team

Grow through experiments

Harry_Waisman_labPractice makes perfect. Who hasn’t been told that at some point in their life? But is it true?

I like Adam Grant’s take who believes that what separates the good from the great is the willingness to try new things. You may be successful the way you are, but regardless of whether you are a company or an individual if you follow the same thing, the same routine, the same strategy over and over again you are more or less standing still, it means you are not growing.

Especially today where our world is changing at an incredible speed we need to have the willingness to experiment. To experiment with what you already know, and to experiment beyond that.

As Adam Grant said in a recent interview with GQ:

“..I would love to see every individual, every group try at least one experiment every week. Whether that’s shifting the structure of your meetings, or rotating around the leader for that decision—you can make a long list of what kind of experiments might be relevant. But to me, that’s kind of the big lesson of organizational psychology: the people who are willing to try new things beat the ones who don’t.”

How can you break your silos of your own built routines and start to experiment?

(Photo Credit: Harry Waisman Lab)

It’s a bird, a plane…no it’s your marketing team!

Marketing can transform how a business leads. That should be somewhat of a mantra for us marketers. And not only for motivational purposes. ironman
Marketing is a key driver to growth, market share, brand awareness and revenue.Therefore, it is even more important to put together a top class team that understands the value and purpose of marketing as well as has an appreciation of it.  Because marketing is not a discipline “anyone” can do.

So does your marketing team understand your business? Do they have a vision of what they want to achieve? Do they know how to reach your customer and how best to communicate with them? Does your team have enough and varied experience to understand the different marketing channels? Are they adaptable, assertive and quick? Do they want to learn and grow? And finally, and most importantly, do they really understand the sales environment because marketing can only be truly successful if it works in unison with sales.

Your marketing team should be like Marvel Superheros – a group of talented, maybe sometimes flawed, persons coming together to “save the world”. For some super heroic inspiration you may want to read “Avengers Assemble: Putting Together a Superheroic Marketing Team”  – which superhero are you in your team?