8 things that Phil Lee suggests to get into the 2018 groove

1. (Goals) Spend some quiet time thinking about what you want to achieve this year (not just at work) and then write it down and put it somewhere where you can see it.
2. (Tasks) Daily schedule the 5 most important and productive things you need to do that day. 
3. (Action) Do them. 
4. Do the hard things first. (Eat the frog)
5. (Wins) Celebrate your wins - even the small ones.
6. (Nice) “Be nice” Be kind to others as a regular practice AND be kind to yourself.
7. (Accept failure) Instead of viewing problems and frustrations as setbacks view them as learning and growth opportunities. Perhaps one of the biggest growth opportunities is learning to let go of your own personal melodrama.
8. (Br grateful ) Be Grateful Look for opportunities daily to serve, smile and say, "Thank you

The 10 Marketing fundamentals in the current world

Written by Adrian Stewart

As silos crumble around us and the world becomes more connected, integrated, and seamless, it’s becoming harder to see where one thing ends and another begins

1. Start with Why

It’s been proven that purpose-led organisations outperform their competitors. With a clear unifying purpose, your team and your stakeholders have a clear focus to rally behind and your customers have more than something to buy — they have something to buy into

Recommended reading: How Organisational Purpose Will Make You Outperform Your Competitors

 2. Know Your Market

One of the biggest mistakes that businesses make is trying to speak to too many people. In an increasingly competitive environment, understanding your market and your customers is more important than ever. Taking the time to do a deep dive into both gives you the necessary insights to deliver real differentiated value that your customers actually care about.

Recommended reading: How to Achieve Product/Market Fit

 

3. Present Your Value

It’s not how good you are; it’s how good you appear to your customers. You may have the best product around, but if you aren’t communicating your value clearly, succinctly, and persuasively, be prepared to get lost in the noise.

Recommended reading: The Advanced Guide to Brand Positioning

 

4. Get Focused

Time and time again, businesses try and do too much and end up getting nowhere. Strategy is about choices, and by identifying the top opportunities and challenges upon which to focus, you can more effectively leverage your limited resources for maximum results.

Recommended reading: The Death of the SWOT Analysis and the Rise of the Strategic Radar

 

5. Check Your Foundations

In the quest for innovation and pursuit of the next big thing, it’s easy to forget about the fundamentals. But without strong foundations, no amount of innovation will save you. Fixing the foundations by taking a look at your customer journey — from the way customers find out about you to the way your customers are asked for referrals or reviews — often yields the biggest returns because, after all, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.

 

6. Establish Your Digital Fundamentals

As the lines between physical and digital become increasingly blurred, the importance of optimising your digital presence is greater than ever. Your customers’ lives are not neatly split between physical and digital; rather they’re a seamless whole. The more effectively you capitalise on that, the more successful you’ll be.

Recommended reading: What CMOs Need to Know about Digital Marketing

 

7. Identify Your Customer Experience Multiplier

Word of mouth has long been one of the most effective forms of marketing, and nowadays the scale of reach has increased ten fold. Deliver a remarkable customer experience, known as lightning strikes, and make it easy for your customers to talk about you and reap the rewards.

Recommended reading: 6 Things You Should Be Doing to Engage Your Customers (But Probably Aren’t)

 

8. Find Your Step Change 

To paraphrase Jack Welch, if you’re not innovating faster than the market, you’re losing. And in a time of constant change and evolution, staying still is a recipe for disaster. The pressure is on to continually be growing, developing, and looking for ways to improve on previous performance.

Recommended reading: Unpacking Innovation: How You Can Be an Innovator

 

9. Define Your Strategy

It’s all well and good to launch a series of growth initiatives, but unless they’re part of a coherent strategy, you aren’t realising the full value. Taking the time to focus, make the tough choices, and crystallise a clearly defined and understood strategy ensures that your growth initiatives work together to achieve your core objectives.

Recommended reading: The 3 Absolute Essentials of Good Strategy

 

10. Get Moving 

The real value of any strategy lies in its execution. An average strategy well executed is better than a great strategy that sits in a bottom drawer. But the true value comes from a great strategy well executed. But no strategy survives its first engagement with reality, so move quickly, be agile, and develop safe-fail tests where required.

 

Conclusion

So there you have it, a very brief helicopter view of Growth Strategies: A Marketing Toolkit for the Modern World.

Adrian Stewart is a Senior Strategy Exec at Step Change. He is a strategic thinker and lifetime improviser with a passion for understanding human behaviour. With over 10 years’ experience in the world of marketing, he’s covered a range of roles in sales, account management, training, strategy, and copywriting. He’s worked with all manner of big global brands, small businesses, and startups. 

The Power of Communities

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Humans connect together in unique ways. Finding a sense of belonging is a basic human need- just like the need for security, shelter and food. 

Making deep connections to other people is pivotal to our experience of fulfilment in life. This is often found in communities. 

Communities can be found in a religion, friends or family and it provides a sense of the collective; we all want to be attracted and compelled by a purpose. 

As described by social psychologist McMillan & Chavis, “sense of community is a feeling that members have of belonging, a feeling that members matter to one another and to the group, and a shared faith that members’ needs will be met through their commitment to be together" (1976). 

How to build community in the workplace? 

To build a sense of belonging and community in the workplace amongst coworkers requires three factors. 

Membership 

Create a sense of membership in your teams. Membership means belonging to a group of like-minded people, which requires personal investment and specialised skill-set, values and/ or character. 

As a leader, ensure you control membership by creating boundaries on how people become members- keeping other people out who don’t fit in with the groups collective culture and criteria. 

As a result, membership makes people inside the group feel special because they are a part of something that has a shared identity. 

The role of identification provides a sense of belonging and acceptance by the group, fostering stronger relationships between members and encouraging greater contributions and accountability to output. 

Create platforms to congregate 

Colleagues need to be able to connect at work. The “water-cooler” theory has found there is significant impacts of workplace socialising.

Social cohesion increases productivity, collaboration and job satisfaction. Face-to-face time together, either through daily huddles, team gatherings or information exchanges, encourages positive conversation that are open and transparent as well as relationship building amongst teams. 

Leaders who make time and space for employees to gather together to get to know each other is an invaluable investment in workplace community.

Acknowledgement & Recognition  

In order to successfully grow and sustain communities, leadership needs to recognise contributions and team achievements within workplace communities. 

Authentic acknowledgment & recognition creates a work environment where colleagues feel valued and aligned to their organisation and community they hold memberships to.  

Ensure your recognition is personalised to each membership. This is how you further embed the values and behaviours you want to see in your workplace communities.  

Finally, acknowledgment should always go hand and hand with empowerment. Trust your team’s expertise in the workplace community and provide team players with more responsibility when its earned. 

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