Leading is not empowering
You don’t empower people: employees, customers, trainees, interns… To empower them implies you can dis-empower them. That you can take any power, agency or determination they have from them. And that’s not in your control —at all. What you can do is help them feel empowered. You can foster their sense of agency, responsibility, decision-making, and more. Empowerment comes from within. Like an elephant that doesn’t move from the ridiculous small chain because they were taught they didn’t…
A choice to make. Following. Or leading.
Friend-of-the list and data science expert, Genevieve Hayes, got back to yesterday’s message with this old Dilbert comic: Leadership is a choice —and a hard one to take because it comes with responsibility for others, taking the time and effort to transfer those skills and learnings to others. You want to be surrounded by A-players. The best way is to help them get A, and even better. But that won’t happen if you treat them as followers.
Being a follower
“You’re a follower.” Doesn’t sound quite “empowering”, right? So, why would you want to have followers?
What’s wrong with your business?
Maybe nothing. I mean it. Maybe nothing at all. Ponder this question, though: What is the center for my business and how does it show? What’s it all about?
What’s wrong with business?
So, the way music is framed is about art, enjoy, amusement, etc. And the way business is framed: profit product growth brand etc. The thing is, none of those are about the customer. Your customers don’t buy because of what your product, your biz or you do (or even why you do it, depending of the need). They buy from you because you solve something for them. And they don’t care how. If they could achieve that very same thing with a AAA battery, a 5-minute writing process, or a complex…
Slow in the weeds
Collaboration is about getting into the weeds, about messiness. While speed and efficiencies do help, getting faster to the wrong goal or executing flawlessly the wrong thing won’t move the needle. Discussions, sometimes, feel like they get you stuck in the weeds. That it brings friction. And we try to avoid friction. Here’s the thing, though. Without discussions, there are no compromises and it becomes an easy way out when things are meh. It becomes easier to point fingers at. It becomes a…
Focus on Speed + Good Enough
This way you’ll get quickly to the goal. HOWEVER… Getting quick and good enough to the wrong goal is worse than slow towards the right thing. Like the player here ???? The player here did score, with efficiency, mastery and intent. Just at the wrong thing. It’s not about speed, good enough delivery or “avoiding perfect”. It’s about seeing where to go and choosing the right direction. That beats efficiency for the sake of efficiency. Because you’ve seen times over and over wrong things executed…
Cringe
What are words / things in your industry that make you cringe? Number 1 for me this month: Storytelling. Let me know yours?
Working on the weekends
If you want, you can. But here’s the thing, you need to understand this is your choice. If you can’t say no to work, or you need to be working all the time, because any reason, ponder this question: Is this a pattern? When it becomes a pattern, you get “obsessed” with work, it’s not a choice anymore. And you’re in your business because you wanted to make the right choices for you. Disconnect. To-ta-lly. from work. Here are 2 benefits you’ll find: You won’t burn out. You’ll leave your brain to…
Stages of risk acceptance
In short: when you have nothing, you try, fail and do whatever it takes to get things moving. That takes you to a place where things in the environment are the status quo and you break it. However, when you get to the first results, you want predictability. So you try and fail less and embrace the status quo. You get afraid of things failing now. You have more at stake. And that can hold you back. What Blair Enns calls the The Innoficiency Problem.