updates are much rather about the status of the people in the project and carry double meanings along the lines of “I’m not to blame for the delay.”, “This is my kingdom. Don’t you dare to invade it.”, “I’m smarter than her.” etc.
In many cases, this happens when the team can’t see how the project is about something bigger than themselves. And so, they lack a sense of belonging to a team that achieves more than anyone could achieve on their own.
Which means that, effectively, everyone’s on their own team.
Which is why they need to protect their status.
Great project leaders create that sense of belonging. They light the path by communicating with irresistible clarity where we’re going as a team, why we’re going there and why everyone belongs.
Surely, you know one or two of these fascinating communicators who just nail it. The kind of people who always seem to find the right words. Who have a gift of making us see things in a way that we can’t unsee them, anymore. Who make the difficult feel easy and the complex feel simple.
Steve Jobs had that gift that people called the reality distortion field. Martin Luther King had the gift of painting his people a future to live up to.
But also my uncle … he had the gift of reframing problems and making me see a tiny step forward. Or my school teacher who had the gift of making us appreciate the power of curiosity.
All of them lighted the path for me, all of them in their own unique ways.
Great communicators sometimes stand up to take the big stages and change the world at large. But not all of them do. In fact, most of them hide in unexpected places. Sometimes very close to us. They, too, change the world.
And we can just as much learn from them as we learn from the big names.
Who is someone around you? What can you learn from how they communicate?
I’ve met quite a number of thoughtful people who are brilliant at what they do but who almost refuse to make an impact.
They would insist that things are complex.
Or that marketing is a trickster business that they don’t want to have anything to do with.
Or that they are just not good at speaking.
Which is true. Things are complex. Marketing is a trickster business. And they are not good at speaking.
But, of course, that doesn’t mean that they couldn’t find simple words to make the complex accessible.
It doesn’t mean that all of marketing is trickery.
It also doesn’t mean that they can’t become good at speaking.
This is a choice.
If you’re a genius, please choose wisely and make an impact.
Every thing has been invented, designed, engineered, produced, marketed, and distributed by someone.
The clothes you wear.
The bike you ride.
The music you listen to.
The book you read.
The painting you admire.
The house you live in.
The fridge you just opened.
The chocolate you love.
One of the things that are very important to my wife and me in how we raise our children is that they see this very clearly.
Things are made. By someone. And that someone could be you.
If you want something to exist, set out to make it.
If, out of nowhere, you were magically given an extra day next year, but with an asterisk: You will only get the extra day if you spend the time with someone you don’t regularly meet …
Who would you spend the day with?
Why don’t you reach out to them right now to schedule an appointment in 2023?
In hindsight, it’s often not that difficult to see what you should have done differently.
Of course, this couldn’t work.
Of course, they would be offended.
Of course, the left turn would have been the right one.
Looking in hindsight, you might also see that you actually did know it previously.
You just didn’t take the time to think it through.
Or you wanted to believe otherwise.
Or you couldn’t or wouldn’t listen to your gut.
The truth is: we know more than we think we do. If only we take the time to step back … listen to our gut … but also, think it through rationally …
So, looking in hindsight, you might discover that, in fact, you had known this.
How will you apply this knowledge in 2023?
