I find it fascinating that so often people will come up with a great idea or product, put all of this time and effort and consideration into making it the absolute best that it can be…and then they watch it fail because they never gave it a good name. And I don’t mean that they thought about it and chose a bad name. In my experience, people simply don’t name things or give them an easy, thoughtless label that doesn’t create any sense of identity or purpose.

I’ve been guilty of this in the past. When my children were younger, they adopted a cat and my wife and I generously (perhaps foolishly) let them name it whatever they wanted. They chose Pud. Why? I could not begin to imagine, but I share this to illustrate the importance of getting out in front of naming something rather than leaving it to chance.

Early in my career, I took over management of a media company where they established a smart program of pre-booking an interesting collection of fixed and unique spots, which had to be reserved on a long-term basis. The very wise concept was to lock in recurring revenue so you started each month with a solid base, in exchange for a discount to the customer. 

When I got there, they were only half reserved and the sales team groaned if you asked about it. Digging into the program, I was handed the log that tracked it, the “Base Revenue Worksheet.” 

This was the name given to it by the accountant who set it up, and it turns out the sales team just took that exact page out as support material. I mean no disrespect to accountants, but if you’re a retailer and someone comes to talk to you about this great, game-changing product that they should definitely buy right now, how excited are you going to be when that product is called the Base Revenue Program?

Understandably, the company struggled to keep the spots filled. When I had control, we burned the worksheet, rebranded it, and moved some of the styling around so that sales would see it as a brand-new product with a catchier name like Sales Success Features. Suddenly the Sissyphian task of selling it became much easier, and spots started selling out consistently. Just by changing the name…

The topic of naming came up for me recently while sitting around the table with my family. My daughter talked about her coffee with oat milk and how great it was. I said that I didn’t understand — words mean things, and mammals produce milk, whereas vegetables and fruits can be made into juice. To me, she was more accurately putting oat juice in her coffee.

My daughter disagreed, so I sought support from the very educated members of my family. I was, however, summarily thrown under the bus, saying that the meaning of the word milk was sufficiently malleable to encompass byproducts of oats or almonds.

For the record, I still disagree.

Nevertheless, this did get me thinking about how much a single word can matter. My personal feelings aside, we can all acknowledge that adding oat juice to your coffee would be unthinkable, but adding oat milk to your drink feels natural and easy. The manufacturers certainly could have tried to market oat juice, but because they put in the time to think of a clever name, Starbucks now has a new way to increase the price of your already overpriced morning beverage.

As you look at your own business and product/service offerings, how well have you done at creating thoughtful, compelling labels? One company I work with was contemplating a live training series, but nobody seemed inclined to give it a name beyond Live Training Series. When I insisted, despite pushback, that it did in fact need a name, they took some time to consider how they wanted to position this offering.

This was during the height of the pandemic, and the name that they came back with was perfect — Thrive. Because at that moment, nothing sounded more compelling than the idea of not just surviving, but thriving. 

The series was a great success and went on to spawn more conferences and live training events. Do I think that this was wholly due to the name? Certainly not — a lot of intelligent, talented people put hours of work into making a great product that did exactly what it promised to do. But the name gave the program an identity, a life, a purpose. 

So as you work on developing your own products and advancing your company, pay close attention to how you’re naming (or not naming) things. Regardless of the specifics of your business, words matter. Because nobody has ever wanted to put almond juice in their coffee.

Isn’t it always about time? The reality is that everyone in the workforce measures their time: You’re either clocking in and paid by the minute or being paid in bulk and tracking your time to make sure you can carve out a good career and a personal life. 

All this to say, time is important no matter who you are. I got my first lesson in this at one of the sales training sessions I attended when the trainer asked us, “Why is time like money?” The answer, of course, is that you can spend it, save it, invest it, etc.

As a rookie salesman, I of course wrote it down in my notes eager to absorb all the wisdom from these oracles. But over a long career, it’s occurred to me that this approach to time management may have shaped my relationship with my schedule more than I’d realized. Specifically, I had this revelation during a car ride recently.

One of my colleagues, Troy, was coming to pick me up for an event. And while I’m a proud early riser, I’m a “walk the dog, read the paper, check my email” kind of early riser, not a “ready to be seen by the public” type. This particular day, I was up at 6 AM to get ready for Troy to pick me up an hour later.

At a quarter to 7, I called to my wife that Troy was picking me up today at 7:00. Then I said, “You know what? Troy is an early person; I bet he’s sitting out front at 12 till and I’ll still be here in my underwear.” To which the woman of my dreams responded, with no small amount of skepticism, “You’ll be lucky if you’re in your underwear.”

What can I say? She knows me.

Sure enough, I get a text from Troy at 6:49 that he’s here and waiting out front, but that I don’t have to rush. Just because I saw this exact situation coming didn’t mean that I liked it; I was indignant. “11 minutes!” I groused to myself. If I had to wait for 11 minutes and do nothing but sit in my car, I’d blow a gasket. In that time, I could get 3 emails returned or formulate an idea and get people to start working on it. 11 minutes is an eternity!

At 7:02 I walked out and, as promised, Troy was very patiently waiting out front. I shared my own perspective on his earliness and we had a good laugh about it. He explained that long ago he’d decided he didn’t like being late, so now he’s always exceptionally early. I asked how he justifies the loss of time, and he said that he’ll spend his time waiting to talk to people or work on an idea, but he couldn’t stand being the last person in a meeting.

I can’t be anything but the last person in a meeting. If you ever have an appointment with me and I’m two minutes early, it means that my world is on fire.

We both laughed about our own peculiarities and went on to have an excellent time at the event. Later, as I reflected on the conversation, my brain kept circling around how we could both be successful professionals with such widely different approaches to time management. If his system worked, I reasoned, then maybe it was worth giving it a try. 

My old system worked with a series of color blocks for my schedule. While helpful, this system was extremely rigid and stressful, because once I put down a color block on my calendar, I was then beholden by the business gods and my own anxieties to work on that exact project at that exact time. If a time block opened, I filled it, and fast.

The new approach is a lot looser. Now, I make a list of A, B, and C priorities that I want to work on with special note of tasks with impending deadlines that can’t be pushed back. I’m six weeks into my experiment, which I’m calling fluid time management. Note to the reader: Google doesn’t think anyone else is using this, so, you heard it here first! Regardless of the name, though, my new approach really has cut down on my stress. 

I still have anxiety that things won’t get done, of course. But by being more focused on the tasks I want to complete rather than on the exact second that I complete them, I find that, perhaps ironically, I’m not pushing things to the last possible second as often. More often than not, I find myself reaching the end of the day feeling like I got done enough to feel like my day was productive, and I’m not stoking the flames of my own neuroses by managing myself down to the minute.

So my question, as always, is what do you make of going from a highly structured time management system to something less hands-on?  I’ll check in again in a month or two (or three if my stress levels are still lower), but in the meantime, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this experiment or your own approach to time management!

In the early days of the internet, its prophets preached that it would bring freedom — a specific kind of freedom that they called disintermediation. In addition to being a very attractive buzzword, disintermediation describes the process of cutting out the middle man. Disintermediation, they promised, would get you the best prices on what you wanted to buy, unfettered access to information, and eliminate any and all barriers between you and the product/provider/information that you were looking for.

The role of the middle-man, though, is a time-honored tradition. While examples undeniably go back further, the first example that I think of is traders who used to run ships from Continent A to Continent B, buy a product, hope they didn’t die on the trip back, sell their product for 20x the price they bought it for, and repeat until they were either rich or dead.

This role of the intermediary would later be seen in print media via priests who could read books (although primarily the Bible) and tell you what it said — or at least what they decided you should think it said. This made them some of the earliest editors and gatekeepers of information, and they used it to great effect in controlling local populations.

As literacy became a tool for the common people instead of just second and third sons of noble families, though, things changed. People were able to interpret books for themselves, which gave rise to newspapers, radio, television, etc. In all of these mediums, though, you still had the middleman deciding what you needed to see and why, effectively standing between you and information.

In the same vein, retailers may have stopped risking life and limb, but Macy’s and JCPenny still served the role of the intermediary. They sourced clothing from providers and exercised a level of quality control that, in theory, meant you knew what you were buying and had some amount of certainty in your purchase.

Things are different in the age of the internet, though. Now, I go online and buy things directly from my preferred brand, but this hasn’t resolved all my problems as a consumer; rather, it’s shifted them. Now when I order a shirt, it inevitably arrives either in the wrong size because it uses another country’s sizing chart or it’s of such a poor quality that I’m not realistically going to wear it. Without an intermediary, the impetus is on me to figure out what the right solution is and who I can trust to sell a high-quality product.

We see the same issues in media and information; disinformation has replaced disintermediation as the word of the day, and many consumers aren’t happy with the state of things. People are starting to miss being able to reliably get products and information that has been vetted and provided by an intermediary.

This leads to an important question: Is the pendulum about to swing the other way? Could we be seeing a shift in thinking that leads us back to the era of the intermediary and gives consumers an easier, less-stressful way to buy t-shirts and obtain information?

As you’re planning the direction that your business is going, it’s important to be aware of this shift in thinking and to try to position yourself advantageously. This is a broad question, so to avoid going too macro with it, I find it helpful to think about what you can do to anticipate and adapt to these kinds of changes.

For instance, look back at what your industry was doing in, say, 1950. Then ask yourself, what had changed by the time 1975 came around? What about the year 2000? And what does it look like the situation will be in 2025? These kinds of broad, major shifts take about a generation to move their way through the zeitgeist and become ingrained.

As you ask yourself these questions, also consider where your business fits in the intermediary vs. no-intermediary debate. Personally, I have a foot in each world, with some businesses that can operate great on the 1-1 exchange and others that function as a middleman for consumers. There isn’t a “better” camp to be in, but if you want to be ready for coming changes, then you certainly need to know which approach you’re currently in, decide where you think the trend is going, and plan accordingly.

So, as you contemplate your next strategic move, remember: Whether you're betting on disintermediation or embracing the comeback of the intermediary, just be sure your business isn't caught standing in the middle of the road. Because that's where you get run over.

If you’re lucky, then you probably spend a lot of your time as a leader or executive knowing, more or less, what you should be doing. But that surety of purpose doesn’t mean that things can’t go off the rails. That’s why it’s important to stay attentive and listen to what the world around you is trying to tell you. Personally, I think of it as listening to the jungle drums.

This harkens back to when I was a kid watching Tarzan in black and white on the TV. When something was happening in the show, drums would play to communicate messages across the jungle. I was enamored with this (to my experience) unconventional means of communication, and now I see a striking resemblance between the world of my career and that of the show.

In leadership, you’re often distanced from your customers. After all, your role is to be high up on the hill for a clearer perspective and use that information to guide your people and point them in the right direction. But while this position is useful, it does make it harder to know what’s going on down in the jungle. Hence the utility of the drums.

But the drums are only useful as long as you’re listening for them, and it’s easy to miss their rhythm if you’re focused on other things.

Specifically, you need to be listening for things that don’t fit your normal paradigm. It can be tempting to dismiss outlying data as a fluke — sales were down on a certain day because it was raining. And while yes, sometimes a blip is just a blip, it’s important not to dismiss it out of hand. If you discount any information that doesn’t coincide with what you already expect, you won’t have any opportunity to adjust course as the weather changes.

So how do you follow up on this data to determine if it’s a fluke or a sign of coming change for which you need to plan?

The best places to start looking are with your customer service logs and your people. Do you see changes in the types of issues that you’re hearing? New objections to price or the quality of your products/services? A significant change in the amount of returns that you’re seeing?

Look for new patterns emerging in the data. Individual data points may not be of any great importance, but trends are what the jungle drums are all about. And when you see them, jump on them to figure out why they’re happening and what you need to do to either prevent a disaster or capitalize on this new opportunity.

I don’t want to keep this entirely theoretical, though, so let me show this concept in action with my own experience of trying to listen to the jungle drums.

Many years ago, our media company was having troubles with one particular delivery route where we had a high volume of complaints coming from one end of the street. We talked to the carrier and our other staff about this, but it never seemed to get resolved (or not for long, at least).

After several rounds of back and forth, we discovered that there was disconnect with a particular manager who was having trouble accurately describing the orders from the top. Hence our company’s repeated mistakes with this part of the route.

If I hadn’t listened to the jungle drums, we might never have figured out what the issue was and just written it off as a fluke. But because I took note of the spike in complaints and didn’t let the short-term fixes be the extent of our response, we discovered a breakdown in communication with our delivery crews and were able to circumvent larger problems before they could grow and start impacting other routes and other customers.

That’s a micro example, but a larger version happened in the 2016 presidential election. Famously, Clinton was projected to have a substantial lead in the polls. But of course, that Tuesday evening in November, many people were stunned to find that things hadn’t gone as they’d anticipated.

A lot of them were left wondering: What happened?

Well, the same thing that happened with our delivery route. There were signs that things weren’t going to work out in Clinton’s favor, but many (not all) pollsters were unable or unwilling to listen to the jungle drums of discontent. Whether that was a good or bad day for you, it’s a strong example of the necessity of listening to the world around you.

So go forth and keep an ear open for the jungle drums. And when you do hear them, don’t let yourself ignore them as background noise or random anomalies. Take them seriously, and use the information they give you to put yourself and your enterprise in as advantageous a position as possible.

In this column, I spend a lot of time talking about the things you should be doing. And I’ve gathered a lot of this advice by doing the wrong thing and learning the hard way over the course of the past 30 years. The crux of the issue is that I can give that kind of advice because it’s within the context of, “I did this wrong, but I learned my lesson and you can too.”

This time, I didn’t learn the lesson. Or at least, not as fast as I should have. Early in my career I worked in advertising with retail clients, our sales team would sit around a table and talk about all the things our customers foolishly weren’t doing: they weren’t merchandising correctly, missed advertising opportunities, and were just generally behind the game. If only they’d listened to us, we cried, they’d all be doing so much better!

Well, that was an attitude that I carried to other places in my career, including when I was buying and managing businesses as an executive. I say this to emphasize that I absolutely had the following events coming to me.

I recently jumped into operating a franchise with my son. And we chose a franchise specifically for all the guard rails and guidance that came with it. This gave us a long road map of how to get from our concept to our official opening, and when we picked out a date to launch six months in advance, we felt like we had the situation well in hand with our spreadsheets and weekly plans.

I believe it was Mike Tyson who said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

As we got closer to the grand opening, we started running into more and more problems. While we had very sound, well-researched plans, for some reason that didn’t seem to matter to the permitting department, vendors, the utility company, or literally anybody but us, in fact. 

As the date got closer, we were quickly running out of time to actually get the doors open. At one point, my son and I were so close to getting mad at each other that we just broke down laughing. We were both giving it our all and our staff was doing great work, but there were about eight things that were supposed to be ready by then that just hadn’t come through due to a smattering of logistical issues.

Looking back on it, some of what got in our way around this pinch point was that we just weren’t using the playbook. That’s a little embarrassing because, as I mentioned, we chose a franchise operation specifically to have access to that kind of instruction. But as we got busier and busier, it became easier to skip the extra instructional videos because we knew better and already had so much on our plates.

Now, it seems obvious that doing the extra training would have saved us more time in the long run — you’d be shocked to learn how much faster inventory goes when you know how to do it the right way. And I’m mostly kicking myself because this was a lesson that I already knew.

Throughout my career, I built a record of success by sticking to the playbook. And that didn’t mean just following it myself — it also meant making sure that my team knew the playbook and knew how to use it. Because there are times and places to be innovative or creative and make big, sweeping changes. But when it comes right down to it, almost any business’ core operations can be written down in a playbook and followed. 

The point of this exercise isn’t just to offer some long-overdue apologies to my former clients who were going through something that I didn’t understand at the time. I also want you to consider, do you remember your playbook? And if you do, are your people still following it? I know how things can fall to the wayside as new ideas take up focus, but don’t forget to stick to the core practices that keep your business afloat.

In the end, we had a successful launch that could have been a bit better but was still good. We were able to dig ourselves out of the hole we found ourselves in, but if we’d followed the playbook from the beginning, we wouldn’t have had a hole to dig out of. We’d be on a hill and have a better vantage point to see further and with more clarity. 

Revisit your playbook and make sure that you’re not accidentally getting lost like we did and losing sight of your business’ core processes.

Warren Buffet is one of America’s most renowned entrepreneurs, but his reputation did not make him above reproach from Bill Gates when, apocryphally, Buffet showed him his calendar. Which had nothing on it. Gates was flabbergasted and asked how one of the busiest men on the planet could have a blank calendar, to which Buffet said, “I need time to think.”

Whether or not this conversation is a historical fact or exists as an executive’s fable, it resonated with me when I was a young manager building a career and trying to read everything that I could about business philosophy.

I think back to that story now because, although it had a great impact on me, I’m the king of not taking my own advice. And I realized recently that I’ve let the message of this story get away from me as I’ve been gearing up to launch a startup enterprise.

The experience has been like one giant Russian nesting doll. Every time we touch a topic, that spawns us needing to talk about 20 different sub-topics. So myself and the other key players have been going through this endless cycle of touching one macrotopic and then dealing with the fallout of 20 different microtopics that then need to be addressed.

To illustrate this point, I distinctly remember a marketing conversation leading us to entirely revamp our plans for a rewards and affinity program that led to more research, more meetings, and, in general, more of our time being eaten up.

As I kept running on this endless treadmill of tasks and subtasks, my wife wisely asked, “Are you getting too close to this stuff?” I, ever the Proud Mary, responded that no I was not getting too close to things and that she should leave me to keep churning over everything.

Like I said, the king of not taking my own advice.

Thankfully, despite my protests to the contrary, I did take my wife’s implication to heart and started considering that maybe I needed to step back for a minute. Normally that could mean anything from taking a walk to the pizza place that I like or even just going somewhere without my phone on me, but in this instance it meant taking a long weekend (yes it was my wife’s idea, yes I brought her along, and yes, of course, she was right to suggest it).

So in a panic, I resolved as much as I could; made sure that everyone was pointed in the right direction; cleared my whiteboards with one big, tortuous swing of my arm; and then I left for my long weekend so that I couldn’t stare longingly at said whiteboard and think of what to do next.

Upon my return, I found that clarity had come into my office while I’d been away. Instead of recreating the nitpicky list of every little thing that I’d wiped away, this time I filled my whiteboard with macro concerns and dropped the micros.

In putting the macros in the right boxes, I was able to avoid that feeling of pressure that comes with trying to implement processes today that might pay off four years in the future. Instead, I could take the more logical approach of looking at how far we could get today and letting tomorrow take care of itself.

With this new outlook, I was able to go back to the team and discuss next steps, and I think we all felt better with plans in hand that focused more on immediacy. Instead of getting churned up in the details, taking the time to think and reset paid off, and all of us were vastly more productive because I was able to provide better leadership with a clearer head.

So my question to you, and I always love receiving feedback from this column, is how do you find your way to step back?

Stepping back doesn’t have to only coincide with a startup environment or a big launch. In fact, it’s just as valuable (if not more so) when you can gain perspective on day-to-day operations. I shared this story about a launch as a proof of concept, but how do you find time to breathe in the daily run of things?

Are you oversubscribed and overscheduled like Bill Gates would want for an executive, or do you take a more Buffetonian approach and keep a manageable calendar that gives you time to go kayaking on the weekends?

I want to hear, because all of us, at every level of leadership, need to understand that at the end of the day, our job is perspective. And if we aren’t making sure that we have clear perspectives, then we can’t pass that down to the people we’re meant to be leading.

In my career, I’ve closely examined many different types of organizations working in different areas. But for all the many differences I see in business perspectives and how an organization is run, I find that businesses tend to fall into one of two categories: yesterday businesses or tomorrow businesses.

A yesterday business falls back on “well this is how we’ve always done it, so this is how we should continue doing it”. And for a lot of American history, this strategy has been enough for plenty of businesses to succeed.

But in the last 20 years, we’ve seen a growing class of disruptors who take the old model and find a way to change it for tomorrow. Think of how money-transferring services like PayPal have all but replaced paper checks as an example.

When discussing this dichotomy, it can be easy to think that the default is that everyone should be a tomorrow type of business. But at present, the old school and the new school are coexisting more or less peacefully in most sectors. 

That likely won’t last forever, but if you’re not worried about what could change in 20 years, then you may not have a reason to be concerned about looking into the distant future.

I recently saw an example of this dichotomy when my most recent car lease ended. Yes, every financial advisor I know hates my three-year leasing cycle, and no, I do not plan to change it, so please be kind, readers who work in finance.

In my leasing cycle, I’ve seriously considered going electric many times, but I felt that the industry needed more time to mature. So when my lease ended, I decided to look at Tesla.

This experience was completely at odds with every car-buying experience I have ever had in my life. I’m used to the poorly lit car dealership where they try to upsell you on packages, nudge you into something else, and then send you home so you can come back in a couple of days to sign a mountain of paperwork.

My Tesla experience barely involved talking to other human beings. It started by going on their website to schedule a test drive, putting in my driver’s license information, and selecting my location (depending on where you live, they’ll even bring it to you).

When I arrived for my appointment, I didn’t even need to show my ID. Instead, they gave me a card to start the car, and away I went because the car had GPS and they already knew who I was.

So I went out to the lot, found the car that I’d scheduled a drive for, and I was off. I came back and told them I was interested and wanted to hear what they had for sale. The associate told me that they had no idea what was currently available, so my best bet was to check the app.

Thus ended the human interaction portion of buying a Tesla. I went on the app, picked a car that I liked, and was pleasantly surprised to find that everything was simple and clean without any “comfort packages” or other upselling opportunities.

While I could’ve had it delivered to my door, I decided to go to the service center to pick up my new Tesla. After giving them my credit card number and some basic leasing and insurance information, I was all set to pick up my new car.

The point of all of this isn’t to endorse Tesla or anyone in particular. It isn’t even to say that you should get a fancy app or a shinier product. 

The point is that Tesla has combined a shiny new product with an entirely new experience that makes you feel like you’re shopping in the space age fantasy of what the future will be like. 

After all, Tesla is far from the only manufacturer of electric cars. But the reason they stand out, and why they’re undeniably a forward-looking business, is that while other organizations are selling new products the old way, Tesla has invented a completely new way to sell that matches their futuristic product.

This is what a tomorrow business does. It takes risks and it isn’t afraid to start over from scratch to be unlike anything else a competitor can offer.

Does this guarantee that Tesla will one day vanquish the old guard? Not necessarily. And I wouldn’t say that every business needs to reinvent the wheel (or the whole car in this case). 

Rather, the message here is that a sufficiently inventive organization can change the game and quickly acquire vast amounts of market share. And whether you ultimately decide to be an inventor or a member of the old guard, it’s important to know which direction your business is heading and what’s on the horizon for your industry.

I was recently helping sort through some old papers, and I came across an unexpected business challenge. The situation itself was not overly complex, but it involved managing personnel, which can be a fraught subject even in the simplest of circumstances. Specifically, it can be hard to balance your desire to do right by the company with your desire to do right by your people.

In going through these old documents, I uncovered an old case study from March of 1969 that, as it so happens, was penned by my father. Going into reading the document, I knew him to have been a fair and even-handed man who had earned a lot of respect from his employees at a major financial institution, so I was very interested to see some of his work.

The situation outlined in the brief is this: There is a woman named Carla Minetti, age 36, whose quality of work has dropped off in the past three to six months. She has been with the institution for 10 years, where she started as a bank teller before working her way to a middle management position where she managed the new tellers, most of whom were younger, married women. Carla, the brief notes, is not married.

The report also stated that Carla’s managers had posited that the cause of the drop-off in productivity could be attributed to Carla’s resentment at managing younger, married women who were more successful (one assumes that these women were “more successful” because they were married with children). 

I am proud to say that my father, at least, did not default to the above sexist assumptions. Rather, he outlined a better path to resolving the issue.

My father suggested that, since Carla had been a great employee for a decade, the company ought to make a significant effort to help her. To this end, he recommended having an interview with Carla and discussing her mental wellbeing and any potential new developments in her personal life.

From there, if it looked like a medical issue (of the physical or psychological varieties) was the cause of this new behavior, the company could explore its options with finding help for Carla so that she could go back to being the great employee that she had been.

Curiously, nobody, not even my father, suggested just talking with Carla and asking her what the issue was, and there was certainly no evidence that the manager with misogynistic assumptions did this either, which I found surprising and concerning in equal measure.

What I found reassuring, however, was the spirit behind these deliberations. At the end of the day, the company wanted to get help for their employee and resolve whatever issue she was dealing with. Yes, many parts of this could have been handled better, and the prevailing sexism of the time does color a lot of the conversation. Regardless, I can appreciate the spirit of wanting to support your people.

And as I look around today, I fear that I see less and less of that. I think that if this same situation were to happen today, yes, there would (hopefully) be fewer assumptions about a 36-year-old woman’s resentment of her married staff, but would there have even been a conversation at all? 

I think that now, the culture is more focused on fixing the issue without having any uncomfortable conversations that could end up as fodder in a discrimination lawsuit. In this sense, I found my father’s recommendations refreshing, and it made me appreciative of the many places I’ve worked where management is done largely via informal conversations.

So while the norm right now may be to fire people with sticky issues so you can get a new body in place and move on, I think there’s value in investing time and resources into taking care of your people—especially the people who have been with your company for a long time. 

In this way, while the social mores were starkly different at the time, I think that this report from 1969 has a lot of insight into how we should be approaching managing today.

As we wrap up 2023, many of us are looking forward to what we can expect in 2024. And given the lack of any credible psychics (my deepest apologies to the Long Island Medium), I’ve decided to gaze into my own crystal ball to see if I can glimpse anything coming our way next year. And after employing all of my divinatory prowess, I’ve got three predictions for 2024 that you’ll want to hear.

I think that, on the whole, we won’t see huge changes in 2024. But when I say that, I don’t at all mean to imply that next year is going to be stagnant. Rather, I think that there are going to be a lot of small changes that don’t lead to huge, obvious changes immediately. Think of a duck constantly kicking underwater without disturbing the surface.

After a year of digesting what expensive money looks like after 20 years of cheap money is certainly going to impact how many huge risks people take, which is why I think we’ll see more small, subtle tweaks than total game changers. 

Similarly, most people are content where they are, so we’ll probably see less job hopping in 2024. Most departments probably won’t get huge additions, but it seems like few will be totally cut in 2024, either. As I said, small, gradual changes are what I see coming in 2024.

That means that you can probably keep any pricing gains you took, but you are not getting more. Most consumer-facing businesses aren’t going to see growth as people adjust to the new normal of pricing, but inflation is also slowing down, so I’d expect people to find a new way to make ends meet without massive disruptions.

That covers macro trend prediction, but there’s one thing that I want to talk about in particular, partially because everybody wants to talk about it: AI.

I think that AI will do in 2024 exactly what it did in 2023. But if you think that AI suddenly exploded in terms of development this year, then you and I are seeing different things.

While AI got a lot of hype this year, the truth is that many of us have been using chatbots and servicebots for years. So while the conversation has centered around these hot new developments, the truth is that it has mostly been slow progression over the course of years.

And I think that will keep happening in 2024. Yes, AI will continue to develop, but it’s not going to be ubiquitous for daily operations in the next 12 months. I’d liken it more to a Blackberry in 2002: Yes, it was better than a fax machine and could give you an edge, but it wasn’t going essential for everyday operations.it takes time for tech to become evenly distributed. 

In that same way, AI is going to keep getting better and becoming a presence in 2024, but I think we’re years away from AI advancing enough to become a must-have.

My final prediction is about the job market in 2024. After a lot of relocation and moving up in the past year, a lot of people have found themselves in much better positions than they started with in 2023. People are making more than they did at the start of the year, so I’d expect to see less mobility in 2024’s job market.

This goes both ways, though. Employees won’t want to move from their new positions, and employers probably won’t want huge staffing changes in a period when the consumer is figuring out how to afford their regular products and services. 

I’d also expect to see more people in the office in 2024. Work-from-home levels are undoubtedly higher than they were pre-pandemic, and I don’t see that changing, but a lot of employers that swore they’d stay remote have started ordering people back into the office. 

Overall, I think that in a year where there are a lot of small, not-immediately-noticeable changes, the best thing you can do is keep yourself informed. Try to look for diverse perspectives so you can get an idea of the whole picture in the moment instead of waiting until the event is in the rearview to uncover some clarity.

For me, I’m a mainstream guy so that means subscriptions to the WSJ and the NYT. That roughly balances out to a moderate view, which I supplement with a variety of digital-only sources. Regulars include Quartz and Medium. 

However you do it, getting credible, balanced information is the best thing you could do to make it through 2024 in a good position. Because while there likely won’t be sweeping changes, staying on top of what’s happening can help you see the small changes that will end up making a big difference further down the line.

How often do you wake up and think, “Crap, I have so much to do that there’s no way I’m going to get it all done today”? If you’re like me, then you have some variation of this thought pretty much every day. But what if there’s a better question that you should be asking?

What aren’t you going to get done today? It’s a fun twist on the classic question, and if you’re a decision-maker in an organization or a solo venture, then it’s probably one that you should be asking yourself more often.

If you’re a manager, executive, solo entrepreneur, etc., then it’s generally pretty easy to see how the things you do make money. This is because you’re close to the top, so your work is amplified through others (e.g., vendors or marketers) and it becomes easy to see your efforts come back through sales.

This can make it tempting to want to do everything all at once. But the truth is that you have to decide which things you can and can’t work on, and sadly, not all of the things you work on will directly make you money. Paying your employees does not directly generate revenue, but it’s still probably in your business’ best interest to make sure that gets done.

Trying to balance all the things I have to get done (both those that do and don’t directly generate revenue) has put me into an odd position recently. I come with a long history as an executive in a corporation that bought and sold businesses, and my experience has been that those always required a lot of work, but I had a team to share a lot of the burden.

Now, as I’m taking on an acquisition for the family business, things are very different. Starting up this new franchise is a family venture, which naturally means that a lot of the legwork with getting things started falls on me. Which, as you might imagine, is extremely different from the days when I could wave my hand and send a task down the line to someone.

Because now I’m “someone.”

So with all of this on my plate, I’ve retreated to my happy place, which is my whiteboard. And for a while, that was enough to keep me sane and functional. But one day last week, I was staring at my whiteboard and realized that I no longer understood what anything I’d written down meant.

I had a list of things to do that day and the next, one corner with urgent items, another corner of responses that I was waiting on, and wedged in just about everywhere else were tasks that had come up or that I’d been asked to look at with a color-coding system that I could no longer understand.

In other words, my world was on fire.

And it wasn’t on fire because of the things I had to do—at least not only because of them. It was on fire because I’d decided that everything was an urgent item that couldn’t wait. As I stared at my whiteboard, which looked like it should’ve been hung in a padded room, I realized that I was never going to get this all done right then, and that was going to have to be okay.

This is where we circle back to you, my esteemed reader. Before you get to the brink of madness like I did, you need to consider how much you can realistically get done in a day and then decide which tasks you’ll take on that generate revenue, and which tasks you’ll handle that keep your business running.

Where does that process start for you? For me, it started with wiping my whiteboard clear (after taking a picture to make sure I didn’t lose any items), then remaking my lists first with only the items that generate revenue, then anything that would cause the organization to explode tomorrow. The rest…it just went away for now.

I remember this time as a keen mind methodically assessing and unraveling problems. My wife remembers this time as a lot of cursing, bitter mumbling, and more than one instance of throwing things.

Regardless, the whiteboard is now back in order, and when I wake up, I decide what things I won’t be working on that day. My wife remains dubious as to how long I’ll be able to keep this up, but for the moment, I’m maintaining my sanity by charting my day according to what I won’t get done, and if you’re struggling to figure out how you’ll get everything done, then I’d recommend that you, like me, start making peace with the fact that you simply won’t.

We live in a world of disruption. It seems like everyone has a billion-dollar idea and they’re starting companies with the certainty that their idea is going to be the one to disrupt their industry. The next Facebook, the next iPhone, the next sliced bread!

Frankly, it gives me a headache.

All of the headlines are about disruption and innovation and change, but from where I’m sitting, most corners of the world seem to be continuing on with business as usual. Instead of industry-wide disruption, I see incremental changes in businesses taking things day by day and trying to improve.

As excited as I am to read the hate mail coming my way, hear me out. I’m not saying that change is bad or that change never happens. I’m keenly aware that change is the only constant in the human condition, and breakthrough ideas do happen that change the world forever.

But the truth is that most startups don’t change the world. For every breakthrough startup that changes the world of business and commerce as we know it, there are a million more that try just as hard and never get anywhere. 

So yes, if you’re the next Bill Gates, by all means, innovate to your heart’s content. But for the rest of us mere mortals, we’d be better served by staying in our lanes and trying to make an impact where we are.

If you’ve been reading this column for any length of time, you probably know that I started my career as an executive in the media business, and I was part of the vanguard as legacy media wrestled with innovations for the future. 

And let me tell you, we innovated. We set up research departments to find new ways to keep up with digital media, developed new divisions, and partnered with many institutes of higher learning to research new ways that we could innovate. 

At the time, our focus was on finding ways for legacy media to evolve into the next big thing, something that would be sustainable through all the changes that the world was going through.

But as I look back on that carnage with the advantage of hindsight, I’m not sure any of our desperation did anything to better position traditional media in the digital age. Why? Because we wanted so badly to be the next disruptors, the next people to change the game, that we forgot to stay in our lane.

So, for the sake of the metaphor, let’s say you’re on a three-lane highway. You’re stuck in the slow lane, but in the leftmost lane you can see all the new Ferraris and Audis zooming past you. You naturally want to be in the fastest lane, so you get over into the left lane.

The only problem? You’re driving a 1997 Lexus. And nothing good is going to happen if you hop into that lane and pretend that you’re driving a Porsche.

But that doesn’t mean you have to stay stuck where you are, either. If you want to go faster, hop into the middle lane and pass the driver ahead of you, then get back into your lane.

In more direct terms, instead of trying to be something that you’re not, you’d be better off trying to be the best version of what you are.

As I look at the state of traditional media today, I can’t say that all those hours of trying to innovate really helped anything. Newspapers, radio, broadcast television—none of them ever found a way to compete with the hot new thing, but all of them wasted millions of dollars fervently trying to.

In trying to be something that they weren’t, legacy media companies were chasing that dream of riding in the fast lane. And when that didn’t materialize, because it never could have, they had already wasted a lot of time and resources on a fantasy.

The moral of this story isn’t that innovation is always a bad idea. But you don’t want to be innovating while you’re already driving in that slow lane. Instead, you want to innovate when you’re off the highway and can build or buy something that can actually keep up with the fastest cars on the road.

But if you’re trying to fix up your old clunker while also driving it, at best you might slow down the Ferraris and ruin the fast lane for everyone. At worst, you’re going to get into an accident, and then you might not even have your old Lexus to get you around.

FOMO, or the fear of missing out, is a powerful thing. It’s so powerful, in fact, that learning to utilize it is the cornerstone of every Sales 101 course. And it works for one very simple reason—fear is an extremely potent motivator.

As human beings, fear is a fact of existence and has been since before our ancestors were even walking upright. In a more primitive setting, fear of the sabertooth tiger can keep you from being eaten and fear of poison keeps you from eating something you shouldn’t. In other words, being afraid keeps you safe and protected.

But fear is an inherently defensive feeling. It can get you to a place to hunker down and weather the storm, but staying safe and growing are two very different things. And in business, these two actions may even be mutually exclusive at times.

Fear may have worked as a motivator to keep our ancestors out of the jaws of predators, but it’s not half as effective in the workplace. And strong fears at work come in many forms, whether that’s fear of the boss, fear of doing the wrong thing, or fear of taking a risk for a few examples.

This doesn’t just apply to people at the bottom rung of the organizational ladder, either. Whether you’re in middle management, the CEO, or a solopreneur, fear can limit your options and send you down specific, unpleasant paths.  

I know because I’ve seen it.

Early in my career, I ended up in a culture that was dominated by the presence of someone dead-set on instilling fear. When someone stepped even a toe out of line, the response was always that person’s yelling, their censure, and an overall slew of unpleasantness. 

And for a while, I was able to hunker down and handle it. My work got done, and I got through the day by mentally calculating how to follow the rulebook and avoid bringing any penalties on myself by doing something new. 

My motivations were entirely rooted in fear, which precluded me from trying to find new ways to grow my role or help the company. And if that sounds both unhealthy and unproductive, that’s only because it was extremely unhealthy and unproductive.

I was able to handle the situation all right—after all, getting through the day isn’t hard when you know what buttons not to press. But I didn’t like coming to work, and I, like a lot of my talented coworkers, quickly found a way to leave on my own terms. For the rest of the staff, they decided to hunker down.

That organization collapsed not long after a lot of us left, and I firmly believe that the leadership’s culture of fear had everything to do with that. The leader that everyone feared was himself so afraid of mistakes that he made it impossible for any growth to happen within the organization. And this led to its inevitable end—a stagnate, failing business.

As you look at your motivators, ask yourself this question: Am I playing to win, or am I playing not to lose? My fear-driven boss was playing not to lose, so the business never had any wins to keep it going. 

As you’re examining your motivators, try to identify sources of fear. Maybe that’s fear of conflict at work, fear of being fired, or even fear that your spouse isn’t happy with your hours or how much money you’re bringing home. 

Don’t just stop at your own motivation, though. What about your company as a whole? Does the sales team fear getting yelled at? Or do they feel supported to try new things and stretch their talents to get the best results?

What about your directors? Are they motivated to color in the lines so they don’t get in trouble with the board, or are they empowered to take risks and try to create new growth for the organization?

After I left that culture of fear, I found a new culture of empowerment. And eventually I learned that making a mistake didn’t have to be like stepping on a landmine, that instead of resulting in carnage, mistakes could be resolved with honest discussions about how to make better decisions in the future. 

I started to flourish in that role, I was happy to be in the organization, and I brought in better results because I wasn’t trying to keep my head down and avoid the sabertooth. And in my career today, I work hard to enable others to take those same risks in their work.

If you’re seeing a lot of fear in your workplace, then it may be time to make some large changes. Like I said, fear is always going to be a part of being human. But it shouldn’t be the primary motivator for yourself or your organization. Because if those are the only management tools being used, then the only possible outcome is collapse.

In many organizations, and certainly within organizations of size, a role tends to arise out of necessity: the fix-it guy. (Author’s note: For our purposes, “fix-it guy” is a gender-neutral term that can refer to an individual of any gender who is routinely called upon to save the day.)

This person has a particular talent for getting things done without planning. So when a problem suddenly arises or things get stuck, they’re the one that everyone rushes to. 

Some people make entire careers off fulfilling this role—but, in reflecting on my own role in several organizations, I’m asking myself if the fix-it guy is actually good for the overall health of an organization.

Here’s the source of my doubt: When things suddenly fall into the lap of the fix-it guy, most people just thank their lucky stars that someone was there to catch the pieces. But what they tend to overlook is examining how things got to the point where they needed a fix-it guy in the first place.

In my career as an executive, I’ve found myself in the role of the fixer more often than I’d like to admit. It usually happens like this: There’s a product launch or a new opportunity that I know is coming down the pipe. But instead of mobilizing the organization to get resources ready, I get wrapped up in other projects. Then, when that opportunity or problem finally comes to a crisis point, I find that I’m the only one with the ability to handle it on short notice.

This happens a lot in a venture where I’m providing some operational support. The executive runs the organization and does a great job and has assembled a team of talented, driven professionals. But every now and then they'll come across an issue, and it’s easy to say, “Doug, can you take this?”

And let me be clear; they are not the guilty party in this. At least as often, I’ll find myself going to them and saying, “I know this thing is coming up and we should have talked about this, but now it’s too late and I have to pull a rabbit out of a hat.”

Why do I let it get that far? Well, to be honest, I have a lot of hats as a result of a long career, and finding rabbits in them can be easier than mobilizing the entire organization. But lately, I’ve started to doubt this way of operating. Because yes, I’m solving problems for the organization, but I’m not helping to develop any skills or resiliencies for the organization as a whole.

Healthy organizations can respond to situations through established processes and planning—not through crisis management every few weeks. And as I write this, I’m currently on deadline for two things that I should’ve worked on last week, but I kicked the can down the road because I knew I’d be able to pull it off.

This is the crux of what I’m talking about. Does what I’m doing work? Sure, the job will get done. But it’s not contributing to the health of the ventures that I’m trying to grow. And the more I think about it, the more I’m starting to suspect that I’m actually doing a disservice to these groups by fixing disasters maximizing potential opportunities instead of helping them build processes to address these in the proper course.

So what should you do instead? I challenge you to identify when you or your organization’s fix-it guy is being called into action. When you see that happen, don’t let one person fix it all. Instead, try something like, “I know we’re running late, but how can we peel this apart and deal with it in a way that’s not so reactive?”

If you can, try to enlist help from other people so it doesn’t all end up on one person’s shoulders. But you should expect to coach people on how they can help, especially at first. This coaching doesn’t have to be in-depth but give people a lead-in on how they can contribute. Try things like, “Hey Kim, there are three parts to this thing coming up, could you help me with this part?”

For myself, I need to remember that if I want to help this enterprise, then I should help the organization grow its own strengths instead of letting it rely on my shelf full of magic answer books. 

That said, I really am under tight deadlines for two different projects. So I’ve committed myself to dissecting one of the issues in a team meeting and getting other people to help, even if that means that the final product is a little late.

The other one? I’m going to have a late night and pull a rabbit out of a hat. Recovery isn’t always linear, so do as I say and not as I do!

Many moons ago, I was a salesman new to the media world. I was young, hopeful, and indisputably did not know what I was doing. At another time we can get into the journey of how I got my position without being strictly qualified, but one way or another I was there, and I had to figure out how to make it work.

As part of trying to figure out how to make the position work and not lose the paycheck that I very much needed, I happened to sit through a seminar with a passionate speaker who shared their skillset, and I still remember that feeling of the world suddenly opening up to me.

Out of nowhere, the things that old salespeople told me off the cuff and without context were being explained as a process and tools that I could use in my career, instead of vague recommendations steeped in wit and a certain glib nature. 

And one of the most helpful things I learned in that seminar, although I didn’t fully appreciate it at the time, was something you’ve certainly heard dozens of times: time is money.

Undeniably, you’ve heard the concept before. But for me, hearing it and understanding it were different things. Before, I used to think that it simply meant, “Do things faster, go go go!” But it wasn’t until that seminar that I started to think of time as an asset that I could deploy to my advantage. 

To get us thinking about this old phrase in new ways, the speaker wrote on the chalkboard (I’m dating myself, I know), “Time is…” and prompted all of us to fill in ways that time is like money. After some ubiquitous dead stares, we started giving suggestions: Time is like money because you can spend it, save it, invest it, waste it, etc. We riffed for a while, but at the end one thing was clear: Time and money are both fungible assets.

Of course, being young and in the early days of my career, I didn’t incorporate this message as well as I could have, and I proceeded to create a work style that centered around trying to get too much done in too little time. And only as a manager did I realize that I wasn’t treating my time like it was my money.

As a manager, you have to make a balance between the things that need to get done and the time available to you. So I started looking at my time: Was I spending it wisely? Or was I wasting this resource on things that other people could have been doing? And that kind of examination is absolutely crucial to getting the most value out of your time.

This came up recently in working with an executive who has had a lot of success in growing their organization. A lot of success, in fact—about 50% growth in the last few years, largely driven by this individual’s zeal and enthusiasm.

As they’ve been adding people to their small-but-growing organization, the executive hasn’t really changed their routine to account for these new circumstances. In other words, the organization has acquired a lot of new resources, but those resources aren’t coming together cohesively because the executive self-selects what they do and when they do it.

I’m still working with this executive, and we recently started to talk about where, why, and how they’re spending their time. A lot of that time is spent communicating with clients, something that this person loves to do, but probably isn’t the wisest use of time if their goal is to keep growing their organization.

I want to be clear—the executive didn’t have to change anything, in the same way that nobody can stop you from spending your money on lottery tickets or expensive cars. But we talked about their options, and it took an investment conversation for them to decide if they wanted to spend their time in a client-facing position or if they want to spend their time growing their business.

Ultimately, this executive decided that their priority was in growing the organization. In our conversation, we identified ways that they could secure their personal time and more wisely invest their time at work into projects and processes that will advance the organization. 

We’re still working on it, but I have every confidence that we’ll be able to keep finding ways for them to invest their time in a way that’s getting them closer to the goals that they want to reach. And while I don’t have a worksheet or a guided activity for you, I’d encourage you to think of how you’re using your time.

So, how’s your investment working out?

Everyone has their own organizational system—it’s all but impossible to get by without one. But just because you have a system doesn’t mean you have the right system for you. And if you are not focused, you can be sure your team is not either.

As someone over 50, I can confidently say that I had very different organizational needs when I first entered the working world. At the time, my only tool was a calendar book, and that was all I needed to make notes on my sales route.

When I advanced to a management position, my little calendar book wasn’t enough anymore, so I switched to the entry-level Day-Timer system. Through time it became the backbone of my work. And as I grew in responsibilities, they always seemed to offer another insert or layout that fit. 

And a Day-Timer notebook may not be the cutting edge anymore, but the importance of updating how you manage yourself and your time has not changed.

Now, we’re at a time when change is the norm for any professional. People don’t just regularly switch jobs—they now switch entire careers, often several times throughout their lives. Where once you might have started at a company and had the same responsibilities for decades, now shifting roles and responsibilities are the expectation.

And while I have made changes to how I organize myself throughout my career, I realized something in preparing for this column: I’ve never proactively made these changes. They’ve always been lagging indicators in response to my old system failing.

The cycle seemed to work like this: I would eventually find myself frustrated by my lack of control over what I needed to manage (personal responsibilities, team relations, projects, etc.). Once I finally realized what the problem was, I’d take the time to reorganize my files or update my management tracking system du jour, then I’d enjoy my new efficiency until I got another change in my responsibilities.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

I did this with every new job, because even if the role was similar, the day-to-day responsibilities always changed. I made the move to full digital during the Palm Pilot era and have found a variety of analog/digital blends that seem to be the right balance over the years. But it continues to be a mystery to me when my systems stop responding to my needs.

I’m a business owner and a consultant, so I eternally stand on shifting sands. And I recently had an episode where suddenly my organizational system wasn’t flowing the way that it used to. So I got frustrated, cleared my whiteboards, stripped my to-do lists, turned to a new page in my legal pad, and even printed out my digital notes so I could figure out where I’d gotten off track.

Then I realized the issue: A couple of months ago we had sold a business that required a lot of time and attention from me. And while it took me some time to notice, I eventually realized my organizational system had centered around that business for the last few years.

It had taken up prime real estate on my whiteboard, and it had lived at the top of my digital to-do list. And now I had to figure out where I was going to re-invest that time.

As I was rethinking where my time needed to go, I thought in terms of percentages: 20% goes to X, 40% to Y, etc. And I was struck by the fact that we’d sold the business in part to pursue a new venture, but I hadn’t done any work toward that goal in the past two months. So a crucial part of restructuring my management system was allocating time for this essential task that simply hadn’t fit into my old structure.

For now, my new system seems to suit my needs very well. My whiteboard setup makes sense again, my digital systems flow the way they’re meant to, and my calendar allocates my time to the proper tasks and projects.

But sooner or later, I’ll need to change it again, and so will you. And I’d encourage you to learn from my mistakes and change your management system proactively, not reactively.

Don’t think that your upgrades have to be high-tech, either. They certainly can be, but I know a group who recently updated their management system to include a series of daily whiteboard calendars around the office, and it’s worked wonderfully for them.

On the other side of that coin, if you decide to try a high-tech solution, don’t just stop at paying for it. There are a thousand things that could help reinvent your system, but they’re only worth the price tag if you commit to using them, even at the start when the learning curve feels high.

Ultimately, it’s about whether your current system is frustrating you or making you successful. And if it’s the former, then you want to make changes now.

No matter what industry you’re in, at least part of your organization’s core function is to communicate information to your target audience. Whether that’s telling them how to make good dietary decisions or providing information on your latest sale, you are usually seeking a reaction. Because if you don’t understand their perspective, you are going to screw it up.

Recently I’ve been working with two organizations in planning for their annual conferences. One of the companies just had theirs, and it was a success. And it’s not hard to identify why: They started planning nine months ago by starting with broad things like who would come and what they would want to learn. Only after defining these aspects did they move inward to more granular aspects of planning.

These more detailed plans included an agenda, social events, and by far most importantly, the reasons why someone in their audience would want to go to the event. In this process, they reasoned that people would come to develop their skills, network, and share in some camaraderie with others in their field. 

Once they knew why someone would want to come, they made sure to push that message in their marketing. They then monitored the results, pivoted slightly in response, and then it was just wash, rinse, and repeat. At the end of it all, they had constructed a successful conference.

This is markedly different from the approach that the other organization took in planning their annual conference.

Instead of identifying why their audience might want to come to the conference, this organization’s message centered around simple messages like “You should come!” or, if they were feeling more verbose, “You should come because the bosses will be there and they say it’s important!”

It’s not exactly “We shall fight on the beaches,” is it?

I was engaged to help because the organizers were coming down to the wire and they’d gotten little engagement from their audience on this and even fewer sign-ups for their conference. Until that point, the only thing they’d tried was saying the message louder and in more places, but the core information had been unchanged.

When we started talking about what could be done to get more people to sign up for their conference, I used the first group’s example and suggested creating a list of value-adds that the conference will create for attendees. Because even the most banal frat party has the core message of, “Hey, we’ve got booze, and it’s free!”

At the start, I asked why someone would want to come to the conference, and the organizer said, “Well, because it’s good for them.” Good for them like broccoli and eight hours of sleep? That’s not what entices people. I don’t doubt that it’s true, but “it’s good for you” didn’t work when your parents wanted you to finish your Brussels sprouts, and it’s not going to work now.

After working through it, we came up with a much clearer value proposition, that essentially boiled down to:

“You are a part of this organization for reasons A, B, and C. Well if you come to the event, we’re going to show you how to do A better! The conference will also have people who succeeded in B to share their stories, and we’ll have experts in C there to talk with you about how you can make C happen for you.”

We retargeted all of the people who’d gotten the old messaging and sent them our new, value-oriented information. And to be honest with you, I’m not sure how much of a difference this is going to make.

At the time of writing, this all happened a few days ago, and the clock is ticking. So the time crunch couldn’t be much tighter, and even with them pushing this new messaging out across their various marketing channels, I’m not sure what the results will be. It’s hard to convince someone to give up several days of their life for your conference, and it’s even more challenging on short notice.

I’d encourage you to get ahead of your messaging so you’re not put in this sort of uncomfortable situation. A good place to start is to be aware of the gap between what you care about and what your audience cares about. 

If you’re a true believer in your organization, then you already know why your product/service/event is so special and fantastic, so that can feel old-hat to you. As an organizer, you might want to brag about something new, like how great and accommodating the hotel staff are!

That’s nice, but nobody has ever gone to a conference for the polite hotel staff.

The question to answer, from the perspective of your audience on anything you want to sell is always, “What’s in it for me?” Focus on spreading the message of how your offering is going to improve the lives of your target. Do that, and do it from the beginning, and you’ll be in a much stronger position to meet your goals.

Throughout literature, television, and nearly any other form of media, there’s a recurring trope of the jezebel: the homewrecker, the other woman, the person who steps in and ruins a happy relationship.

Whether this threat is the eponymous Jolene from Dolly Parton’s hit song or Jacob Black of Twilight fame, you’ve certainly seen examples of someone coming in and threatening an existing relationship.

I’d posit that this role also exists in the workplace. And, if I may be so bold, I’d also go so far as to suggest that you should be filling this role, because there is a lot to be gained from becoming “the other job.”

Right now, we are well past full employment, and most businesses are scrambling to hire more people. There are, of course, high-profile instances of tech giants implementing mass layoffs, but these noteworthy examples are by far the minority. Indeed is still bursting at the seams with job listings in most industries, and employers are desperately seeking new talent.

If the current situation is challenging for employers, it’s certainly no easier for working class individuals. At present, 62% of Americans in the workforce are living paycheck to paycheck. Blame that on the high cost of living, wage stagnation, or whatever else you like, but the reality is that more than half of the American workforce are in a pretty desperate situation. 

I’m not just telling you this to tug on your heartstrings. I’m telling you this because a lot of your employees are probably in the same position, and if you’re not careful, there exists the potential for “the other job” to step in and offer them something better.

You see, this is the problem with the legend of the other woman (or man, or person). The myth is that two people are in this perfectly content relationship, then a temptress steps in and ruins everything.

And it’s just that: a myth.

The truth is that stable, happy relationships don’t have anything to fear from outside intruders. Put simply, you can’t sell to someone who doesn’t want to buy. Similarly, employees who are happy with their current employers aren’t likely to be tempted into another position.

So how do you make sure you don’t lose your people to a new, more appealing offer? Simple. You become the other job. Instead of the boring person at home, you become the mistress.

If you have part-time workers who have another, “main” job, start courting them. Make sure they have a good wage and a pleasant work environment. If they need you to be flexible around their main position’s hours, then happily work around that schedule and impress them with how fair and reasonable you are.

The goal here is to slowly let your employees realize you’re the more appealing employer. Then, as time passes and you prove you’re stable and reliable, maybe your part-time employees become full-time hires.

For the last several years, I’ve worked with a company that has done this brilliantly. Routinely, they bring people in as part-time help and then slowly become their main employer. And honestly, the strangest thing about this practice is that it’s not particularly difficult.

This is certainly not the highest paying job out there. But management makes sure it’s a nice place to work, that there’s a culture of empowerment amongst employees, and that each employee has a variety of duties and responsibilities so they feel like they’re growing and gaining valuable skills.

Once you’ve made a good place to work, all you have to do is start offering some extra hours. People don’t usually go from 20 hours to 40 right away, however slowly but surely, this organization becomes the primary employer for most of their staff.

Not sure what you can offer your employees to tempt them out of another role? Ask them. Monetary compensation is always a good place to start—yes, your labor costs are going to increase, but they’ll do that anyway (and worse) if you have to keep hiring and training new people. 

The reality is that we are past full employment. So if you want to stay competitive on the job market, it’s time to look at better pay, more robust benefits packages, and anything else that will keep your people choosing you as their preferred place to work.

There are a lot of potential employers out there. If you’re not willing to become the other job that steals away employees, then you can bet that somebody else will.

Isaac Newton’s first law of motion is fairly simple: An object at rest will stay at rest until acted upon by an outside force. Similarly, an object in motion will stay in motion until an outside force stops it or changes its direction.

This is a foundational law for our understanding of how matter moves through space, but I find that business operates along similar rules. And just like with Newton’s laws of motion, people tend to overlook the impact of what this means.

Business momentum tends to be a more significant factor in gauging how a business is doing than many people think. Some of what is happening to you may be of your own making, but it’s important to remember that you’re surrounded by outside forces that could change your trajectory.

In Newton’s example, “outside forces” are things like gravity, friction, and wind resistance. But in business, those forces look like a variety of things—some you can control, and some that are completely beyond your power to change.

I’m referring to things like decreasing sales in a product line, consumers choosing Bundle A over Bundle B, drop offs in returning customers, etc. In my world, these are trends, and Doug’s first law of business is that the trend is the trend until an outside force changes it. 

Much like gravity or friction, you often don’t have a lot of direct control over many forces. But you should be able to identify them, because whether you can or not, they’re going to impact your business. And in some cases, a negative force might come from within your organization without you realizing it.

Your business cycle has trends that may be hidden. Finding these often means a broad look at numbers through time and across product lines. I like to find unexpected patterns—recently in working with a subscription-based company, we identified a very unexpected hot spot. Only by laying activations out across five years did we identify a strong seasonal bump in one subscription type, hidden by a weakness in another. It was big and opened the door to create sales pressure where we had never thought it logical before.

This is an example taking note of the areas that I have the power to influence within the “trend” of outside forces. Things like my management style, how we price, quality of our products, and sales pressure.

Once you have a clear understanding of what’s in your control, then you have a path forward to impacting the trends—if that’s something that you want. If, on the other hand, the trend is favorable, that may not be ideal. Just like you can turn around a negative trend, you can also unintentionally mess with a trend that’s working in your favor.

I saw this firsthand when working with a client who wanted to add an extra incentive to a certain product line. Their reasoning made sense: If I give customers another reason to buy this product, our sales will increase.

Except that wasn’t really how things turned out in this case. The trend was that sales had already been perfectly acceptable for this product line. But once an outside force acted upon the trend, it changed directions, and suddenly sales for that product were noticeably decreasing.

The client and I each started doing some research and reaching out to customers, and we both reported the same findings: By increasing the incentive to buy, we cheapened the product in the customers’ perception. 

If we hadn’t taken note of the lower yield in sales on that product line, we would have been completely ignorant to this new trend and thus unable to remedy the situation. As it was, the client had to back off on that product line for a while, until a later date when the market would be more receptive to the higher price point.

For your own research into the trends impacting your business, I recommend starting simple. I like to make a sales graph, print it out, then lay a ruler across it. It’s a little rustic, yes, but it’s also an excellent way to identify sales patterns, allowing me to figure out what trend is causing the results I’m seeing.

As you look back at your sales, try a couple different time periods: several months as well as several years. When you can see clear up- or downswings, try to identify the trend that was working with or against you at that point. Were there a lot of layoffs that year? Was your community going through a financial rough spot when sales dropped off?

These can help you identify the trends that have impacted your business in the past, which is an essential step in figuring out how the next trend is going to hit your bottom line.

Once you have an understanding of the trends that have been working on your business, you can start tackling the issue of changing your behaviors to adjust them. Or, if you’re lucky, you can identify what’s working in your favor and make sure nothing messes with it.

There have been too many instances in my career where I’ve needed to make a decision not because I was sure of the right path forward, but because making decisions is what leaders do.

If you’re in charge, then inevitably your team or organization is going to look to you for direction to help lead them down the correct path. And depending on the talent on your team and the type of organization, that might not take much. For example, when you have a lot of strength above and below you, it’s often much easier to make good choices and set a course you feel confident about.

Other times, the next steps just aren’t as clear. Recently I’ve been working with an organization to help them sort out their data and get some answers on what they should do to manage their relationship with their clients. They had grown, resources were thin and service requests up. At the heart of this debate are two factions within the organization, each advocating for a different path.

One side firmly believes that the only way they can be successful in the future is by shifting how they relate to their constituents. This faction is in favor of increased rules and barriers, but ultimately, if successful, this approach could yield more engagement and relationship development with their audience.

The other group asserts that they’ve already done well, so why change the path? And they’re right, this organization has done well—they’ve made it through the worst of the pandemic with growth that is comfortable, if not aggressive, and things are fine right now. Changing for no reason, they believe, would jeopardize all of the success that they currently enjoy.

When coaching a leader through this kind of difficult decision, I always like to start with the data as a foundation. So I helped them sort through and make sense of their data sets, but after reviewing everything, the results were inconclusive. The data didn’t prove that restructuring would result in any noticeable growth. But at the same time, the numbers didn’t indicate that the trends sustaining them would necessarily be viable in the long term.

In short, no matter what way you turned the data to look at it from a new angle, there just wasn’t a clear directive to be found. So we went back to discussing our findings, and for every good point that one faction raised, there was a “Yeah, but….” response, which is almost impossible to combat.

So we were stuck in a never-ending loop of back and forth discussion. Again.

At stages like this, it’s tempting to table the whole thing and say, “We’ll think about this for a while and come back to it.” But that’s not leadership, and it’s not going to lead to a clearer path forward—it’s just going to create frustration.

Instead, when the data can’t tell you where to go and you’ve exhausted the opinions of your strongest advisors, then your choice is simple: You either find different data, or you find different voices.

Different data is great when it works, but if you’re at an impasse of this size, you’ve probably already done what you can with the numbers. I had, so I opted to look for clearer, less muddled voices.

In situations like these, the voices that I try to find are interested and invested in a good outcome, but not necessarily the people you’d normally turn to. After all, at this stage you’ve already asked the executives and the managers, so now it’s time to look for people who aren’t normally involved in high level decision making.

Go find the people in your organization who work in the front lines, and present the situation to them. It’s imperative that you describe both sides as neutrally as possible: “One group is saying X, one group is saying Y, and I’m interested in making sure we chart the best possible course. What do you think?”

Then find another person who’s not usually a decision-maker and ask them. And do it again. And again. And again. Oftentimes, you’ll see trends emerging in how the people closer to the base of your organization see this issue, and that’s exactly what you need to break through the impasse at the upper levels.

I both did our share of asking around, and in sharing notes, we quickly saw a path emerging where it made more sense to stay the course than shake it up and create new rules. While not pleasing everyone, it was a path and a decision.

The leaders came to a good choice here not by swinging a sword around and cutting the baby in half, but by acquiring enough information to make a sound decision and identify the best course of action. Because that’s what leadership is: taking the steps to make the right choice, even when you feel like it’d be more comfortable to stay seated on the fence.

We’re well into the new year, and by now you certainly have some sense of what you want to accomplish in 2023. I know, because it seems like everyone has been forced to identify some goal, direction, or thought for the year. But setting up a goal, or “strategic objective,”  is not the same thing as executing one. And none of this is a vision— which is where the North Star reference comes in. We are not taking on the vision monster today. 

I’m going to give you some business advice that you probably don’t get a lot: Stop. Stop already! Your business is trying to do too much at once— you’re trying to do too much.

It’s December as I write this, and it’s a mystical time when contracts end, leases expire, and there’s a strong wind of change blowing us into the freshness of a hopeful new year. To see how the people around me are making changes, I’ve been sampling owners and managers in the business world around me.

One of my contacts has wisely identified that their pet project needs to be put down. This was a trial concept that they desperately wanted to work, and as far as I can tell, they did everything right. They gave it a lot of time, support, resources—everything it takes to make a new venture a success.

But after a couple of years of putting in the work and barely scraping by, they came to the realization that this project was never going to be what they wanted it to be. And rather than keep pouring their time and effort into the bottomless hole that this venture would become, they had the foresight and the fortitude to finally pull the plug and move on.

Did it hurt to give up on a project that they cared about and really believed in? Of course it did. But spending another year wasting their time and energy wouldn’t have spared them any pain, and at least now they can look for another project to invest all of those resources into.

Most often, people learn this lesson the hard way. Like someone I know in sales, who spent two months working around the edges on a concept to push into a new sector. He spent hours putting materials together and generally solidifying the foundation for this new material.

I say generally solidifying because he did forget one important step. Early on, I suggested that he take a breath and talk with his market to make sure that there was an interest in this new material, but he insisted that he knew what he was doing and didn’t want to break his momentum.

Unfortunately, the tricky thing about momentum is that it can send you speeding along the road to success just as easily as it can run you straight into a brick wall. That’s why every now and then, it’s a good idea to pump the brakes.

You can probably guess where this is going—he took his new product to market, and every single person he talked to had not a drop of interest in it.

Stopping is often viewed as a failure or, at the very least, a lack of success. But “not winning right this second” and “losing” are very different things. My friend lost two months of work because he could only see his imminent win. And if you don’t want to find yourself in a similar situation, then I’m challenging you to find something to stop working on.

One of my clients was making his plan for 2023, and he saw some dark clouds on the horizon in his business plan. In peeling things back and re-examining his product lines, we discovered a couple of areas that brought in great top lines, but once we factored in the opportunity cost and shared resource allocations, they were clearly losers.

These were beloved products, things that he and the team liked and had done for years, but it was obvious on paper that they weren’t worth what got put into them. And once they realized that they were dragging down the bottom line, my client cut them.

My bet is that you have similar areas that take up a lot of time without bringing in as much revenue as they should. Whether you’re a thousand-person enterprise or a one-person band, there’s probably something that you take to market that isn’t worth what you’re investing into it.

But how do you tell what's worth your time? In most cases, it's simple. Look at what you put into the venture and compare that with what comes back. If this is something that you work on personally, look at how much time you put into it, how much you charge for the product or service, and then compare what each aspect costs relative to the whole.

For those who are risk averse and want to experiment a bit before stopping entirely, that’s fine, start by identifying a project that takes a lot of your time and only generates so so results. Then increase the price or pause delivery. If the market decides it still wants what you offer, it will let you know. If not, then you know it’s time to stop and reinvest that time somewhere else.

Of course, this begs the question, to where do you reallocate that time? I’m so glad you hypothetically asked—that’ll be my topic of conversation next time!

Are you a Hilton person or a Marriott person? I ask because this distinction recently came up while my wife and I were at a family event out of town, and the organizer had booked it at a DoubleTree hotel. 

Upon learning this, I did what a rational, sane person does, and pulled out my phone, did a quick search, and dutifully informed my wife that there was a Marriott Courtyard up the road. To her perplexed “What’s your point?” I replied that I only stayed at Marriotts. I could get points, upgrades, special pillows—I’m a Marriott guy!

Anyone in a committed relationship will know that I spent the weekend at the DoubleTree, and it was fine—although I didn’t get an upgrade or free wifi, just saying.

But upon reflecting on it, I know that this neurosis is not unique to me, despite what my wife’s exasperation would imply. I talk to plenty of people who travel regularly, and we all have our own particular loyalties and affinities for different hotel brands. 

Curiously, though, none of my contacts have that similar kind of “Google the nearest Marriott location” sort of loyalty for airline brands; we all just take the best deal that’s in front of us while paying nominal attention to the airline.

This begs the question: What are hotel chains doing that airlines aren’t, and why does it engender such affinity?

Looking at airlines, it’s possible to get small rewards—maybe an extra inch or two of overhead space, or the promise not to be squished against a bulkhead in the back of the plane by the bathrooms. But at the end of the day, the promise is thin, and there’s not a clear, consistent way to get those rewards except at the very highest levels..

Not so with the big hotel brands. Their promise is that if you get serious about them, in return you’ll get nicer pillows, a free cookie, free internet, and upgrades you can bank on. They deliver on that loyalty every single time you visit them, so you always have a compelling reason to book with them for your next stay. Not a lot of programs deliver that kind of consistent reward for loyalty, but they do and it serves them well.

If you’re running a business, in all likelihood you don’t have the opportunity to give out big rewards like free suite upgrades or first class seating. But there are probably steps you can take to attract repeat customers and establish some brand loyalty. 

Side note: If you’re running a business where you only have one opportunity to sell to a customer ever, then this column isn’t for you, sorry, please come back next month.

But for anyone who has the potential for repeat business, large or small, what benefit does being your repeat customer get people? Your business certainly has some potential, even if it’s not in an industry you’d typically associate with loyalty rewards programs.

A great example is my local fitness center. At first I dismissed their perks program, but then I started getting simple emails showing my points and how to spend these with them. I signed up for some classes and did other things that they liked, and I got a free workout towel—not a cheap piece of terry cloth, but a high quality product that has actually made me go back and purchase other things from them.

They also reward my behaviors that are favorable to them. They’re in an urban area where parking is at a premium, so I can earn a handful of extra points if I walk or bike to their location. This isn’t making or breaking my experience with them, but the small rewards are tangible and nudge me to consider choices that are better for their business as well.

Similarly, you want any type of return business program you offer  to feel like a win for both you and your customer. And if a rewards program doesn’t make sense for your business, what about referrals?

I own a transactional business in the leisure industry, and a lot of our business is from people who live in another state or country, so the opportunity for repeat business is slim. But we have rewards for referrals, which gets us great word of mouth business, and we have plenty of customers who come to us at roughly the same time every year when they’re in the area so we have an offer out to them for a special discount at that time. This nudge helps bring back customers who could easily choose a different provider.

Ask yourself what you can do to give someone that little extra reason to come back. And let me know what you figure out, because all I have is my own little laboratory to try out new offerings, and I’m always curious to hear what people are doing to retain business and engender affinity with their customers.

In my youth, I was a Boy Scout for a number of years, and many may remember the BSA motto is: be prepared. And I’m not sure if my contingency-focus is a result of that upbringing or a natural inclination on my part, but regardless, I certainly grew up to be a belt and suspenders kind of person.

In short, if I can prep for something, I do. And if I can prep twice, so much the better.

That came in handy when the return flight from my vacation was canceled by Hurricane Ian; within a few hours I was able to rebook a flight and lock down some backup tickets over the next several days. And reserve a rental car at a middle ground airport. And a couple hotel rooms along the way. Just in case.

Overkill? Maybe. But if I can lay the groundwork to feel prepared, that effort is more than justified in the resultant drop in my stress levels, even if I never end up needing plans C-Z.

By the time that you’re reading this, Hurricane Ian will likely not be a top-of-mind concern in the national conversation. But even if you weren’t so unfortunate as to face the brunt of this disaster, the storm still had real, horrific impacts for countless people in Florida.

Hundreds of thousands of people fled their homes, uncertain if they’d still be standing when they returned. And for business owners, operations were either shut down or drastically altered by the uncertain path of an oncoming storm.

And like it or not, unexpected situations are going to keep happening. Whether it’s a hurricane, a snowstorm, a tornado, a power outage or a fresh pandemic, the “unexpected” seems to be coming at an increasing rate.

So, with that cheery thought buzzing around in your brain, what can we do about the big, scary unknown? As so often happens in these columns, I make one simple suggestion: Be prepared.

Being prepared for a crisis means being ready and able to continue business operations when the world isn’t cooperating with you. Of course I don’t mean that you should try to tornado-proof your hotdog stand, but if you’re a provider of any key goods or services, in all likelihood your community is going to need you to be functional in the event of a disaster.

So how can you make that happen?

Well, in all likelihood, you already have some amount of experience with this. In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, we all watched in real time as businesses scrambled to figure out their approach and tools for a suddenly remote or ‘distanced’ environment.  We all learned how to continue providing service to customers even as the crisis raged on.

COVID, of course, had a much slower onset period than most natural disasters, but the concept is the same: Figure out how to stay operational when things aren’t going your way.

“But Doug,” you assert, ever-prepared leader that you are, “I already have a plan for what to do in a crisis! I know exactly what I’ll do if I can’t get to my normal place of business, and so do my employees!”

And hey, that’s fantastic. But I would ask you one follow up question. When’s the last time you tested that backup plan?

I ask because I also thought that I had a fool-proof disaster plan in place. And for a majority of issues, I’d say that things went according to plan when we had to shut down for Ian. But what did give us trouble was our password sheet, which did not have the latest password for our ever-updating payroll system.

And while on the one hand we were fortunate to only run into the singular issue, I can confidently say that our staff feels rather strongly about getting paid, particularly when a crisis is happening around them. A client I talked with told me all their contingency plans worked great for them—when they were in their office. When forced to evacuate, they found that several software platforms would not authenticate access from a different Internet provider, and that the phone number used to send the fresh authorization was the one in the recently-vacated office.

Thankfully (after a moment of blind panic, several hours on hold with customer support, and a new heart condition), I was able to get us back into the system, as was the client I talked with.

While we both had “virtualized” our systems by providing the relevant codes and links to the team, things changed. And getting around to updating your ability to access, find, turn on or turn off systems, processes and providers is not top of mind when dealing with the daily demands.

But the lesson here is that even if you feel ready for anything, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you are. Test it once and a while.

It can be tempting to imagine ourselves as immune to disasters because of where we live or how much we make or the lucky rabbit’s paw in our back pocket. But nobody is immune to a crisis, particularly as we continue to see the ever-growing effects of our changing global climate.

Don’t believe me? Hey Texas, winter’s coming; how’s your power grid looking this year?

Early in my management career, I worked at a company where the mantra was, “Everyone needs to be personally productive.” That meant that no matter your location or position in the organizational structure, you were responsible for regularly producing something of concrete value—no one just “managed.”

This was at a newspaper company, so being “personally productive” could mean anything from providing customer service to hopping on a sales call to helping with the printing process.

And for the most part, this system worked really well. This kept the bosses honest about what it really took in time and effort to get a project done, which led to more reasonable deadlines and better understanding between management and employees.

That isn’t to say that every manager loved this approach, however. Leaders in the organization would sometimes get frustrated because it was a lot to ask a full-time manager to also find time for regular production. Of course, since this was integral to the organization’s ethos, there wasn’t an option to simply not comply.

In the long term, this generally meant that aspiring leaders followed one of two paths in the organization. If you were good at finding the balance and could thrive in that structure, then you tended to do well, and you had a lot of opportunity to grow with the organization and have a great experience.

And if you couldn’t make that system work, you often failed and left the organization before too long. I don’t think this result was necessarily representative of a character flaw, so much as it was an indication this was the wrong culture for you to advance.

For that reason, it’s important for managers to take stock of what percentage of their time they spend leading vs doing. By leading, I mean managerial tasks like project management and enabling your team to do the work. By doing, I mean completing the vital tasks that keep revenue flowing.

At that same company, early on, I found myself doing entirely too much work for the people working under me instead of setting clear expectations and letting them deliver. I would do deep dives into their work, structuring and organizing it and making sure it was up to my standards. And while that may have ensured that the work was of a certain quality, it also left me with very little time to do any managing.

And in retrospect, I can see that that wasn’t helpful for the people I was managing, either. It stifled their ability to directly contribute to the business, because instead of enabling them to do their jobs, I was making them perform how I would have, not necessarily to make their own contributions.

I thought that I’d mastered my impulse to do rather than lead, until a recent situation at a non-profit I volunteer with. Not long ago I took a leadership role in the organization, where I quickly found myself falling into my old habit of doing instead of leading.

As I was getting organized in this new role, I started writing scripts for people defining what each individual role should do and be. I also made notes for every role and committee detailing how these roles should relate to each other, how they should be executing their duties, etc.

In short, I was doing instead of leading. Again.

This was a great reminder that as a leader, my responsibility was to focus time on enabling and empowering others rather than instructing them on the minutiae of their day-to-day tasks.

Because ultimately, a talented do-er may not perform a task in exactly the way that their manager would. But that doesn’t matter; what matters is that work gets done and done well.

Of course, good leaders do need to make sure that the work gets done. But rather than micromanaging or breathing down your team’s necks, that should look like explaining to struggling team members how their work relates to the broader organizational goals. From there, you can highlight where their work is or isn’t working toward those goals and allow them to self-correct from there.

This doesn’t work all the time, of course, whether the individual just isn’t right for the organization or they just don’t have the right leader. But regardless, giving individuals this opportunity to self-correct is the most valuable use of your and their time.

Because for leaders, the focus needs to be on giving your team the freedom and opportunity to be personally productive. This doesn’t mean that you can’t or shouldn’t help out and get your hands dirty from time to time. But at the end of the day, you have to make sure that the bulk of your time is spent managing effectively.

If you’re reading this and you’re still standing, congratulations! The worst of the pandemic, physically speaking, is behind you, and you’ve managed to navigate an unforeseeable global crisis for over two years.

And your reward is an oncoming recession? If you are leading a business of any size, you need to think hard about the path you want to follow.

Obviously, there is still a lot of debate and conjecture about the specifics and how severe this economic recession might be. But once an idea is firmly entrenched in the cultural zeitgeist like this, people start making changes, and those changes are going to have real impacts for your career regardless of how the underlying economic factors end up playing out.

For my part, I’m already seeing reports of people spending less, individuals running out of COVID cash, and the obvious inflation on food and gas. So even if this isn’t a classical recession and it’s never officially named as such, it’s undeniable that changes in money habits are going to have real, tangible, I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-a-recession effects on your work.

Of course, how that hits you has a lot to do with how your industry is faring in this new, more subdued phase of the pandemic. Over the past two years, a lot of people have made changes—to their products and services, to the scales of their offerings, to truly any and all aspects of their operations. By now, these changes have probably settled into normal for you.

If that sounds familiar, congratulations, because you’re going to need those same skills to navigate this recession. You can follow one of two paths—the typical Hunker Down, which is the most easily accessed or the Market Grab which has a much bigger risk/reward wager.

Career services professionals who are seeking the most assured direction often make extreme, sweeping changes to navigate a recession, and this approach could be considered a hard left turn.

The underlying rationale of this strategy is to cut back, hunker down, and weather the storm while consumer spending is down. This means no longer looking for someone to fill that position you’ve been hiring for, scaling back product offerings and business hours, or maybe even re-evaluating your supply chain and seeing where you can trim some fat—if indeed you still even have a supply chain.

If you take this approach, now is a great time to look at any leftover ideas you have from the pandemic. What did you have on the whiteboard but never really got to try? Maybe this is the moment to give it a go and see how much you can tighten your belt over the next however many months until the situation stabilizes again.

Of course, if this is a hard left, then the other popular alternative could be considered a hard right turn.

This playbook is probably older than my source, but I first learned of this approach in reporting about Sam Walton. During tough times, Walton would over-invest and seek to expand his market share. He expanded discounts, offered more products, and generally did everything in his power to offer more to his customers.

Walton could do this because he knew that his competitors were scaling back in response to external pressures. And the economy, like nature, abhors a vacuum, which gave Walton the perfect opportunity to fill the roles that his competitors were sheepishly backing away from.

It’s important to remember, though, that there are important factors that influence how viable this strategy can be. This kind of hyper-investing necessitates the ability to take temporary losses without flinching.

The overall tone of your industry will also influence the efficacy of this playbook during a recession. If you see demand for your services increasing, then sure, lean into it and expand your market share. But if clients are pulling back and you’re working on a tight budget, maybe you should be pulling back with them.

I would posit, however, that for most people, the “perfect” solution meets these approaches somewhere in the middle. Almost nobody is approaching “Walmart Founder” levels of cash flow, but you can still probably afford a few select investments to expand your market share right now.

A major reason to pursue this strategy is that the employment market isn’t nearly as dire as it was in 2008. A lot of people are still hiring, so you have a real opportunity to push forward now and set yourself up for success in the recession.

If you want to get ahead of the storm and find an effective middle path forward, then the time to start doing it is right now. The pandemic has given you a Master’s degree in navigating crises, so break out the old drawing board and start executing for the next 12-18 months of disruption and opportunity.

Let me know which angles you’re planning on working throughout the recession. Where are you scaling back, and where are you taking the opportunity to expand? You’ve already got years of crisis management under your belt, so there’s no reason to let this one catch you unawares.

Years ago, I took over command of a company that was in rocky shape. And on my first day in this new role, I found something interesting in the top drawer of my new desk: reports. Three detailed, extensive reports from experts who had been contracted to assess areas of improvement for the business.

My predecessor had been forced to bring in these experts by his superiors, and then he chose to stuff those reports in the drawer, close it, pay the bill, and call it a day. Suffice it to say that I wasn’t astonished that his desk was now my desk.

That was my first glimpse into a fairly standard practice in the business world: the timeless pursuit of contracting professionals to give new insights. And whether it’s a consultant or a subject matter expert or anyone else, the biggest thing to provide an outside expert with is a respect for their time and capabilities.

Judging by where my predecessor left his reports, it seems safe to say that his motivations for bringing someone in were a combination of pressure from above and wanting someone to tell him he was doing a great job. As you might imagine, that’s not a recipe for successfully working with a career services professional.

That’s why I decided to read over the reports and call the author of the one that intrigued me the most. It had been awhile since they’d come in to audit the place, so I asked them to come back in to see what, if anything, had changed since their last visit.

Gentle reader, you will be shocked to know that not one single thing had changed since they gave my predecessor that 40-page report. Eager to make positive changes, but less eager to read a novella at work, I asked the consultant to boil down for me what I really needed to know out of that 40 pages of information. And after some back and forth, we ground that down to 15 clear-cut, actionable items.

When I took those 15 items to my team, we talked about why they didn’t want to do certain items, which ones they’d already tried in the past, etc. So we went through to see which items would do the most for our organization, then ranked them that way. Then we ranked them by what they’d cost us to implement.

We started doing that on a weekly basis, and every week we’d discuss how each item was advancing. And after a few months, sure, some of the ideas hadn’t worked out, but on the whole those 15 items made a big difference on our operation: our revenues were up, and our margins along with them.

We didn’t end up executing all 15 items, let alone all 40 pages, but the items we did accomplish made large, sweeping changes for the better throughout our organization. And while that was the beginning of my love affair with the outside expert, it was far from my only encounter.

In fact, I exist on both sides of this relationship now that I’m contracted as a managing consultant for businesses and also bring people in to share their insights on my own organizations. From living through both sides of this experience, I can safely say: I get it. And as a career services professional, I know that you get it too.

At some point in your career, you’ve almost certainly run into someone with an awful website who says “oh, I just started redoing it” or someone with a painfully bad resume who is “in the process” of editing it. But you and I both know they’re not redoing or editing anything—they’re just embarrassed and are afraid of a professional coming in and telling them what to change.

That embarrassment is normal and understandable, but it’s also unproductive and a detriment to long-term success. None of us know what we’re doing 100% of the time; for the best of us, the 51% of what we do that we understand is enough to carry us through the 49% that we’re just guessing on. Career services professionals bridge that gap and give us the tools to do the right thing when we have no idea what the right thing is.

If you’ve got a client or even a colleague or friend who won’t listen to what the experts are telling them, share this column with them. Maybe it’ll change their mind, or maybe it won’t, but at least you’ll be able to say that you tried to get them to come around to the value that an outside professional can bring to their work.

When I was taking the first big step in my media career, I found myself in the enviable position of leading a newspaper group as we were coming out of a recession.

The local factories needed people desperately, and those help wanted ads made us so much money that we started aggressively going out and looking for more. During such a precarious time for everyone, but especially for those in print media, local help wanted ads generated more per-space revenue than anything else in that paper.

The driving force behind the success of selling those help wanted ads was the fact that the entire recruitment advertising marketplace was only accessible through newspapers. This wasn’t new—it was just the first time I’d seen it from the newspaper’s side.

When I was first starting out in life, I’d go out on Saturday evenings, pick up a copy of The Chicago Tribune, and pore over the third of the paper that was just help wanted ads. And now that I’m a bit older, I can appreciate how sleek that business model was.

Businesses paid newspapers obscene amounts of money to run help wanted ads, then job seekers paid for access to where the employers were. The employers would get resumes over the next week, sift through them, then make their hires.  In this way, you had newspapers as the middleman between employers and workers, selling access to the job market to both sides.

But monopolies rarely last forever, and like with every other facet of life, the internet came in and disrupted the traditional dynamic.

Nowadays, that monopoly has disintegrated. Sites like Monster and Indeed became the go-to spot for job seekers, and the way that people access the job market has shifted. The growth of digital media with virtually no barrier to entry on either side has skyrocketed the volume of transactions.

I don’t mean to paint this as a wholly negative change; undeniably, there are benefits to this new job marketplace. Once upon a time, if I saw a job that I wanted to apply for, I had to print out my resume, break out my typewriter to draft a cover letter, then mail the whole package off to my prospective employer. That was my investment in reaching out to an employer—I had to put some amount of skin in the game just to get my name out there.

But now, that friction has been drastically lowered, at least on the side of the workers. Employees can apply to any job in which they have even a passing interest, and it’s often as easy as clicking “apply now.” And that’s not wholly a bad thing, but it’s got some clear drawbacks.

For employers, a listing that used to get them 20-40 applicants could now easily get them several hundred or even thousands. And while a wider talent pool isn’t a problem, exactly, there are logistical realities to going through that many applications, especially when half or more of them aren’t even truly interested in or qualified for the position.

Solving this new problem required new services and other players, so now automated systems recommend jobs to potential candidates and job seekers to employers (for a surcharge, of course). And this “solution” seems to please exactly nobody.

For businesses, you have to set ridiculous standards for each job listing just to avoid being flooded with unqualified applicants. And job seekers have to keyword stuff their resumes and exaggerate experiences just to get their names in front of a hiring manager for a position that they’re more than capable of filling.

And frankly, these workarounds don’t begin to solve the core issue. Applicants still have to over-apply to have any chance at getting seen, let alone hired, and businesses still get so many candidates that they can’t read every application in detail.

In this constant, droning noise, there isn’t really time to do more than glance at a job listing or an applicant before deciding to swipe right or left.

But what if the solution to these woes has been with us the entire time? I’m talking, of course, about career services professionals.

If we continue this metaphor of dating apps, then a qualified CSP could fit into the role of a matchmaker: someone who understands the strengths and needs of both parties and brings them together.

Sure, maybe the idea is a touch “old-fashioned” compared to applying to jobs with a click. But I have to believe that working with a professional who can connect me with qualified applicants is preferable to swiping through 1,000 resumes of candidates who don’t even want the job.

Sadly, though, I’m just one small business owner. So how do we get both employers and applicants on board en masse? A marketing campaign? Subliminal messaging? Or do we all just have to beat our heads into that wall until the world is ready to trust career services experts to do their jobs? It’s a difficult situation, but share your insights and expertise in the comments below, and we may all get one step closer to finding a solution to the Tinderfication of the job market.

Sales can get a bad rap, but there are fundamental elements of selling that can be useful at any level in an organization. In fact, I’d argue that many of the core tenets of sales are really just good management skills. And the higher up the corporate ladder you are, the more important sales skills could be for you.

A long time ago, when I was running a basic sales route, I came into it with virtually no sales-related skills. I had to learn fast, and thankfully I had people around me who were generous enough to impart some much-needed sales wisdom upon me. But of all the things I learned, the one that I got the most mileage out of (and still use to this day) was the importance of getting people to a “no.”

Obviously, that’s counterintuitive, especially from a sales perspective. But the answer isn’t always a no—the important thing is to always direct someone toward a clear, final answer. Instead of trying to sell someone, you should think of yourself as facilitating their final decision by providing them with clear, pertinent information. Otherwise, you’re leaving someone with a “maybe,” and that’s not in your best interest or theirs.

From the perspective of the person you’re selling to, a maybe is a waste of time. It’s time spent reflecting, reading reviews, consulting with a spouse—and it can still end in a no. And if you’re the salesperson, you have to circle back around to get a final answer and go through your spiel an extra time.

The real value of getting someone to a “no” is in the time you save. And I know you want every conversation to end with a sale, but no matter how much you believe in your product, it just isn’t going to be for everyone. And the more time you waste trying to convince someone who doesn’t want to buy, the less time you’ll have to give information to a customer or client who could actually make a purchase.

So, what does this have to do with management?

Following the rules above, a good salesperson is someone who can size up what information a person needs to make a decision and then delivers it. Coincidentally, management is largely the same—making sure that people have the right information to make good decisions. And in a corporate environment, being able to help people make informed, quick choices can save you and your organization a lot of time that could be spent working toward your goals.

With that in mind, I’ve got some sales tips that also make for good management practices. Some of them sound a little goofy, but if it’s on this list, it’s because I still use it regularly all these years later.

One common sales tactic is to ask, “This or that?” Instead of asking if they want to buy, you ask if they want the red one or the blue one. “Do you want to buy” means a hard choice, but choosing between red or blue is much simpler.

But offering an easier choice isn’t just applicable in sales—I use this all of the time to set up meetings. Instead of asking “What time works for you,” I’ll ask “Does X time or Y time work best for you?” Just like getting a potential customer to a no, this is the fastest way to get a clear, final answer from someone in your organization.

Another useful skill that I learned during my time in sales was asking the little question instead of the big one. If you’re trying to get a signature on a big contract or get your boss’ final approval on something, don’t keep reminding them that you’re waiting on a decision. Instead, ask a smaller question that’s easier to answer.

For example, instead of asking for final approval on a project, ask “This thing in paragraph three, does that look okay to you? Is there anything else that’s an issue?” If they say no, then congratulations, you just got the answer you’ve been waiting for—hand it over for their signature.

Another strategy to get a decision is to ask what the decision-maker would change. Instead of asking for a final decision, by asking for their thoughts, you make it their responsibility instead of yours. If they make a change, that’s an intellectual investment, and you can consider them sold.

Some of these might sound sneaky or dishonest, but they’re just skills. And they can help you distill key information, make sure it's understood, and get a decision as quickly as possible. Life, sales, and business are all about making decisions, and the quicker you can get someone to make a choice, the more effective and efficient you’ll be.

Sales can get a bad rap, but there are fundamental elements of selling that can be useful for any professional. In fact, many of the core tenets of sales are really just good professional skills. And the more people you work with, the more important sales skills could be for you.

Of all the sales lessons out there, one of the most useful is the importance of getting someone to give you a “no.”

Obviously, that’s counterintuitive, especially from a sales perspective. But the answer isn’t always a no—the important thing is to always direct someone toward a clear, final answer. Instead of trying to sell someone, you should think of yourself as facilitating their final decision by providing them with clear, pertinent information. Otherwise, you’re leaving someone with a “maybe,” and that’s not in your best interest or theirs.

From the perspective of the person you’re selling to, a maybe is a waste of time. It’s time spent reflecting, reading reviews, consulting with a spouse—and it can still end in a no. And if you’re the salesperson, you have to circle back around to get a final answer and go through your spiel an extra time.

The real value of getting someone to a “no” is in the time you save. And we all want every conversation to end with a sale, but no matter how much you believe in your product, it just isn’t going to be for everyone. And the more time you waste trying to convince someone who doesn’t want to buy, the less time you’ll have to give information to a customer or client who could actually make a purchase.

So, what does this have to do with professional communications?

Following the rules above, a good salesperson is someone who can size up what information a person needs to make a decision and then delivers it. Coincidentally, that’s an essential part of everyday business communications. When you’re working with others, being able to help people make informed, quick choices can save you a lot of time that could be spent working toward your goals.

With that in mind, let’s review some sales tips that can improve your interpersonal communication skills. Some of them sound a little goofy, but give them a try and see how much time they can save you.

One common sales tactic is to ask, “This or that?” Instead of asking if they want to buy, you ask if they want the red one or the blue one. “Do you want to buy” means a hard choice, but choosing between red or blue is much simpler.

But offering an easier choice isn’t just applicable in sales—it’s also a great way to set up meetings. Instead of asking “What time works for you,” ask “Does X time or Y time work best for you?” Just like getting a potential customer to a no, this is the fastest way to get a clear, final answer from someone in your orbit.

Another useful skill is asking the little question instead of the big one. If you’re trying to get a signature on a big contract or get someone to sign off on something, don’t keep reminding them that you’re waiting on a decision. Instead, ask a smaller question that’s easier to answer.

For example, instead of asking for final approval on a project, ask “This thing in paragraph three, does that look okay to you? Is there anything else that’s an issue?” If they say no, then congratulations, you just got the answer you’ve been waiting for—hand it over for their signature.

Another strategy to get a decision is to ask what the decision-maker would change. Instead of asking for a final decision, by asking for their thoughts, you make it their responsibility instead of yours. If they make a change, that’s an intellectual investment, and you can consider them sold.

Some of these might sound sneaky or dishonest, but they’re just skills. And they can help you distill key information, make sure it's understood, and get a decision as quickly as possible. Life, sales, and the professional world are all about making decisions, and the quicker you can get someone to make a choice, the more effective and efficient you’ll be.

When you’re trying to figure out how to make it as a professional, there’s often a problem with the business advice you find—it assumes you want to be the next Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos. But what if you want success, but aren’t aiming to be a billionaire? Is it really as simple as go big or go home?

At its core, business is a hobby that generates money. And there’s no reason to pretend that money doesn’t matter—everyone has to eat. But, assuming that you’re meeting basic needs and putting bread on the table, it’s important to consider what you want out of your investment.

Why did you get into your current industry? If it was solely to make boatloads of money, then go with my blessing, bigger is probably better for you. But for some people, that’s not the ultimate goal. Maybe you started your organization to fulfill a need in your community, or you wanted to work toward a mission goal. If that sounds like you, then expanding may not always be in your best interest.

Let’s look at a fairly common example: someone working in the trades. Perhaps after a long career of working with their hands, an individual finds themself heading a 20-person venture that’s generating steady, reliable profits. On the face of it, that’s success. But it’s important to look at more than just revenue and organizational size.

This hypothetical business is thriving, certainly, but it probably requires a lot of hours of mental and emotional work for the trades professional who got into their field because they liked hands-on work. And even if the money is good, managing an enterprise of that scale may not be what that individual wants out of their career.

In this situation, the right move may be to unwind the venture; to sell the parts of the business they can, then downsize the staff to just a few core team members. Sure, that means a little less money, but the individual in question is back to doing the work they enjoy, and they have more free time to enjoy the fruits of their labor.

With the proposition of “go big or go home,” this illustrates an unspoken third option—to stay right where you want to be.

This illustrates the fundamental problem with the messaging that your business is either growing or failing—it’s a false dichotomy. There is a spot for having a satisfying business that serves a purpose and never seeks to be bigger than it is. All you have to do is be honest with yourself if that's what you want, and then stop putting in work toward a goal that you don’t really want to achieve.

This isn’t an issue where there’s a right or wrong choice. The important thing is that, when you’ve finished your work for the day and you’re thinking back on what you did, you can feel satisfied.

Be honest with yourself and your team about what motivates you. Don’t feel overly sentimental for having a mission, and don’t worry about being a bad person because your primary goal is to make money. But once you have your answer, look at what you’re putting into your business, where it’s headed, and make sure that you’re not spending your days working toward the wrong goal.

With the new year comes a new flood of “X Tips All Leaders Know” and “Y Things to Do NOW to Save 2022.” And largely, they’re all the same. They give you basic business advice in a slightly new way, and at best they serve as reminders for a concept that had slipped your mind.

But that’s not what we want to share with you today. Instead, we want to give you real, workable tips for your personal and professional development in 2022. Will they be the deciding factor in how your year goes? Maybe not. But if you do them and work on yourself, you cann bet that you’ll be able to look back on your year in December and feel proud of the choices you made.

So, with that in mind, let’s talk about three new, healthy habits you should start in 2022.

1. Take On a Mentee

Oftentimes, professionals have a lot more to give back than they realize. It doesn’t matter if you’re not a CEO or other high-ranking executive; if you’re anywhere but at the very beginning of your career, you have something to offer somebody else.

If you can, try to choose someone who you don’t directly work with. If you’re in a smaller organization or you’re a solo entrepreneur, that’s fine, just try to look for someone who you don’t work with on a daily basis. This way, you won’t get bogged down in helping them meet organizational goals, and instead you can focus on helping them move their career forward to where they want to be.

So, how does mentoring someone else give you a better 2022? Well, there are a couple of key benefits.

First, there is a real, practical value in teaching and giving guidance. There are many schools of thought that would assert that if you can’t explain something to your grandmother, then you don’t really understand it. Ideally your mentee will have a bit more know-how than that, but still, giving guidance requires you to take a look at the field around you. And when you’re well into your career, having those kinds of fresh eyes can do a lot for helping you understand how to navigate the professional world around you.

And frankly, sometimes it’s just nice to do the right thing. Nobody earns a successful career solely on merit; hard work and skill are a big part of that equation, but everybody has help putting the pieces together, especially at the beginning. So why not pay it forward and do something that you can be proud of when 2023 comes around?

2. Explore a Tool That’s Been Vexing You

As a professional, it’s easy to get comfortable and stagnate, particularly if you’ve been in your field for a good length of time. It’s normal to feel uncertain or even uncomfortable when you hear people talking about a tool that you don’t quite understand. But rather than counting yourself out or saying it’s too late, make understanding that tool a part of your 2022 goals.

Whether you’re interested in learning more about SEMRush, MailChimp, or any other tool, try not to feel pressured to learn everything in a day. Nobody gets completely comfortable with a new tool inside of an hour. Instead, try adding some tinkering and exploration time to your daily schedule.

If you’re someone who prefers a more guided learning process, check to see if your chosen tool has any kind of training program. Often, these programs are offered for free, since developers want you to use their products. In fact, they may even offer certifications, which you can add to your profile to make yourself more competitive.

3. Read a New Book That Challenges You

Clickbait articles aren’t the only places that you can find regurgitated business advice. Any self-help or business section of your local bookstore is going to offer a lot of the same; books that offer good, solid advice, that you’ve probably already heard in a slightly different format.

Many professionals have stacks of these books in their personal libraries, and they dot “Best of” lists from year to year. But in 2022, challenge yourself to go above and beyond the rote advice that cycles through the public consciousness. Right now, I’m reading “”Four Thousands Weeks” by Oliver Burkeman and finding it…provoking.

If you can, try to find something that’s a bit more daring in its approach. In fact, more than just looking for new ideas, you should be searching for things that actively go against what you know. In the worst case scenario, you disagree with the author and get to feel smart in your mental arguments while you’re reading. But the best case scenario is that you find something that really makes a change in your approach to life, your career, or both.

Explore Personal Development Strategies in 2022

The truth is that nobody knows what’s going to improve your life better than you do. So for this list and for everything else you read in the following year, take what you can from it, apply it to your life, and leave behind anything that isn’t benefiting you. And remember, there are plenty of places to learn outside of a top-15 list.

Win or lose, black or white, on or off: Whatever the metric, a lot of management advice is wrapped up in binary thinking. We’ve all read the advice books and viral LinkedIn posts about the secret to winning, how to beat the competition, and other buzzy phrases that tell us that if we’re not winning, we’re losing.

Now, I don’t hate that idea. Personally, I’d love to live in a world where I can choose between Option A or Option B and, when I pick right, always end up in the winner’s seat. But that has never been how business works.

Instead, managing is a constant juggling act, where you’re trying to get your organization, your team, and yourself to the place you want them to be. And as you work on getting to that place, you’ll often find that that goal you’ve been working toward isn’t actually what you want. Situations change, goals shift, and suddenly the goalpost isn’t anywhere near where you expected.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you should never set any goals or target certain metrics. They’re great tools for measuring what does and doesn’t work in your favor. But it’s December, and I’d bet when checking end-of-the-year numbers, the situation is substantially more complicated than “we won” or “we lost.”

While it’s easy to think in simple, binary terms, any executive knows that that isn’t how it really works. The things that come across your desk—concepts to consider, targets to set, projects to green light—are all about judgements. And judgement requires seeking out input, allocating resources to your team, and evaluating the risks and rewards of a potential next step.

All of which is to say, while there’s temptation to define success as “making X thing happen,” because that’s how we think success is measured and accomplished. But I’d suggest that, especially in external communications, we work with a vocabulary that allows for more shades of grey. Whether that’s talking to the public, shareholders, or your team members, it’s important to not treat one metric as the end-all-be-all. As tennis player Arthur Ashe famously said, success is a journey, not a destination.

To step outside of my comfort zone and make a foray into the world of sports analogies, consider it like a game of football. Teams don’t win by scoring a touchdown with every throw—they win by gaining yards and stacking up the little successes until you’ve got points on the board, then doing it all over again. No coach starts a game by telling the players, “If we score 17 points, we win.” The path to success is ongoing, and it’s about a process rather than a singular goal.

So as you’re looking over your data at the end of the year, you’re probably noticing trajectories of the last year that did and/or didn’t help your business. I suggest giving yourself and your team the latitude of considering your progress directionally. Did you get the first down? Move toward a touchdown? If you can see that you’re moving in the right direction, then don’t throw everything aside because you didn’t “win” in the way you’d hoped.

As we think in terms of trajectories, it’s an opportunity to look toward the future. What path do you want to build on, and what do you need to see even more progress next year? If you didn’t hit your big picture goals this year, take a closer look at things that gained ground, even if they weren’t quite enough. Can you reinforce those areas with extra resources?

Conversely, there are probably areas where you invested some time or money that just didn’t move you in the direction you want to go. What happens if you allocate those resources into an area that made some forward ground this past year? Reinforce the efforts that are working and kill off some that aren’t. Don’t get stuck in the invested-capital fallacy. Some things just don’t work.

A win is never going to be the big, game-changing win. And a loss isn’t always a lost cause. Humans don’t exist in binary terms like that, and a little-known insider tidbit is that our customers, our teams, and ourselves are all human. So instead of focusing on binary winning or losing as you close out the year, devote yourself to identifying what worked in 2021, even in little ways, and find new opportunities in 2022 to grow that little victory into a larger success.

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