Crushing solutions
“Don’t come to me with problems. I only want to hear solutions.” That’s part of friend-of-the-list Genevieve Hayes’ email about solving problems in isolation —and a generalized thinking framework in the business world, as the focus of this “don’t bring me problems” doesn’t let you see the forest for the trees. Here are a few thoughts on it: This kind of thinking from management has ramifications: “You bring fresh eyes, get me solutions”. If i see the problem —that you don’t consider a…
Future and present
“Leaders are in charge of the future, and managers are in charge of the present.” Blair Enns Friend of the list, James Turner came up with this email about Managers vs. Leaders, taking on points about how you can focus on the present and the future of your business. Under this view of future v present, you can also find out that one goes in the direction of innovation (being wasteful per definition), looking for the new; and the other, towards efficiency-seeking (the best use of resources) to…
A question for you
Here’s a question for you: If leading is a choice, can things and businesses be… Product-led? Sales-led? Marketing-led? Growth-led? Innovation-led? Experience-led? I’m curious about what you think. 🙂
Compressed experience
That’s how Andrew Skotzko, from Product Leadership Daily, defines intuition. ???? When thinking of it, here’s a question that comes to mind: How can you get good at trusting your intuition? Well, by training it. It can come in various shapes and forms: Opening yourself to new experiences and environments. Seeing the patterns that appear in your practice. Making the wrong decisions in a controlled environment. Experimenting different ways to get your goals. That’s how you get to see pathways and…
Seeing the future… only by humans.
Leadership is about vision and only people can have a vision of the future, not things or concepts. It makes the notion of [THING]-led business an oxymoron. Because, how could a thing decide? A couple days ago there was a question about if business could be led by —Sales, Growth, Innovation, etc. If it could be led by things. Here’s what friend of the list and Data Scientist & AI and Analytics Specialist, Genevieve Hayes (do go check her emails out) said and I couldn’t put it better [shared…
Doing it the wrong way
“If you’re efficient, you’re doing it the wrong way.” Interview to Jerry Seinfeld – Harvard Business Review Following yesterday’s email about helping your client with what they want, not what they need, this last part needed some closure (or opening). When you’re looking for new ways, different approaches, how to break from what is, to devise, see and design new futures, you’ll be wasteful. That’s just reality. You can’t make something that’ll work out at the first try (well, in most of the…
What you don’t need
Few things you don’t need to build authority in your space. A personal brand . . . … Yeah. That’s it. You don’t need that to build your authority or reputation.
Focused, instead of led
Are you afraid of using sales/growth/product/growth-focused and so on, instead of [THING]-led? My perception is that whoever came up with this [THING]-led concept was afraid of using [THING]-focused. Because when you change that tiny word, you can see how odd that would sound. As if focusing on the thing will have a tell on what you actually do. What if we change the wordging? Product-led? Product-focused. → So we focus on the product. Growth-led? Growth-focused → We focus on the biz growth…
Unethically-led
Using the wording of [THING]-led takes off the responsibility of whatever sleazy/unethical actions they might do. The decision-makers feel they’re off the hook. If it’s led by sales, sales is what matters most. The decisions will be whatever makes sales grow. It’s only about the end. So if you get scammed/conned, it’s your fault, not the company’s or who runs it. “We’re sales/growth/innovation/whatever-led. We gave you a crap product, but it’s not our fault. “The thing” made the decision”….
Elevating others
Yesterday’s email took these points on Womack’s conception of leadership: Leadership equals heroic leadership. Leadership equals authority. Leadership is about convincing others. Here’s why this view can’t be sustainable. Leadership equals heroic leadership. It’s there to save the day / put the fires out. Heroes don’t scale. So at the moment there’s no more “heroic leader”, things go down south. Quickly. Leadership equals authority. They’re both independent from each other.You can have…