Quick notes to help you find new business in less time with less effort. . . sometime next week.
In this issue:
- Thoughts on Wallowing
- Being Human – Voices
- Random Stuff
- Back In The Day
Thoughts on Wallowing
- Resilience, or as one of my past bosses used to call it, "bouncebackability," is key to keeping momentum. It's okay to mourn a result and wallow in the sorrow a bit, but exhibit some resilience. Bounce back. Take action.
- Feelings and emotions drive action, not logic. Knowing this, when something goes wrong, let your people wallow in their emotions for a bit before pulling them out. That little taste of defeat will result in an emotional response and drive the actions needed to prevent the bad thing from happening again.
- Describing an experience your people will go through is much different from how they experience it in real time. No matter how explicitly you describe it, you will hear, "Why didn't you just tell me this at the start?" They have to wallow in the muck a bit for a lesson to take hold. It's unavoidable.
- Bad incentives create friction, slowing momentum. Surprisingly, a "bad" incentive is simply how it's perceived. Let your people wallow in comp plan changes they perceive as bad or unfair for a day or so. Then, challenge their thinking from missing the old way, to how to maximize the new way. Get them moving. It's not a bad comp plan, it's just a plan. Figure out how to win with it.
Being Human – The voice you hear
“The 'voice of sanity' is getting hoarse.” ― Seamus Heaney
Have you played with AI voice generation tools? I spent some time in 2023 playing with one. Every time I thought I was coming close to replicating my voice, my lovely bride would say, "that doesn't sound like you."
I dropped it.
I logged in yesterday because Elevenlabs is advertising an audiobooks service, or production environment, as they call it.
Audiobook! Something perpetually on my to-do list.
I searched through the tool, looking for my recorded voice. I found it.
I will no longer wonder how I sound to others. I've been stapled, folded, collated, and filed by the bot. I sound middle aged?
I need to think about this. Until then, I say "neigh."
Random Stuff
“We are all failures – at least the best of us are.” — J.M. Barrie
My lovely bride hosted a baby shower for our niece. As part of the preparations, it is suggested we bring a table. I have one parish table, as I call it. The kind of folding table you find in parish basement. When I started my clothing company I bought a bunch of them. They served as shelves, tables, desks, and even a small table-tennis surface, impossible to use. I am down to one. And I know exactly where to get it. The garage attic.
The morning of the event, I get up early to load my transport. I may have remembered where the table is, but I don't remember how dirty the garage attic is. I don't remember how many years of things I piled in front of it. Most of all, I don't remember how freaking heavy this thing is. No matter. I have a deadline. Just need to lower this monstrosity down from the attic without falling through the hole or some other calamity.
I get it down. I clean it. I drag it to the event. We don't need it. I drag it back. I don't have the energy to get it back up its hole. I leave it balanced precariously against the other things leaning against the wall. Ten minutes later, talking to my sister-in-law and her daughter, we hear a noise from the garage. A big noise.
"Just a table falling," I said. "Nothing to worry about." I imagine the table sliding down. "I'll deal with it later." I am tired.
A few days later, I can't open the garage door . No problem. I walk to the back door instead. A week later, the garage door doesn't work. Days after that, while inside inspecting our dahlia bulbs, I notice the table is still leaning against the wall. "I need to move that," I think and look up at the hole where the table needs to go. I see what's wrong with the garage door. There's no suspension spring. It broke. That's the loud noise we heard that Saturday morning going on two weeks ago.
An advantage of living in one place long enough is what is happening, happened before. Fixing the suspension spring was probably the first bit of work I did on the house. (with my father-in-law's help, of course) It was probably twenty years ago. I know exactly what to to. Kind of. It's more like I remembered what to do once I look up how to fix it on YouTube.
Part ordered, part installed, garage door fixed.
Parish table still leaning against a pile of stuff.
Back in the Day
In this section, I'm going to revisit what I was writing about last year, 5 years ago, and 10 years ago. (Yes, it's been 10 years!) Just the highlights.
- Last year: Right FIT #477 – this time last year I was thinking about being healthy. Must be because it's the week before my birthday. I was also thinking about how to avoid robot behavior when getting your people to implement best practices. Intent counts, you know.
- Five years ago: Right FIT #268 – In 2021 I was thinking about new hires. Is there anything more important than a good start? I also compared sales prospecting to frequent testing techniques used for measles, something I learned from a public health expert. I wonder what happened to that guy?
- Ten years ago: Right FIT #6 – I tell a story about "mental floss" books, those easy readers you might pick up at the airport. I grabbed one on the way to my layover city, realizing too late I had read it before. I grabbed another during the layover and yep, you guessed it. Halfway through realized I read that one too. My father in law uses a spreadsheet to track his thrillers. Meanwhile, I've done this like six times since then.
