All in Entrepreneurship
This month's podcasts focus on the art of communication - a critical skill no matter what we do for a living.
In today's episode, I discuss how no amount of clever language and word smithing can make up for a poor message or offering. That sometimes, the problem isn't in the message but with us.
I was in the car with my family the other day and we were heading to lunch. We were having a conversation, and in the midst of it, we noticed that my daughter’s answers were short, to the point, not really like her normal, jovial self.
My son actually noticed it first, and he asked her what was wrong.
Mark Manson wrote that we should overestimate our future but underestimate our past. That sounds about right to me.
Many of us tend to do the reverse - we overestimate our past (both in terms of the implications of what we’ve achieved, as well as the ramifications of the mistakes we’ve made) and we underestimate our futures (in terms of what is still possible).
This month's podcasts focus on the art of communication - a critical skill no matter what we do for a living.
Today's episode focuses on the idea of conflict, and the fact that it can actually be a good thing for our relationships at home and at work. The question is one of intent and ego (or lack of it).
There’s a difference between rolling the dice and taking a calculated risk. Often we tend to confuse the two.
We avoid taking specific actions in specific areas of our life because we believe “it’s a lottery”, when instead, there are parameters - fundamentals - that we can assess, evaluate, extrapolate to come to a reasonable expectation of an outcome.
When Amazon launched Prime back in 2005, Jeff Bezos’ central premise was that it should be “such a good value that you’d be irresponsible not to be a member”. This was when it offered 2 day free shipping.
Now, of course, it offers a whole lot more and there are more than 200 million Prime members today. There are two takeaways from this.
This month's podcasts focus on the art of communication - a critical skill no matter what we do for a living.
Today's episode focuses on the idea of objectivity in what we believe and what we communicate. It's important to believe in ourselves but still be objective enough to understand the reality of our situations.
A price of innovation and growth is criticism. If you’re intent on creating change in any material form, you have to expect it.
The simple fact is that the change you’re trying to create will result in some sort of displacement, both real and perceived, and it’s likely to come from many different areas.
The thing is, no one actually has the answer.
We want to believe someone does - perhaps that we do - but we don’t actually know that to be a fact.
Sure, we might believe our version of the answer right to our very core. We might be convinced that our boss or our peer can be trusted to get us where we’re trying to go. But what we’re trusting is our versions of the story. We’ve made a judgement based on the accumulated data at hand.
This month's podcasts focus on people, specifically the different aspects to consider when it comes to the talent acquisition, development and management.
Today's episode focuses on the topic of relationships, and the fact that strong relationships create great teams, which create great organizations. Relationships form the very foundation of our success.
The Ikea effect is a cognitive bias where we place greater value on those things we’ve created ourselves.
There’s value in this idea when you’re a business and you’re providing customization options to your customer. The more they can personalize the product even partially, on their own, the more they will value it. Makes sense.
But we need to be wary of this bias when it comes to ourselves.
Competition is a sharpening mechanism.
It forces a clarification of our strategies, demands a strengthening of our capabilities and forces everyone to improve (if they want to continue to stay on the field).
And, in order to have competition, you have to have participation - without constraints.
This month's podcasts focus on people, specifically the different aspects to consider when it comes to the talent acquisition, development and management.
My last episode talked about the value of the team, even when we have a star performer in our midst. Today's episode discusses the idea that, while it still is about the team, we should all strive to adopt the star performer's mentality.
Recently, Unilever, the global consumer goods giant, announced that it will be removing the word “normal” from its beauty and personal care products and related advertising.
The idea behind this is to move away from descriptions that might suggest who (the type of person) the product is for, and towards those that describe what the product does. A step towards inclusivity and body positivity.
I think we get so caught up in the goals that we’re after that we lose sight of the need to focus on the process. Especially when the goals are big, audacious.
This makes sense, intuitively, of course. The bigger the goals, the higher the stakes, the more invested we are in their achievement. It’s natural then that we takes these goals seriously, and that they occupy our thought processes.
This month's podcasts focus on people, specifically the different aspects to consider when it comes to the talent acquisition, development and management.
Today's episode focuses on the star performer - or rather the need to recognize that, despite the extent of their star qualities, the team is always the most important thing.
Those who’ve worked with me for any length of time will inevitably have heard me say some variant of the following words: “If the customer has to work to understand what we’re offering, we’ve already lost.” I try to live by those words.
There’s enough going on with any client or customer that any of us are dealing with. Just like us, they’re constantly bombarded by emails, news, requests for, and demands of, their time - and, oh yes, their actual work.
We think of technology as the simple fix. If I simply bought this piece of software, I could get this work done so much more effectively. If only we implemented that new piece of tech, we’d get this billing process absolutely sorted.
Many times, though, when we actually get the funding, buy the tool and put the tech place, things don’t always go as planned.
This month's podcasts focus on people, specifically the different aspects to consider when it comes to the talent acquisition, development and management.
Today's episode focuses on the need to hire the right people and how fit and genuineness are among the most important criteria to consider.
The recent hype around Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs) has been interesting. A piece of ‘art’ by the artist Beeple sold for almost $60 Million. I put the word ‘art’ in quotation marks because it isn’t art in the conventional sense that most of us might think of. It’s digital and anyone can see and download it (there’s nothing physical at play here). But the NFT provides one person with indisputable proof of ownership, and that person estimated the value of that proof at $69.5 Million.
