Quick notes to help you get more done in less time. . . next week.
Do you enjoy this newsletter? If so, I need a favor. Forward it to a friend. Try your networking group, your colleagues, or anyone you know working at a company with less than 150 employees. I've been working on this book and it's reminding me that I need to grow this list! (publishers love that)
In this issue: Options
- Techniques for FIT
- Being Human
- Random Stuff
Techniques for FIT
- Options help frame decisions. When confronted with the unexpected, try, "As I see it, you have 3 options. . ."
- Options move people from thinking, "do I want to do this?" to "how do I want to do this?" A small but significant change.
- Intent counts more than technique. In fly fishing, a kink in the tippet spooks a fish. In growth, bad intent spooks a client.
- Templates and guides are shortcuts that make life easier. Essays in school were significantly easier once you figured out the 5 paragraph format, thesis, point 1, 2, 3, recap.
Being Human - When to use options
I'm writing an article about proposals and one of my main takeaways is the power of options.
There's a school of thought that experts shouldn't give options because the client is paying for expertise. "Just tell them what to do. You're the expert." That thinking is rooted in the past when information was controlled by the expert.
Today, right or wrong, your customers believe they can search for and find all the information they once needed experts for. Just ask your physician what they think of "Dr. Google." In this article, I submit that everyone is better served when presented with options.
Thought not always.
Here's a short list of times I'm not looking for options: when time is of the essence, during regular maintenance, if it's life or death, or if I say, "just tell me what to do."
Random Stuff
The Broncos game
The NFL's television schedule pisses me off every year and this weekend was no different. In a world of on-demand, instant gratification, you'd think there would be a way for me to avoid sitting at Old Chicago for 4 hours and purchase a single game to watch at home.
Nope.
Instead, I find myself trying to log in to an app as my Dad, trying to fool it into giving me the local Denver game. No dice. Then I try to sign up my college aged son for a student version of Direct TV's NFL thing. Too much. And ultimately, I end up using a VPN to make it look like I am in Denver while using a 7 day trial of the SlingTV app.
They could have had me at $19.95 for a single game.
And after all that, the Broncos lost. Orange Sundays, blue Mondays.
I'm over it.
(not really)
