Fit contradiction
You need to stand out —in a place where you’re supposed to fit into. How do you do that? Doing both is a contradiction: If you fit into something, you’re pretty much average in that place. If you stand out, you’re out of that average. Do you find the logic behind “stand out in a place you where you have to fit into?”
Empowerment
“We empower our clients.” Take a moment from how things go and let’s rethink of this word. If you run a team or work with clients and you empower them, it means you *give them power*. And just as you can give power, you can take it away. Best control model. Ever. And if you’re in control, the others are not. What you can do is give them agency and/or authority. You don’t need someone else to “empower you”. People —You, my friend, have power within yourself.
Mapping an ecosystem
Here’s the work of a project led by Philip Kotler: The Wicked 7. It’s a map of how intertwined several (and most times unseen) factors are. It aims to take a systemic approach —or at least gain awareness of how things work… and what could change. With this map, you can have a better picture that taking incremental change (or aim at one-problem) won’t influence the system itself. Taking an overall approach might do. Can you map out your own business ecosystem? Map of The Ecosystem of Wicked…
Incremental v. Systemic
Incremental change Takes how not to disrupt the system in search for (small) efficiencies and improvements. Slow: 1,3,5,10… Small changes to increase. Safe: Keeping what you have (aversion bias kicks in). Short term: Not big changes now. Sales to keep. Revenue to keep. Profit not to lose. Don’t stir the pot. What does it look like? Raise your prices… according to inflation, or by 5-10% Raise your prices incrementally +5%, +15%, + 30%… [Timestamp 14:07] ESG, B-Corp Short-term: how can it…
Change
Last couple of years, systemic change has become mainstream. Shows, podcasts, books have been published recurring to the idea that systemic change is needed to stop the decay of the environment or that it will help change how (broken) things work. I agree. However, the lens the vast majority sees systemic change through is of incremental change. They picture it like a waterfall. As if one fix will lead to fix the other one at a time, ignoring (consciously or not) they’re interrelated. That is…
It’s not fair
There’s no fair thing. Not from your POV as a seller / service provider. What you charge has nothing to do with you. Or if you find it “fair”. It’s about what’s important to your clients. If they think the work you’ll do will mean 500K to pay you and it’s acceptable to them, they’ll pay you (and you’ll take it). You don’t say “Oh, I don’t think it’s fair (to me) because it might take me 20 minutes to get that done or it’ll cost me 20K or I’ll be happy with 7K because that’s what ‘I’m worth'”….
Ditch the beginner’s mind
Beginner’s mind v accepting to not know. The first is about trying to find a pattern. Start with a clean slate. Trying to figure out the right questions to make. Accepting not knowing is embracing the unknown and go deeper to explore, to make better questions. One is about starts, the other about change and transformation.
The Earth is flat
You sell time. And time is money. Those statements are the equivalent of saying “the Earth is flat”. Just because some people believe it, it doesn’t make it a fact.
A shiny ribbon
You receive a present and are asked: “What did you get?” Your reply: “A nice, blue, shiny ribbon.” Wait. What? The ribbon is what makes the present nicer, what completes the picture of it, a part of it. But that’s not the present itself. Same is with marketing and storytelling. So, to whoever tells you that “marketing is storytelling”, think twice. It’s the other way around. Storytelling is (a tiny bit) of (one/few points of) marketing. Does it help? Yeah. Is it all about storytelling? No….
Don’t bridge the gap. Own it.
Bridging a gap to avoid going into the depths of it might not always be the best choice. It’d leave too many things on the table. Yes, you might need to bridge gaps some times —yet not every gap needs to be bridged. Imagine the Grand Canyon with lots of bridges all over it. It would only create noise. Owning a gap, on the other side, makes you accept it as it is. There’s nothing to fix, it is what it is. It has unknowns that you can explore. It has potential to do and be so much more than…
