2025-03-09 16:44:00
You have a strategy. Perhaps you didn’t even choose it but you have one… and it’s not working.
The dominant question is, “what do I do now?”
Which tactic do we use? How do we get the word out? How do we close this sale, solve the problem and succeed?
Perhaps we should look to others that have succeeded and use their tactics.
The problem is simple. You don’t have a tactics problem. You have a strategy problem.
Borrowing tactics from someone with a useful strategy isn’t going to help because it’s their strategy that’s better, not their tactics.
And using tactics from someone who got lucky isn’t going to help either. Someone needs to get lucky, and it was them. It’s not their tactics that made it happen. Going to the same bank as Charlize Theron isn’t going to make you a movie star.
When in doubt, focus on your strategy. The tactics will follow.
2025-03-09 16:09:00
While it’s tempting to compare suffering, inconvenience, unfairness or general no-goodness, it’s not helpful.
Someone else’s trauma doesn’t diminish yours. In fact, when we can find the space to see that others have their own mess to deal with, it opens the door for forward motion. The past happened, but all that’s available to us now is the choice of what to do about it.
And doing it together is more nurturing, resilient and effective.
2025-03-08 17:34:00
This is difficult.
Care requires time and effort, and we can’t care about everything, all the way, all the time.
If you’re prepared to care about every element of your work, then you also have to decide to not care about something else. Because caring equally about everything means that someone else cares more than you do about something.
If a non-customer doesn’t like your product, perhaps it pays to not let that bother you.
If there are features in your service that don’t matter to your key customers, perhaps you can let them go.
Deciding to care also requires you do the hard work of not caring.
2025-03-07 18:03:00
It’s one thing to say that 7,000,000 people will die next year from smoking cigarettes.
It’s a totally different thing to list those folks by name.
When we confront risk, two things make it seem less real: We’re not sure who, and we’re not sure when.
If you want to clarify our understanding, it helps to be specific.
2025-03-06 18:03:00
The first impression is vitally important. It positions us, establishes the tone of our relationship and earns trust.
But we’re human, and it’s unlikely that every first impression will be as useful as we’d like. Fortunately, people can speak up and let us know, particularly if we make it easy for them to do so.
When a customer or partner lets us know that we made a lousy first impression, it’s time to lean in. You’re not going to get a third chance to make a second impression.
If a customer service call goes wrong, or if a new employee is stumbling, this is the moment to escalate and get the second impression just right. It shows that we can recover, that we’re listening, and that the relationship is worth something to us.
What an opportunity to make things right. If your team isn’t empowered to escalate support at the first hint of a problem, you’re letting them down.
2025-03-05 17:49:00
might also be a good idea.
The hard part isn’t finding proof before you begin.
The hard part is beginning, knowing you might not succeed.
