It’s that time of year again. No, not the time for Black Fridays and Cyber Mondays. No, not the time when the ringing of the Salvation Army bells serenade our every entrance into Wal-Mart. And no, not just one more year when we wipe the dust off the Festivus pole and let the good times roll.
I’m talking about the “Upcoming Year’s Strategy” time of year.
Heaven forbid we think of a strategy for next year a moment sooner than in the final days of this year. Regardless of how much we will vow to have our strategies for the year after wrapped up by the end of the third quarter, it never happens.
When things aren’t working the way you think they should, the easy thing to do is start fixing everything that’s wrong with your channels of communication.
The website sucks; fix it.
We aren’t tweeting enough; fix it.
Our slick isn’t slick enough; fix it.
My bet is your issue has more to do with what you’re communicating, regardless of the channel you’re using.
Processes … we hate them all unless they are our own. Then we treasure it with every ounce of pride we have.
Interesting thing about working in an office: when things go wrong, the first thing we look to is creating or improving our processes. Meantime, no one wants to follow them.
Where I work, we recently updated our job request form. The old form was seriously overwhelming, and nobody wanted to fill it out. It’s so easy to try to ask for everything in a request form to make it easy on you. But what it does is make it difficult on everyone else, which means they won’t use the stupid thing. Which then makes it difficult on you, cuz they end up just emailing you everything. Backfire…
But once you do improve your process, it becomes awkward to ask people to follow it. You don’t want to come across as one of those project management prudes (cheap shot), and you feel like you’re being lazy for not just taking the request and entering it yourself. Offices are filled with hallway requests and offshoot, half-baked emails. Who are you to rock the boat?
It’s been a while since I batched up of the great stuff I’ve read lately that you may have missed. Check these lil’ morsels out, and spread the love.
Men Are Idiots …: I’m only vaguely familiar with this story about Cali Lewis from GeekBeat.tv, but I know enough to know this is funny on many levels. Nice grab, Gio.
Alienating the 2%: Hey, what’s a mash-up list without a post from Seth, huh? His premise is that 2% of your crowd is gonna be disappointed with what you’re doing. They just squawk so much that you can’t tell if they represent everyone else, or if they are, truly, just 2%. My experience in direct sales also tells me this 2% is often your top leaders (at least in leadership levels), and therefore you listen even more. Seth says stop.
Content Strategy and the Dying Art of Execution: Forget that this is focused on content marketing. These pitfalls apply to just about any project. Joe’s nailed the pits of quicksand we so easily get stuck in. My favorite (if you can call it that)? Lack of support from the execs. Being able to get executive buy-in truly is a gift and skill. Find people who can do it and put ‘em to work.
8 Simple Facebook Tips: My friend Jen Fong neatly packages some nice Facebook reminders that are so easy to forget. Read ‘em. Do ‘em.
My Favorite WordPress Plugins: One of the things I love most about Michael Hyatt is how he so readily pulls back the curtain and let’s you know what he’s doing behind the scenes. WordPress plugins are a lot like iPhone apps: there are a lot of cool ones out there, but who’s got the time to weed through them all. Michael’s list will help you cut through some of the clutter.
Yes, “Wade Phillips” can be a verb.
As in, “John was simply caught in a no-win situation, so I Wade Phillipsed him.”
Or …
“Even though Jane’s whole team is responsible for the project’s failure, I’m gonna have to Wade Phillips her just to make a statement.”
For those who don’t know, Wade Phillips was the coach of the Dallas Cowboys until this past Monday afternoon. And for those who don’t know, the Cowboys have much bigger problems than a bad head coach.
But perception is reality, and the simple fact is the Cowboys are sucking and the natives are restless. A sacrifice had to be offered, and it had to be Wade Phillips’ head on a platter.
I was chatting with a friend the other day who was ranting about some of his disgusts with his current job. He wiggled through his thought process until he made the following statement: “I guess I could just go start my own business. But the insurance ….”
The insurance?
No, seriously, the insurance?
I’m convinced too many good entrepreneurs with good ideas do nothing about it due to a silly little thing like insurance. They think the risk outweighs the reward.
Sure, taking care of your family’s and your personal health needs is important. I’m not suggesting you do without.
