marketer vs director

You can do most things alone. I can do, at least. But marketing goes beyond individual work. YOu can be a good analyst, you can have a good sense of what you need to do, but to have solid results, you need to have a marketing team.

Now I'm in a big project of creating the system of client's business improvement to establish long term win-win relationships. A mix of marketing, consulting and analysis tools. But to perform well I need a solid base of marketing support - and I can't do this alone.

Here is a problem. We have one marketer who doesn't think strategically. The only perspective he can get is his own interest, the more short term the better. WIth all that he thinks it is normal to interrupt other processes with his opinion. In most cases he is a pain in the ass.

My first move was to kick him out. If I start anti-promotion, soon or later I hit the goal. But before doing this I decided to provide him with some tools to improve his behavior. Before kicking out it is always better to find a way to fit the employee to ideal system.

Here we are - just making a step from sole marketing executor to a strategical thinker.

it is easy to miss something you're not looking for

funeral management

Funeral requires a lot of management skills to pass through. High emotional involvement combined with high time pressure. Inspite of a limited procedures needed to be done, the stress level is incredibly high.

Just to survive, I used the following tricks:
1. To lower emotional pressure, I dove into physical labor - cooking (in Russia we have a tradition of funera repast, that is normally cooked at home), serving the food etc.
2. When somebody wanted to help me and at the same time started to anny with a phrase "we don't have enough time until..." the only way to limit the hysterics was to give the person some occupation, cause in the case of high emotional pressure there's no possibility to explain for the person to understand.
3. Just remember that this pressure is not endless, the time for pressure is limited wit a traditional set of funeral procedures.

Let my granddad's memory live on forever.

selfactualization

Sorry for Russian, but this is my opinion about russian article from e-xecutive.ru.

Реально понравилась статья "Тайны корпоративного двора". Прежде всего тем, что поднят вопрос самоактуализации.

Обидно, что практикам не хватает более формального и системного подхода - в статье сформулирована проблема и показаны плохие примеры, мол, не справились, мол, не получилось. Есть пару-тройку намеков о том, что можно делать, но основы под это никакой не подведено. Замечаю за собой ту же слабость - лень формулировать, проверять на целостность и полноту теории. Нас долго пичкали статьями Портера. Я все удивлялась, мол, написал книгу, молодец, но потом еще двадцать пять лет объясняет ее в статьях. Теперь понятно - он постоянно ее тестирует на соответствие изменяющимся условиям. Подходит ли модель пяти сил для анализа интернет-бизнеса, почему сил именно пять, не пора ли ввести еще парочку, и тут же тестируются кандидаты. Но Портер - он этим и живет, преподает себе. А тут управленцы же.

free your twitter mind

Is it possible to trust people in your private life and be a rigid manager in business one?

resilence to criticism

One of the biggest mistake of entrepreneurs is having pink glasses when reviewing own business and idea. I'm the best, others are sucks. Or I have a unique proposition, nobody can give this to you. This leads many of businesses to a failure.

Then a person becomes professional, he/she tends to be more resistant to critical views. In my humble opinion, professional is the person who can still open his/her mind to a new information or view rather then pushing own idea. It's ok to have a stron belief into own idea - that's a reason why you have it. In the same time critical review of the idea can improve it a lot.

Many people understand this position in their own manner. Recently I've seen several examples of making a public access to the document asking for idea/presentation/business evaluation. Wow! Those people are open to criticism, I thought. But then I've read all the comments and authors reaction to them. Resistance. Normal reaction is 'Tastes differ' (universal answer to someone's opinion), or 'What can YOU say to me?'. The person posted the document for discussion therefore has a different aim. Instead of asking for an opinion he/she asks for approval, bragging.

I'm not good in listening criticism to my job. I take everything too personal and prefer to blame person who gives criticism of lacking critique skills. Sometimes it is true, but not all the times although I prefer to exaggerate a lot and count all the cases of criticism I don't like to the lack of skills. And I'm also awful in giving criticism meaning that I try to find weaknesses without mentioning strenghs. When I don't like one job from the person I tend to perceive other his/her jobs in a worse way.

So, here are some rules and exersises I use to be less critique resilent and give a good criticism.

While asking for a critique:
1. Try to evaluate your job without bias. Think about target audience - what are their interests and do they find benefits in your message. Do they have an answer on the question 'What's in it for me?' Make a list of their interests and answer if your documents brings your idea to fit them.
2. Count to 10 after making suggestion about criticism given. Think about the person's interest of giving this critique to you. Is there good sense in his/her comment? What will change if you make suggested chnges? Are they for good or for bad.
3. Remember, those comments are about your document/idea, not about yourself. They doesn't reflect your skills/talent in full, just a small piece incarnated into this document/idea.

While giving the criticism.
1. Evaluate the job, not the person who made it.
2. Make a list of strenghts and weaknesses. Try to provide an even quantity of comments on each part. If you can't provide one of the parts, think deeper.
3. Think out the words you're making criticism. While making criticism, ask yourself about your interests. And interests of a person asking for criticism.
4. Never give criticism when not asked. In ideal world give criticism only if they have paid for it)))