It’s always less desirable to give nuanced, complex, or sophisticated answers which require input from multiple parts, be it society or yourself. People have always wanted simple answers. Whenever anything happens people need to know whose fault it is and if possible, embody blame into one person, for example, immigrants, the European Union, it’s always somebody else. “It’s never us!” because people love to have a solution that is both not nuanced, not sophisticated and not our fault. Acknowledging the effects of your behaviour and choices will open you up to new experiences, improves your mental health which in turn, allows you to build a sense of control over your life. I think taking responsibility for your own actions is how you’ll gain a deep understanding of your true self.
Simple answers
Here’s a 3 step plan to achieve whatever you want:
Define
Plan
Execute
Contact me via e-mail if I missed anything?
““One of the best lessons you can learn in life is to master how to remain calm. Calm is a superpower.” ”
It sounds like
One of the reasons why people resist change is because they focus on what they must give up instead of what they have to gain. In business, money is money, and time and services are also money. When people get more value, they will do more, pay more and give more in return. I think that it is possible to change the world, but to change the world, you have to change yourself first.
Human concerns before money
c/o Forbes
Before money was invented, humans were concerned with the following five things:
Status
Humans have always been concerned with their social status and their place in society. This includes their reputation, position, and influence in their community.Certainty
Humans have always had a need for certainty and predictability in their lives. This includes a sense of security, stability, and the ability to plan for the future.Autonomy
Humans have a need for autonomy and the ability to control their own lives. This includes the freedom to make their own decisions and the ability to pursue their own goals and interests.Relatedness
Humans have a need for social connection and the ability to form relationships with others. This includes a sense of belonging and the ability to establish meaningful connections with family, friends, and community members.Fairness
Humans have always been concerned with fairness and justice. This includes a sense of equality and the ability to receive a fair share of resources and opportunities.
I think although money has become an important aspect of our lives, these fundamental concerns continue to be important to us as humans.
Stories of change
c/o Harvard Business Review
What kind of stories should we be telling to help people rekindle hope as we come out of the war in Ukraine, and is connectedness the route to achieve this?
All marketers tell stories and as individuals we tell ourselves stories as this is what guides our behaviours, decisions, and choices. So many of the big stories people believe in have crumbled away, stories of progress that tomorrow will be better than yesterday. We have lost so much that we don’t have the stories that provide the scaffolding we can use to climb out of all our difficulties. We must decide personally and as a community about where we are going as we are looking at a world that is making new rules, new connections and new decisions. Change is happening and as marketers this is what we do - We make change!
The capacity to increase the valuation
Here’s a framework for creating marketing value for your organisation (V.A.L.U.E)
- Understand how VALUE is created within your organisation and how it is created for customers.
- Be ACCOUNTABLE to your organisations value creation metrics.
- Use the LANGUAGE of value creation.
- Scale the UNDERSTANDING of value creation across your organisation.
- Have an EVIDENCE based mindset and report regularly using the agreed value-based metrics.
Creativity is critical not only to brand building, but also to value creation as a whole.
a) Do you understand where your brand value is created?
b) Do you understand how your customers perceive and receive value?
c) Do you understand the value your brand delivers both short and long term?
Contact me via e-mail for a meeting on why you should use business language and not marketing jargon deeper when speaking about your organisations brand value.
Can we control our minds?
The benefit of a good education is the ability to think on your own, and your words start to lose value when your actions don't match. You may think this is heavy stuff as all you wanted was a little help in climbing out of the strange crack between life’s floorboards that you unexpectedly fell into. First, you have to understand what you’re doing there, and then you’ve got to see why it’s important to stay there for a while - and then we can talk about what to do.
Today’s mantra includes affirming, declaring, observing, and allowing:
“All is well, everything is working out for my highest good and out of this experience, only good will come, and I am safe.”
Contrast and compare
I am a very big collaborator and I think the most successful salespeople are. Just like a professional athlete, successful salespeople are always in training, in practice and open to learning new skills. Just like a professional athlete, sales definitely involve a “performance state”, gearing up to act, rallying energy, visualising on what you are about to do, preparing to take hits and be resilient. If you compare this to most knowledge work jobs, then the performance nature of sales becomes even more clear. People buy from people they like and if you cannot have a conversation with them, it is unlikely to go very far.
Advice on Mother’s Day
Mother's Day is a celebration honouring the mother of the family or individual, as well as the influence of mothers in today’s society. Mother's Day is celebrated on different days in many parts of the world. Here’s some advice from my mother RIP:
Character is a door opener, so be honest.
You may be wrong, so be humble.
Luck seeks the thankful, so be grateful.
Givers end up with more, so be generous.
Artists believe in their craft, so be courageous.
You will also make mistakes, so be forgiving.
You will be happier., so always be yourself as everyone else is taken.
Forget football
How do you tell the right story to the right people?
The best way to learn marketing is to do marketing, and you can do marketing in lots and lots of different ways. This is because you don’t need a budget anymore as marketing is not advertising. This is the decade of change, and we must figure out the narratives that we want to tell to bring connection and possibility to people. It’s a fact that making people feel bad for drinking water out of plastic bottles isn’t going to solve the environmental crisis. I think we must weave things together to make things better, not just to make profit because we can’t shrink ourselves to greatness. Why are people not shouting from the rooftops that solar power is cheaper than coal?
Small steps stick
When trying to make a change in your life, a too big a change is not sustainable. It’s far easier to make small, incremental changes and make them stick. It’s important to reframe change into a positive and stick to it. Try telling yourself that change isn’t a chore, improving isn’t a chore! It’s the stickability over time that makes us different.
When we feel good about ourselves, we are going to be happier, more engaged, and willing to make more changes. It’s not about what happens to us, it’s about how we deal with it. When people think about habit loops, they often have a reward at the end of it. It’s really important to think about the suffering, as I think change happens when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of making a change.
Think differently
Image c/o Vector Stock ©
Authentic leaders know they can learn a lot from those that think differently than they do. Leadership is not just about skills and abilities, it’s more about having the right mindset to inspire and empower others. The most successful leaders are really good at keeping people informed and making them feel valued.
““I’m a big believer ability takes you so far and personality takes you that extra yard. When you’re a player it is down to you to go out and perform. You need leaders, people who drive standards in training and on the pitch with the intensity levels.” ”
Don't be afraid to admit it
The term 'affinity bias' is used in neuropsychology to describe an unconscious bias that causes people to gravitate toward others who appear to be like them (including those with similar interests, backgrounds, and appearances). I think the best way we can reduce unconscious bias and achieve a culture of equality is to become aware of them. It’s important to note that biases, conscious or unconscious, are not limited to ethnicity and race.
One of the greatest values of interacting with people who are different is the mirror it provides on seeing my own identity. Contact me via e-mail if you want your employees and leaders to learn more about discrimination, biases, and stereotyping, through unconscious bias training workshops.
“”Diversity training doesn’t work!” ”
Brands are not logos
A brand is nothing to do with your logo or your mission statement. A brand is the perception of the person you are dealing with before the next interaction happens about what they expect will happen. The brand expectation and promise are the things that saves us time. Most mission statements I have read could be swapped from one company to another and you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference – apart from the logos. One of the few mission statements that means something is Patagonia’s. Patagonia says we are going to reduce the number of items we sell, or we are going to stop selling this profitable item because it leaves too much of an environmental footprint. I think these are not mission statements, they are mission actions and if you do enough mission actions the statements get made by itself.
Invictus poem
“Invictus” by William Ernest Henley is one of the best motivational poems of the Victorian era.
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
This poem contains invaluable advice to those who blame others for their failures. The poem also talks about a person’s battle with mental and physical impediments, and the mindset that makes one surrender while faced with challenges. I think challenges make one stronger but mentally submitting oneself to those impediments extinguishes the inner light that one carries inside the heart from infancy. Through these lines, Henley tried to say that it’s not about how difficult the path is, it’s about one’s attitude to keep persisting without submitting oneself to fate’s recourse.
These basic things
What are you doing to help the people relieve the tension?
I make a conscious effort to smile throughout the day and take the time to appreciate the little things, for example, the architectural detail on buildings. A simple smile, can reduce stress, help heart health, lower blood pressure, and boost your immune system by decreasing cortisol in the body. Smiling, genuine or even forced, prompts the brain to produce endorphins and serotonin which may have a positive effect on your mood. Try it – SMILE. I think that if we make new behaviours fun, we are far more likely to do them in a consistent and repeatable way.
This is not just noise
Operational Excellence has been describes as delivering leading performance across all measures of value by consistently executing the strategy.
Consistent execution requires two components working together:
1. The systems in place to manage the work to be done to execute the strategy
2. The culture that drives how well and consistently the work is done.
What are the basics and fundamentals of excellence in your space?
In my experience, personable people tend to be more successful as I think everything revolves around people, networks, and communities because we all value something. Regardless of what business you are in, everything starts with the people, and yes, I know this may change in the future but I’m a humanist. Everybody uses different tools and means; we all have different mentalities but in the end it all revolves around people, so I’ll continue to focus on the human aspect. Contact me via e-mail when you would like some guidance in helping you connect with your customers on an influential and human level.
The cost to nature
Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) is an environmental policy approach in which a producer’s responsibility for a product is extended to the post-consumer stage of a product’s life cycle. An EPR policy is characterised by:
1. The shifting of responsibility (physically and/or economically; fully or partially) upstream toward the producer and away from municipalities; and
2. The provision of incentives to producers to consider environmental considerations when designing their products.
While other policy instruments tend to target a single point in the chain, EPR seeks to integrate signals related to the environmental characteristics of products and production processes throughout the product chain. I think that this will be a gamechanger.
We deserve your money
The majority of management is about rational planning of things that are entirely in their control. The obsession with planning, quantification and rationalisation arguments means that we are automatically constrained to doing those things which makes sense in advance. It’s not safe to assume that the incentives and interests of individual employees are necessarily well aligned with the interests of the organisation. I think in reality, what your business depends on are citizens whose behaviour can only be influenced obliquely, they can’t be controlled - in other words you can’t tell your customers what to buy.
Exchanging knowledge
The hardest part of marketing meetings is persuading people to stop trying to prove that they were right all along. Defending the business, they came in with, defending their position and all their previous decisions. I’m sure these people mean well but they are limiting the possible because they are trying to defend what got them here in the first place. Everybody knows that knowledge is power, right? Knowledge is not power, I think it’s our ability to influence people that is power, and once you know, you cannot unknow.
““Any fool can know. The point is to understand.””