Sure, sure, affirmations are fine. You’re good enough and smart enough and I’m sure people like you, mostly.

And I’m not talking about empty “positive thinking” either, the crap you read in lousy self-help books that tell you to look in the mirror and say to yourself, without specificity, that everything is going to be okay.

I’ve had a bit of a quiet epiphany of my own lately, thanks to a simple conversation with a friend, that has completely turned my perspective on goals and aspirations on its head.

We are cynical creatures, many of us. We look at things in terms of what we don’t want to have happen, where we don’t want to go, who we don’t want to associate with, and so on. Avoidance of the negative in hopes that the positive will emerge.

Much more rarely do we get really, painfully, brazenly specific about what it is we DO want.

And I mean specific.

Not “better work-life balance.” Screw that. That tells me nothing about what I need to do in order to achieve it.

Instead, I need to be incredibly detailed, direct, and clear about what I want. And then, ruthlessly and consistently, apply my decision making to line up with those things.

This is a bit different than just goal setting. Mostly because I look at a goal or objective inside a SMART framework, one of the requisites being that the goal is realistic and timed.

Instead, this is back to reframing again, but it’s also about reducing what you want to do to what you really want to do, regardless of the current implications of your professional or personal situation, and regardless of your ability to do them immediately. Personally, I find a bit of freedom in stating aloud that “I want to make a living doing X” even if I have no earthy idea how I’ll get there quite yet, or when.

Maybe I’m speaking in circles here, but the small idea of simply defining what I want to do – outside of the constraints of a proper “goal” – and looking at everything through those lenses has just sort of clicked. I’m not sure why it didn’t before. But the key is in the simplicity, even if it breaks the rules.

Here’s what I want. I’m going to act accordingly.

It’s affirmative instead of negative, and it’s very definitive. Clear. Unmistakable.

I’m ready. In fact, I’m already starting. Are you?

image credit: Michael Francis McCarthy

A post from Brass Tack Thinking
The Power of The Definitive Affirmative

You’ve thought it through, and you’re excited. You’ve uncovered something that’s really going to help your company or your boss or your client achieve their goals. You want your project to get attention and action. It deserves it, right?

Wrong.

Having an idea, unfortunately, doesn’t in itself entitle us to see it to fruition. Instead, in a business context, we must first translate that idea and present the case for it. Selling in your project requires a few key elements to ensure that it gets proper consideration.

1. Hypothesis

This seems obvious, but is rarely done well. The hypothesis behind your idea should illustrate why your idea is valuable (i.e. what problem you’re trying to solve), a rough sketch of how you hope to get there, both the potential upsides and downsides, and some conclusions you’ve drawn about possible results based on other people’s experiences, your research, assumptions, and data. It’s the underpinnings of an initial plan.

Try something like “I’d like to propose we try X because I think it can help us improve Y. My initial plans would include doing A, B, and C in order to lay the groundwork. Our potential obstacles include D, E and F and we’ll need to consider those in our plans. If we’re successful, based on my research to date, I believe we can achieve Z.”

The more clearly you state your hypothesis, the more likely you are to get and keep someone’s attention.

2. Allies

Cause you gotta have frieeeeenddss…. No, really. It’s very hard to fight a battle much less wage a war (even a well-meaning one) all by your lonesome. Building alliances requires coming prepared to share why you think your project or idea is worthwhile, and illustrating how you’d like that person to help you in your quest. Presenting a united front can help lend credibility to a project, as it demonstrates that it’s not just a solitary whim, but an idea that has backing from more than one mind.

3. The Opposition

Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer, even when you’re building a project plan. You need the naysayers to lend perspective, as well as demonstrate that you are considering all sides of the equation in your planning, including the not-so-pretty ones.

I’m not suggesting you indulge a jerk that can’t offer a constructive perspective, but I am saying that you need to present the concerns, challenges, or issues that are raised by those who are skeptical of your plan, if they’re out there. It’s doing your due diligence, and can give you a much needed reality check when you’re passionate about something.

4. Translation

If you’re selling  a marketing project into the C-suite, you’ll need to talk in terms of how it will impact brand reputation, awareness, lead generation. If it’s a research project, you’ll need to speak in terms of the insights you hope to collect, and what they’ll help you improve or address in your business. If you’re selling a project into  your team, you’ll need to help them understand how it will change their priorities, roles, and how you’ll equip them to do it.

It’s absolutely critical to put the project not in terms of how you see it, but in a frame of reference that’s relevant to the person you’re trying to convince.

5. Negotiation

We never win out of the gate. Okay, rarely. Slam dunks are the stuff of legend.

When you have a project plan in hand, come prepared to negotiate. Much like buying a car or selling a house, you know your ideal price, but you also know what you’ll accept. The great negotiators always come to the table to pitch the perfect vision, but prepared to walk away with a step in that direction. That requires a dose of humility – accepting that all of your solutions aren’t brilliant or perfect – and the patience to recognize that some progress is better than fierce and utter resistance.

6. Accountability

Want to win the trust of your colleagues for this and future projects?

Own your part in it. That means sharing the credit for successes – after all you didn’t do it yourself – and being willing to look in the mirror when it comes to assessing what might have gone wrong. It’s also important to have the skills to look at the failures clinically rather than emotionally, so that you can diagnose where the hiccups might have been without making them someone’s personal responsibility.

And when you’ve captured learnings – whether the happy ones or the challenging ones – share them. Liberally. Report back to the boss or the team and chronicle what you learned. Communicate often and openly so that folks know how invested you are not just in the project, but in the results.

What’s Your Principle?

I know you’re out there, those of you who have successfully sold in projects, or struggled to do so. I know you’ve learned in the trenches, and gotten it wrong before you got it right (where do you think this post idea came from?).

I’d love to hear more from you about what principles you have as part of your project pitch, and the questions you have for those that have done it successfully.

The comments are yours.

image credit: walknboston

A post from Brass Tack Thinking
6 Principles of Selling In Your Project

Stuff like time management and goal setting and measurement.

But the real key to getting social media established in your organization isn’t just having the toolbelt of skills and tactics and ideas. You need to be accountable what you deliver, other than just a vision and crossed fingers.

Objectives and Strategy

If you don’t know what constitutes a measurable objective, it’s time to learn. And if your social media strategy is lacking, buckle down and make it better.  If you want your social media efforts to be taken seriously , treat them as such. Approach them as you would any other business endeavor that requires investment of time, intellect, and resources.

Shortchange the planning piece, and you’re just tinkering. And good luck getting the boss or the board or the client to take you seriously.

Practical Measurement

Please stop telling me you can’t measure social media. Yes you can. You can measure it as well as we’ve ever been able to measure things that impact the sales channel but are not the sales channel themselves. Communications. Customer service. Business Development. Public relations. Marketing. Infrastructure impact. Cost savings. There are plenty of old ideas that are still applicable, and plenty of new things to try.

Lots of social media measurements are going to be correlative vs. causal. Meaning you’ll be able to show that your social media efforts align with progress toward other goals, but that you won’t usually be able to prove that social media is the only thing that drove that progress. But so too with any of the other things I mentioned. That’s the nature of business infrastructure. It’s all related and interdependent.

The problem is that this requires systems thinking, and dedicated work, and too many folks are stopping at the “this is hard and I don’t know how so I’m going to blame the medium”.  But no one said you had to nail it perfectly out of the gate. Get in and get your hands dirty, and learn.

Behavior (and Consequences)

What you put on the internet stays on the internet. Do we really need more reminders of that? If you’re representing your company, your personal self, or a balance of both, it’s not social media’s fault if you screw that up. It’s yours.

The instantaneous nature of online communication means it’s far too easy to leave your filters at the door and just pop off about whatever’s on your noggin. But there are real people and businesses at the other end of your communications. And that goes for you as an individual, and you as a business. Just because you can put it out there in real time doesn’t mean you should. Good judgment is needed as much now as ever. Maybe more.

Rushing headlong into social media without any consideration for the culture, investment, risks, cost of success (yes, that’s real), resources, and other business implications is just plain silly. The web will still be here in a few months while you get your ducks in a row, okay?

Responsibility for Outcomes

It’s wonderful to be innovative. Creative. Experiment. I’m a huge proponent for those things, and always have been.

But that means you’ve got to own the results of your work, even if they’re not what you’d hoped for. It’s easy to own success. It takes courage and solid footing to own the “learning opportunities” that come with missing the mark. I’m not talking always about taking the personal blame (though sometimes that’s appropriate), but first owning up to mistakes or shortfalls, then the most important bit:

Making a commitment to do something about them.

Learning and Adjustment

Listening isn’t enough. Engaging isn’t enough. Measuring isn’t enough. You don’t win a prize for doing any of those things alone.

The entire point of all of this stuff is to absorb, learn, and glean insights about how to make your business better for both you and your customers. Listening begets engagement in order to shape information and experiences. Measuring helps you see how well you’re doing with either. But the real gold is a part that only a human can do, and in the part that’ll be unique to each business: figuring out how what you hear, say, and measure has an impact on your entire business. Not just the social media part.

That might require something as old-fashioned as a meeting, or a discussion. Some analysis and critical thinking, or getting help with that piece. That might require talking to people in other departments that you’ve never met. It might mean having a tough conversation with your boss to kill a poor performing initiative, or stick with a new one that’s not there yet, but shows promise.

A Court of Our Peers?

I happen to think we’d all be a bit better served if we stopped standing in such knee-jerk judgment of what everyone else is doing, and instead kept pushing each other to detail all of the above. To deliver the Almighty Case Study that isn’t just filled with shining examples of glory and success, but the ones that help chronicle what went wrong. The hard decisions and choices that came up. The trial and error. The real world learnings that help shape our decisions.

It’s awfully easy to say that someone should have done it differently until you’ve walked in their shoes, or offered a practical alternative yourself. There are so many opportunities for constructive accountability in social media that it utterly fills my mind some days.

We all have a vested interest in weaving social media into business as a legitimate endeavor. But that means we all have a responsibility, too, to model the change that we want. On the spreadsheet, and on the human end. To do the trench work, illustrate our learnings, and demonstrate why it makes sense.

Don’t we? What does accountability mean to you? What else would you add?

image by AndYaDontStop

A post from Brass Tack Thinking
Social Media Needs Accountability