johnmaconline

When I was a young engineer working on the products that our company made and sold, I was quite naive. 

Actually, I was worse than naive. I was insular and egocentric. Basically, I thought that engineering was the most important function of the company. Engineering was the purpose of the company. 

Sales? Can’t sell something that doesn’t exist.
Marketing? Can’t market something that doesn’t exist.
Accounting? Can’t create P&L statements if there’s nothing that brings in P.

Yeah, I’m not proud of my thought process at the time.

I missed the fact that we were all pieces in the system. All important. None functions without the other. It’s a symphony, not a solo performer.  

You can’t sell or market something that doesn’t (or won’t) exist, but also, you don’t have a business (or a job or a purpose) without marketing and selling what you make. You also won’t be in business if you can’t understand your finances, keep them in order, and make decisions based on them.  

So here’s a better approach: 

When you walk into the room, assume everybody is important, and ask yourself, “What does the system need from me?”

That’s the shift from solo performer to symphony.

It’s easy to do, and it’s easy to buy in when others do it for us.

“You deserve this.”
“You’re doing a great job.”
“It’s not your fault.”

To be clear, these may be true, but what if they’re just comfort in disguise?

Are you snowing yourself?

Attention is a currency.

You spend it, and others are trying to extract it.

We talk about, write about, and argue about how we spend our other resources. We made up the term ROI (return on investment) to measure it.

“What’s your ROI?”

How are you spending your attention? Are you investing it? Wasting it?

“What’s your ROA?”

Where you spend your attention shapes what you produce, how you feel, and who you become.

Attention, like time, is one currency you can’t earn back.

A friend of mine recently said that when we were commiserating about useless meetings in our businesses.

In the industrial work paradigm, you clocked in, moved parts down the line, and then clocked out. Today, we do the same thing, except the parts are useless meetings, and the line is our calendar.

We replaced the factory with the meeting room.

We gather six people with the right titles for an hour to address a $100 problem.

The repetition feels safe. Familiar. Productive-ish. The hierarchy is satisfied.

Useful work — the kind that solves $100k and $100M problems — often takes place with a collaborator or collaborators. In assertion. In tension. In collective energy. In conversation.

Wait, aren’t meetings the problem?

Meetings, yes. Conversations, no.

If you’re a leader, encourage the conversations. Give them room to exist and breathe. Give them tools and the power and responsibility to use them.

Skip the meetings.

You’ve lost momentum.

To get back at it, you don’t have to start with inspiration, intensity, or the answer to whatever stopped you.

It’s simply motion. Not everything or even the most important thing. Start with the next thing. One foot in front of the other.

Now you’re back at it.

Tables and charts are just tables and charts. 

Until you enter the picture. Does this table beg new questions from you? Will this chart inform your decision? Do either of these help you change your mind or bolster what you already know? 

The data doesn’t talk, but when you come together with it, it may undergird your voice. Or maybe not.

Yet, smart marketers use data as part of the story they tell. It’s part of their influence campaign. It’s a bludgeon.

More data — bigger hammer. 

Don’t be impressed, distracted, or confused by the data if it doesn’t help you see it better. 

Data should be a flashlight, not a weapon. 

[NOTE: I commandeered/plagiarized/stole the title from The 1440.]

Penny’s cost almost four cents to make. Yet, they’re worth only one cent. 

The government lost $85 million last year making pennies. $85 million. A pittance for the government, sure, but for you and me? 

And what did you do with them? 

You probably left them at the register, or tossed them in a tip jar, or stuffed way down in the console of the car, or even threw them out. About 6.7 million people toss their pennies in the trash. In total, we discard about $62 million in coins each year, with pennies comprising a significant portion of this amount.

And yet, we kept stamping them out. Why?

Nostalgia — The penny feels foundational, plus it’s a tie to times past. 

“That’s how they get ya!” — People are concerned about businesses rounding up and having to pay more.

Infrastructure — Pennies are built into the system’s infrastructure. Changing the system is hard. 

Politics — Somebody’s gonna spin this as taking away something “the people.” That somebody will tell you a story with a name and a face about how this person is suffering without the penny. 

OK, fair enough. 

But sometimes you gotta rip the band-aid. 

Just because it used to work doesn’t mean it still does. Just because that’s the way we always did it doesn’t mean you still should. Just because one or some people may be worse off doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it anyway. 

The hardest part of progress isn’t necessarily building the new. Sometimes, it’s letting go of the old.