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Clueless

What just happened? Did they seriously choose that piece of junk over mine?

Every detail, every nuance — mine’s miles ahead … and it’s still trumped by that amateur hour show? What a kick in the gut.

Damn it! All those nights, the endless tweaking, all the personal sacrifices—swept aside for what? Some fancy talk and smoke and mirrors? I mean, their sweet talk might impress for a moment, but it won’t hold up in the long run. Why can’t they see past the façade?

They must be blind. Or stupid. Anyone with half a brain would see mine’s the real deal. If they just looked closer, gave it a real shot, they’d get it.

Are they seriously this clueless?

====

What do you reply to this frustrated person?

Where great ideas go to die

Recently, in a marketing brainstorming session with a table full of snacks and charts.

Chief Trend Officer (CTO): “Alright team, we’ve got the latest trend report right here. Fidget spinners are making a comeback! We need to integrate them into our campaign.”

Marketing Intern (tentatively): “But, um, isn’t our product a high-end coffee machine?”

CTO: “Precisely! Imagine: a coffee machine with a built-in fidget spinner. Every time you brew, you spin!”

CEO (trying not to laugh): “Or, maybe we could explore why people love coffee? The aroma, the morning ritual, the conversations over a cup? Dive into the shared experiences and emotions?”

CTO (with an enthusiastic grin): “Sure, all that deep stuff is great, but just imagine a GIF with someone sipping espresso while spinning a fidget spinner! Viral content!”

CEO: “Well, while we’re at it, why not add a whistle? Brew, sip, spin, and toot! We’ll revolutionize morning routines everywhere!”

CTO (pausing, thinking deeply, then with a eureka moment): “…Can we patent that?”

A bit of a mess

You’ve started with the best of intentions. You’ve chased opportunities and kept doors open. You’ve been a good listener and tried to fulfill the wishes of your customers and your team.

But then – before you even notice it – you find yourself in a bit of a mess. Initiatives begin to overlap, priorities clash, and what was once a structured strategy begins to resemble a haphazard scramble.

You’ve committed to one “yes” too many. You’ve crossed the line to becoming aimless. You’ve essentially become lost.

When leaders frequently bypass saying “no”, they inadvertently plunge their teams into a whirlpool of confusion. Each “yes” is not merely an affirmation; it’s a commitment of time, energy, and resources.

Worse, this inability to set boundaries and make selective decisions blurs the team’s vision. Instead of a clear path lit by intention and strategy, the route becomes foggy, littered with detours and distractions. The light that should guide the path dims, causing uncertainty and doubt to creep in.

For some, saying “no” feels easy. But for most of us, it’s not. But leadership is not about embracing every opportunity. It’s about making choices that align with the team’s vision. Saying “no” is an instrument of clarity that allows teams to focus on what truly matters and keep the light focused on their path.

Choosing “no”

A “no” to excessive jargon is an embrace of clear, straightforward language that every listener, regardless of their background, can understand.

A “no” to redundant meetings is a commitment to purposeful collaboration.

A “no” to information overload is a commitment to prioritize, ensuring clarity over clutter.

A “no” to lengthy emails signals respect for the recipient’s time and attention.

A “no” to generic statements is a push for specificity, ensuring that feedback, directions, and insights are meaningful and actionable.

A “no” to speaking without listening underlines that everyone’s on the team for a reason.

A “no” to speaking for the sake of speaking ensures that when words are spoken, they carry weight and relevance.

“No” is a choice.

In the vast sea of words and information, sometimes what you choose not to say or include makes what you do communicate all the more powerful. As leaders, embracing these principles can elevate our communication, making every interaction more meaningful and impactful.

Keep lighting the path!

The double-edged “yes”

Hidden within every “yes”, there’s an implicit “no”.

Steve Jobs famously said that he was as proud of the things he hasn’t done as he is about those he did do. For him, saying “no” to many ideas meant that he had more time to focus on the things that deeply mattered to him and that he really did say “yes” to.

It’s an insight we tend to forget. Saying “yes” to one thing means saying “no” to all the things you could be doing instead of the thing you said “yes” to.

Saying “yes” often feels like the most harmonious response. Whether it’s agreeing to a colleague’s project proposal, accepting a social invitation, or undertaking a new responsibility, a “yes” can carry a world of positivity and opportunity.

But every choice has an opportunity cost. Each time we say “yes” to one endeavor, we are (consciously or unconsciously) saying “no” to another. Agreeing to work late on a project means declining the family dinner. Accepting an invitation for dinner with Tom means we can’t go out with Tim. These implicit “nos” often go unrecognized, but they have a profound impact on our time, priorities, and overall well-being.

Every “yes” is not just an acceptance, but also a decline of alternative possibilities. But is that what you really want?

Getting awareness of this duality allows us to be more deliberate in our choices and ensure that when we do say “yes”, it’s to the things that align most closely with our values and objectives.

Embracing “no” is not about becoming negative or closed-off. Rather, it’s about recognizing the interconnected nature of our decisions and the implicit trade-offs within them. It’s about making the unconscious conscious and empowering ourselves to choose with greater clarity.

How do you choose?

The chaos around us

The tricky thing about distractions is that they don’t always present themselves as such. In many cases, they come disguised as opportunities. A new job offer, a side project, or a shiny new tool can all seem like positive turns to take. Yet, when looked at from the perspective of our core objectives and values, it often becomes evident that these are divergences rather than enhancements.

Add to that the constant ping of social media notifications, the allure of new ideas, or the changing tides of opportunity and responsibility, and it almost feels like the Universe is conspiring to destroy clarity as soon as we arrive at it. A merciless endeavor on the Universe’s part that requires an equally merciless endeavor on our part to maintain focus and alignment with our goals.

Being able to clearly articulate the goals – and ideally, being able to explain them to others – can be an important step in refusing to allow the Universe to divert us from our path.

While we can’t control all that happens around us, we can control our reaction to it. We can decide to say “no” to opportunities when they are not aligned with our objectives or values. And we can strive to stay in control irrespective of the chaos around us.

Stop scrolling

Watch someone flick through TikTok reels and you’ll see a repeating pattern:

Lame! -> Flick
Lame! -> Flick
Lame! -> Flick
Oh, what’s that!? -> Stop scrolling !!

Only to discover – usually in a matter of 2-3 seconds – that it’s still kind of lame. So: flick again to continue the loop:

Lame! -> Flick
Lame! -> Flick
Oh, what’s that!? -> Stop scrolling !!

And this time, it’s actually kind of interesting. And before they’ve even noticed it, they’ve watched the reel for 40 seconds.

It’s a very simple principle:

  1. Get their attention
  2. Spark their interest
  3. Only then dive deeper

With presentations it’s much the same, albeit on a very different time scale.

Someone starts their PowerPoint, you think: “Lame!” and tune out to switch your attention to planning your evening.

Another one starts their PowerPoint, you think: “Lame!” and tune out to switch your attention to improving your tennis swing.

Another one starts their presentation, you think: “Oh, what’s that!?” but they land on a generic agenda slide and you go “No, still kind of lame!”

It’s the same principle:

  1. Get their attention
  2. Spark their interest
  3. Only then dive deeper

Your audience’s tolerance to dive deep – and therefore your impact – is limited before you’ve established attention and interest.

Keep lighting the path!

Addressing objections

A great way to improve your communication is to listen to your customer-facing teams, such as sales, tech support, or social media managers. If you have a system in place to collect all the objections that customers tell your teams, you can address each of them in your communication.

The obvious way to do this is to find (or come up with) ways to convince your audience that these objections are kind of untrue or don’t matter that much (or that it wasn’t your fault).

A much more unusual way is to use the collection of objections as a filter and embrace some of the objections to separate who your service is for and who it’s not for.

That way you can strengthen your communication for those who it is for.

In a way, rather than arguing why your are right and those who complain are wrong you acknowledge that both might be right and then you use it to reinforce the message for those who agree with you.

No!

In elementary sales school you learn that a prospect’s “no” is short for “not enough information”.

And so, whole armies of salesforces bombard their prospects with ever more info when the prospect has already tuned out and started to feel annoyed.

A better way is to consider the possibility that your customers are actually, you know, smart and that they might actually know what they want and need.

Sure, sometimes a “no” means that you haven’t explained it well enough or that a crucial detail was missing. But other times, a “no” really does mean “no”.

If it’s the latter, rather than adding more detail you might want to consider fixing the product or finding a better match. Only if if’s the former will tweaking your communication have an impact.

(It helps, of course, to become good at distinguishing the two.)

What customers want

Many failed products are built on what the makers think people should want. Successful products deliver on what people actually want or need (if not both).

Meta’s virtual reality products are built around what they think people should want: an artificial metaverse that looks kind of childish and that enables experiences that no-one has asked for. They try to conquer the world by creating something entirely new in the hopes that people would want that.

On Monday, Apple has unveiled their take on headsets. They chose not to create something entirely new. They built an (arguably) better way to experience the things that people already know. At the core, their headset is a way superior display compared to any other display that we used before. On that display, we can do the things that we already do, browsing the web, watching movies, enjoying family photos or collaborating with colleagues; most of these things seem to work better than on traditional displays. Movies will be more immersive, screens for our work will feel bigger etc.

Instead of creating something entirely new, the Vision Pro looks like it is about doing the things that we already love to do with the apps we already love to use, but better. That’s literally their pitch: “So you can do the things you love in ways never before possible.”

Apple doesn’t make customers want something entirely new. It tries to sell customers on a better way to get what they already want.

Spread the Word

Dr. Michael Gerharz

Dr. Michael Gerharz