Successful mistakes

A good friend rang me late last year and said he ‘has had enough and he has nothing more to learn here.’

By his account he has had enough of his job, his lack of workplace camaraderie, his colleagues all working for different goals, he was tired of being undervalued, shut down, his skills where not being utilised to the full extent.

My friend was an ambassador of change; he had the ideas, the will, but not the power. He was a cog, he was being under resourced and he was frustrated.

After a few minutes of listening to his rant, I mentioned my thoughts;

Success only happens twice- Once in someone’s mind and twice in the real world. It will only ever happen twice. There can be variations of that success, a similar business model, a similar outcome to a competition and an almost identical product. It will be slightly different every time- Success will never be replicated.

Mistakes happen infinitely. The same mistakes happen frequently, businesses fail in the same way continually; a competition will be lost by making the same mistake, people will lose loved ones by making the same mistakes.- Mistakes will always happen again.

Focus on the mistakes, there are plenty of them, you will never learn enough of them, you will never be able to avoid all of them but the more you know and understand the less the likelihood of them reoccurring in your own equation.

My friend was closer than ever to achieving his own slice of success as he was surrounded by it every time he went to work.

n.b. My friend is still working for the same company, but recently got a promotion.

Who's your company?

These days there a lot of people with a lot of acquaintances, people that want to spend time with you when they want to, when the sun is out, when there is a memory on the table or a lack of things to do at their end. Yes, they are friends, friends that do not care overly much other than the company and the passing of time with someone- Anyone.

Friends it seems are becoming passé, good friends even more so. An older women mentioned to me the other week that she cannot believe how many friends all the younger generation have these days- she people watched at her local cafe for a few months and saw one group of 20 something girls with different people, only once were they in the company of the same people. In her time, she proclaimed “I had two friends, best friends “

We are all spending a lot less time with the same people, and a lot more time with more people. Is it a good thing? It’s a good thing if the company you are keeping is making you a better person but too often we keep company for the wrong reasons.

If you can’t comfortably and with no awkwardness hold the hands of the ones next you, you shouldn’t be standing there for long.

Head in the sand

Too often companies are sacrificing their brand equity by putting their creative and media responsibilities in the hands of people that actually do not care.

The in house marketing team are ‘too busy’ about the real world because they are focusing on their insular world and rarely devising the strategy anyway so why would they care how it gets implemented.

So some companies outsource to agencies...

Most agencies operate on a retainer or a perecentage of transactional media, some are performance based (all should be performance based) and some even ask for a fee from the brands on top of the percentage kick backs the suppliers are offering.

Let’s face it, the suppliers write revenue and they don’t overly care about the agencies because they are not the brand, they only hold the responsibility for a period of time. These Account execs, managers, directors receive a nominal wage per year (few get commissions on top of that) and their time is broken up between the accounts they hold. They didn’t build the brand, the empire of which the hold the budgets for. They just spend it. Sound like a spoilt little rich kid doesn’t it?

So when the agency for company ‘x’ says that they are not interested what do you think they are really saying? When they don’t reply to emails, or even entertain a thought, how do you think the brand would feel? Isn’t this their job, to care about the brand?

But then again how often do you meet a discerning little rich kid?

The modern tour guide

Over the next 6 months we will see a very different media landscape. Over the next 3 years there will be a very different thought process being applied to all media action. Of course there will be the age old, archaic and traditional theories that will be strewn out against any brand not willing to think outside the square. What square?

I implore you to think about your objectives under a night light of seemingly endless possibilities.

e.g I am your new Tour Guide...

In 2010, I’ll be co-coordinating virtual tours via Skype on your mobile phones. I will be taking you on a journey through Google maps to the Seven Wonders of the World, all in 4 hours. I will be selling ''screen shots' as e-postcards in the Facebook marketplace.

You can book your tours by sending me an email or find me on foursquared.

Im happy to discuss, if you don’t scare me.

Both in business and personal life it can be difficult having efficient and productive conversations. Conversations that create action and update the current status quo (deliver desired results.)

Because of this (or in spite of this) most businesses and people operate within a comfort zone. They employ a way of thinking and actioning that is comfortable and ‘just’ works- The comfort formula. It happens across many industries and infiltrates into nearly all departments.

‘We already use a similar service at the moment’ upon further analyses, they do use a similar service that is more expensive and delivers minimal results and maximum comfort.

Making people aware that they could possibly be doing their jobs better, using better services or even better people can be a scary thing. It means they have to open their mind, challenge what they know, make a hard decision and be ready to be scared.

Planaholics and Goalism

Plans are important as they give us a certain discipline, a procedure and a line of attack. More often than not the plan becomes the goal- “everything went according to plan.” This is not the objective, nor the goal nor the outcome. You do not want a plan to be put together and the objective/goal been to fulfil that plan.

Plans take you in a direction, any direction. Some plans succeed, some fail. They also do not give the actual goal enough credit, as when plans are finalised they do not allow for much scope- scope can achieve a goal more efficiently.

The key here is the Goal, the objective, the pot of gold, the outcome and the re-evaluation stage. The time when the goal has been achieved and then we can sit down and re-evaluate if that goal has put us in the position that we intended to be in?

Then we start over.

Focus on the goal. What exactly is it that I want to happen? Increase sales by 12%, grow my data base by 12,000, save 15,000 dollars this year.

Put simply; Plan: To drink more water.

Goal: drink 6 glasses a day. (3 before 3pm and 3 after 3pm)

"your just two eyes in a box,

and a fairly small box at that!"