Reading Time: 2 min I’ve always been a fan of the phrase “the customer is always right” as long as you put the caveat “…in matters of taste” at the end of it. I certainly give no credit to rude or forceful people that use “the customer is always right” to try to get their way, but people can […]
What do you do with those pictures of slides?
Reading Time: 2 min Part of our team just spent a few days at the Digital Summit conference here in Atlanta, and it was excellent. We picked up some great tips and ideas that we’ve already started to use, and I’m sure more will come out as we unpack further. My thought for today is “what does unpacking really […]
Chesterton’s Fence
Reading Time: 2 min Whenever someone is starting a new job, I always advise them to take it slow at the beginning. Understand the current setup, see how things work, and then later begin to make suggestions. With our newest hire at GreenMellen, I told her exactly that. She’s coming from another agency, and we’re very excited to learn […]
Stewardship, not ownership
Reading Time: < 1 min Kevin Paul Scott has a fantastic description of the idea of “stewardship” versus that of “ownership”. In his book “Return on Inspiration“, he says: “Stewards take care of things for other people; owners look out for their own interests. When we look at companies through this lens, we see that some owners act more like […]
Outcome bias
Reading Time: < 1 min If you’ve read some of my posts over the last few years, you’ve probably seen some of my fascination (and struggle) with the idea of separating decisions from outcomes. Brent Menswar’s book “Black Sheep” gives a simple name to it: outcome bias. Using an outcome to justify whether a decision is good or bad is […]
The Sunday Summary: Marking automation, hopeful AI, and bad ways to go viral
Reading Time: 1 min In an effort to help me keep up with everything I post each week, here is my latest “Sunday Summary” of my posts from the week. Mon, September 30: Reflecting on experiencesJohn Dewey, American philosopher, educator, and cofounder of the philosophical movement known as pragmatism, once said, “We do not learn from experiences, we learn […]
Hatred for outgroups is the best way to go viral on social media
Reading Time: < 1 min I have a great tip for you today to help you go viral more often on social media: show a lot of hate. While we all say that we want to more uplifting content on social media, hate spreads much more quickly. I know you’ve all seen it, often from very “nice” people online that […]
Satisfying your customers isn’t nearly enough
Reading Time: 2 min Satisfying your customers is a good thing, and it absolutely beats the alternative. In most environments, though, “satisfying” falls far short of where you need to be. In the book “Raving Fans“, the authors argue for this very point: Blanchard and Bowles argue that there’s a clear distinction between satisfying your customers and exceeding the […]
Train people well enough so they can leave
Reading Time: < 1 min There’s a maxim I’ve heard a few times over the years that goes something like: “You should invest in your team to make them the best that they can be. This may mean that some leave for better opportunities, but that beats the opposite of just not investing in them at all.“ This came to […]
The hopeful side of AI
Reading Time: 2 min There is a lot coming because of AI, and much of is not good. There’s not a ton of awful things to expect, but a lot of just… yuck. Like I shared yesterday, I suspect we’ll see more spam email, more AI-powered chatbots, more automated social posts, and just a lot of “we don’t need […]