A wave crashing on the beach captures just the last few moments of an epic journey that started as a small ripple in the open ocean.
CEOs and other organization leaders are often invited to look over high-profile projects in the days leading up to their launch. What may seem like benign feedback for them has crashing effects on the employees at the receiving end who must drop everything and scramble to address it.
These leaders are oblivious to the waves they’ve created.
Involving leadership much earlier in the process can help keep waves in the ocean and out of the corporate world. Keeping waves in the ocean is the responsibility of not only leadership, but on those who manage the project.
Years of doing work a certain way ossifies our habits and approaches to projects. Introduction of a new technology can really throw us off. When this happens, do we embrace the new technology or run away from it? What SHOULD we do?
Getting there is the hard part. Once we’re there, we feel at home.
When explaining a project to someone, be crystal clear about which key business questions/objectives your project seeks to answer. Nailing this will create many efficiencies at numerous touchpoints later on.
Attention is what we crave as humans, yet is in shortage.
It is rare to notice someone—perhaps which is exactly when we do notice someone, it could change their life’s trajectory.
Who did you notice today that did something right? Did you let them know (even if you had to go out of your way)? It could change their lives—maybe even yours.
There are different ways in which we show up in front of our customers and clients.
When they view our project, when they read our email/text/instant message, when we attend a meeting together, when we meet them in person, when they hear about us from a colleague, ….
Executives spend, on average, 22 minutes daily staying up to date on business-related content in the form of journal articles, etc.
If they happen to find your business article, they better be able to process the message INSTANTLY. Title, introductory/concluding paragraphs, headlines, and graphics should be able to tell your story. The rest of the content is there in case they’re interested.