Everything I write is ..

Photo by DJ Johnson on Unsplash

“I’m a writer, and everything I write is both a confession and a struggle to understand things about myself and this world in which I live. This is what everyone’s work should be…whether you dance or paint or sing. It is a confession, a baring of your soul, your faults, those things you simply cannot or will not understand or accept. You stumble forward, confused, and you share. If you’re lucky, you learn something.”

– Arthur Miller

Don’t get impatient

“This is one more piece of advice I have for you: don’t get impatient. Even if things are so tangled up you can’t do anything, don’t get desperate or blow a fuse and start yanking on one particular thread before it’s ready to come undone. You have to realize it’s going to be a long process and that you’ll work on things slowly, one at a time.”

– Haruki Murakami

Via the wonderful Swissmiss.

Rules for people and teams working together

During my weekly review and clear-out of my inboxes I did a deep-dive into the Photos app and I found this rules that I saved back in 2016.

I think they’re a great set of rules that are even more relevant after the last two years of the pandemic. With apologies for not being able to provide credit to the original author and poster.

It's ok to...

• say "I don't know”
• ask for more clarity
• stay at home when you feel ill
• say you don't understand
• ask what acronyms stand for
• forget things
• introduce yourself
• depend on the team
• ask for help
• not know everything
• have quiet days
• have loud days
• to talk, joke and laugh
• put your headphones on
• say "No" when you're too busy
• make mistakes
• sing
• sigh
• not check your email out of hours
• not check your email constantly during hours
• just Slack it
• walk over and ask someone face-to-face
• go somewhere else to concentrate
• offer feedback on other people's work
• challenge things you're not comfortable with
• say yes when anyone does a coffee run
• prefer tea
• snack
• have a messy desk
• have a tidy desk
• work how you like to work
• ask the management to fix it
• have off-days
• have days off

How to lead and support an exhausted team

We remain in challenging times. Leaders must be aware of the landscape and issues impacting their teams and the people in their lives as we work our way through this.

Two of the most important things you can do are:

1. Lead by example - which means ensuring that you are managing your own stress and recovery cycles.

2. Make sure that your team are having their own downtime and recovery periods.

A great read from HBR with recommended action points for all leaders.

Strategies for inspiring a company’s social media followers

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I’m proud to have been admitted to the Forbes Communications Council. This is an invitation-only community where senior-level communications and public relations executives can share their professional insights and experience.

Recently, Forbes asked 14 of us how businesses can inspire their followers on social media.

For me, inspiration comes from living your values and building a brand that’s known to care. We need to communicate positive messages and empower people to implement positive change—for themselves, their families, communities and work.

You can see my contribution on Forbes here.

Finding A New Normal: Embracing Flexibility For A Better Era Of Working (Forbes)

Photo by Shridhar Gupta on Unsplash

I am delighted to share my first contribution to @Forbes Communications Council, titled ‘Flexibility For a Better Era of Working’.

Leaders across different sectors can create a ‘new normal’ working model focusing on clear communication. By enabling emerging perks around flexibility, whether working remotely or not, organisations can ensure that all colleagues feel equally included.

Joining the Communications Council has provided me with a fantastic opportunity to share personal experiences of managing office culture remotely. I look forward to continuing my collaboration with Forbes, sharing further expertise, discussing these topics with fellow Council members, and having a positive impact.

Please find the full article here: Finding A New Normal: Embracing Flexibility For A Better Era Of Working.

Set smarter goals at work to better measure performance

With the end of the year approaching for many of us in jobs, annual review and appraisal season is almost upon us.

While this may be back to front, I want to talk about goals in the workplace in this post. Some refer to them as key performance indicators (KPIs), others as objective and key results (OKRs). Whether you use KPI or OKR, they both measure performance against a documented goal.

Photo by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash

I am certain that you’ve heard of SMART goals. Smart goals refer to goals that are:

• Specific

• Measurable

• Achievable

• Relevant

• Timed

An example SMART goal for a salesperson would look like this:

To achieve a 10% year-on-year increase in sales in 2021 on sales made in 2020 as measured by closed deals as of 31 December 2021. :

Specific: The goal is specific as it states time, performance metric, comparative results.

Measurable: The objective is measurable, as it documents a percentage improvement and specifies closed deals and a date.

Achievable: While each situation varies and there will, of course, be sales situations and markets where a 10% increase in sales is not achievable. The number used in this example may be achievable, particularly if you compared it to a goal to achieve a 300% increase in sales.

Relevant: The goal is relevant to a salesperson who would set and agree to such a goal.

Timed: The goal states both the end date and the comparative period in time.

While SMART goals add the relevant framework to performance management and goal setting, they exclude two crucial elements that make SMART goals smarter. From my experience, you should also ensure that in setting a SMART goal, you are equipped for the task and have the resources to achieve the task.

Equipped: If the salesperson does not have a source of leads, prospects, advertising, product or services to sell, they are not equipped to do the task.

Resourced: In addition, the goal is at risk if they do not have the available time or resources such as hardware, software, sales support, assistants, and whatever key resources are essential to achieving the goal.

Using the leads generated by marketing activity and networking, with sales and administrative support, in 2021, achieve a 10% year-on-year increase on sales made in 2020 as measured by closed deals as of 31 December 2021.

This revised goal is smarter than the original goal. In addition, this change puts some of the onus for achieving the goal on the organisation and the employee.

In 2022, I recommend you consider making SMARTER goals with your teams and for yourself.

Who works for who, and why it matters to you?

Erik Mclean on Unsplash.

In my career so far, I have managed hundreds of people. I've managed small teams and large teams. I've lead teams in multiple countries and industries, in one physical location, and virtual and remote teams across multiple offices and timezones.

The critical question is, who works for who?

Most people believe that the team I have work for me, and any org chart or hierarchy would support that. My employer or customer has hired me to do a job. That's true, just as I've hired my team members and contractors to do a job.

But my job, similar to yours, is to enable my team to do their job. We should resource our teams, equip them with software and hardware, tools and platforms, and training. In addition to this, we must shield them from pointless interruptions within the organisation, the demanding customers, and low-value work. We intercept, deflect, and handle the interruptions that they don't need to avoid slowing them down or distracting them.

By taking this approach, my team can get their job done and deliver on their goals and objectives and the work we have tasked them to do.

I believe that looking at this question in the inverse provides a different perspective. This approach focuses me on enabling my team to do their job. Meaning that team members can do the job I've hired them for, not fighting for scarce resources or drowning in politics, confrontation, and time-wasting.

It also positions each of us as leaders with a function or team performing and delivering a high-quality service. By enabling our teams to do their job correctly, they can also develop their skills, strengths, and careers and grow their sense of job satisfaction.

The combined effect of this also stacks the odds in our favour and enables us to work in roles that we enjoy — a win-win for everyone.

Delivering service quality at scale

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

One of the challenges we all face is scarce resources. Not having enough time, tools, money, or team members to deliver can be an everyday experience. This scarcity can be overwhelming to those involved in situations where demand exceeds the available supply of a product or service. But could it be that we are looking at our problem in the wrong way?

In a recent post by Seth Godin - Mouth to mouth resuscitation, he points out the value of this lifesaving intervention. But it does not scale. You cannot perform Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) on more than one person at a time. Yes, you could scale it by training more people, but it is still a service delivered singularly, one at a time.

"It might be the best way to save someone in distress. But it doesn’t scale. You can only offer this sort of lifesaving intervention to one person at a time." — Seth Godin

This analogy has a direct relation to the concept of communications, design, and creative work. As we produce art that's on-brand and relevant to the world we are experiencing, how do you deliver bespoke art at scale?

So far in my career, I've built, managed, and lead the introduction of multiple platforms and technologies. These platforms have supported marketing, content, brand, design, video, and training. In speaking with my team leaders over the last few weeks, I've asked them to to to consider how they could deliver double the amount of work they produce now using tools, technology, and automation?

Seth's post has prompted me to think about this from the root cause. To continue his analogy, if we deliver CPR and do it well, we cannot scale CPR. But is CPR what is required? How else can we provide services around brand and design, content, media, events, video, animation, and web?

This awareness causes me to rethink how else we could solve the problem and produce the same quality results? The service must still restore and maintain the health of the patient.

What service can we deliver of the same quality or better - using technology and automation? One of the questions I'll also be taking a deeper look at is how we could use training to enable the user to self-serve and deflect the need for the service entirely?

A galaxy of inspiration from Douglas Adams

The Guardian has just published an article with a copy that the author Douglas Adams wrote about writing to himself.

It turns out, even celebrated writers who have sold millions of books can still struggle with their craft and their self-belief.

For me, the stand out section is:

“Writing can be good. You attack it, don’t let it attack you. You can get pleasure out of it. You can certainly do very well for yourself with it!”

Douglas Adams

The Guardian has the complete note.

For any current or aspiring writers out there, I'd recommend taking a screenshot of the note. I now have a copy and will use it when I need encouragement or inspiration with my writing.