Three Things You Shouldn’t Be Afraid to Tell Your Boss
[Nearly 3 years later I have very different opinions about #1. I think metrics are invaluable, provided that they're the right metrics, and that they're tied directly to business objectives.]
1.) Throw your data out the window
There are huge divisions of companies specifically created to collect and analyze data. Do you like staring a excel spreadsheets all day? How about creating pivot tables to determine correlation? Maybe running regressions is your thing?
A woman asked me the other day how attracted I was to her on a scale of 1 to 10. What a loaded question. There’s no right answer. [Really what do you want here ladies? Will an arbitrary 8.5 do the trick?] And think about it. Isn’t this essentially what your company is doing? Even when you fill out a quick questionnaire don’t you ponder what your answers might say about you? What they’ll be used for? In what context?
All that data leads to what? Chances are you pore over it for hours in order to justify and affirm conclusions that the company is already pretty certain of, but they have to have the data to support it, and for what? Incremental change that should increase the bottom line. Personally, I say screw the incremental change.
Delve into you consumer. Communicate, work with, feel out your consumer. Get on out on the streets, lurk in the social media outlets and gain real valuable insight that can’t be communicated in a spreadsheet, and then take a risk; dare to dream big and stay ahead of the competition.
2.) I’m not too young, or too inexperienced.
Don’t confuse this with Generation Y entitlement. Go ahead and tell your boss these things, but then work your ass off everyday proving it to them. Guy Kawasaki said it best when he said, “It is better to hire people that can get you where you want to be than people who have been there before.” Passionate people build great brands, and passion is contagious. Experience and reason leads to rationale conclusions, but passion and emotion leads to action.
I could give a rip about the general that plays it safe where most of his men go home alive at the end of the day, yet he hasn’t accomplished his mission. I’ll follow William Wallace into battle right now knowing full well the chances of me getting my head chopped off is significantly higher, but so is the chance that I’ll have the opportunity to make the world a better place.
3.) I’m going to dream big, and I’m going to fail. Get over it.
There’s nothing wrong with failure provided that you learn from the experience, fix the mistakes, and progress forward. Again, I’m not advocating complete idiocy here, but Walt Disney dreamed big, and I suspect people told him he was foolish along the way. If you limit yourself to what you can do under traditional constraints then you’re going to be stuck in the same cycle; sometimes you have to take the leap.
Kevin Roberts CEO of Saatchi and Saatchi actually tells his employees (and America’s youth) to actively pursue failure.
Everybody wants something to stand behind, something they believe in, something they’re passionate about. I’ll be the first to admit that after I come up with something that’s a little out there I run it by someone a bit more rationale than myself to ensure that my logic isn’t too flawed before I ever start; you should do this too. But forget the fear of failure (particularly if you’re still young and don’t have various other commitments). Take a risk, work for a company that encourages you to take chances and fail, and chances are you’ll learn alot more about both business and yourself along the way.
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Great points there. Those are the things I remind myself whenever I think about business.
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admin Reply:
June 26th, 2009 at 10:50 pm
@MarketingDeviant – Thanks for your kind words. Care to explain further how these rules of thumb persay relate to what you think about when you do business?
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Hi Ryan,
“I’ll follow William Wallace into battle right now knowing full well the chances of me getting my head chopped”
…always the likely scenario if you fight the mighty English!
Generally a great post. I do have a conflict with one point though. I think you’ve dismissed the importance of data a little too easily. Data, after all, is everything. Data is the money in your account, data is whether your business can continue trading, data is if your customers can physically afford to offer what you’re buying.
Sure, data isn’t perfect, but ignoring it would be an awful mistake to make. Most of all, data can be absolutely fascinating to analyse. Deeper interactions with customers like you’ve mentioned are vital, but knowing what the market is doing a whole is equally as important.
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admin Reply:
June 26th, 2009 at 10:50 pm
@Rich – The intention certainly wasn’t to dismiss the importance of data, but I don’t think it is ‘everything’ either as you claim. There’s a lot of flawed data out there, and there’s a lot companies that spend a ton of money for data that merely confirms conclusions they’ve already made.
What I really wanted to emphasize was the fact that you can’t always let a bunch of numbers bog you down, particularly if you’re a small entrepreneurial company. I think you have to be willing to take a risk (in line with point #3) and sometimes trust a gut instinct (before the data is gathered and in rare occasions even in spite of the data). Maybe that’s one way to get ahead? To be a thought-leader, an early adopter … instead of sharing the same data that every company gets.
I really appreciate your response, and I definitely think there’s some merit to it.
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I’ve been there before (I’m referring to #2). I’ve told a potential boss that I’m not too young or too inexperienced. However not in an arrogant way or anything like that. I said it with confidence and then busted my butt to show for it. It wasn’t easy, it was hard work but I did it and got a good sense of accomplishment from it…
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admin Reply:
June 26th, 2009 at 10:50 pm
@Ribeezie
I think #2 is the one that resonates the most with me as well. Just because someone has gone through the motions and has an abundance of experience (in years) doesn’t mean they’re necessarily more qualified (or if they are that you wouldn’t be able to surpass them relatively quickly). I think it is important to note that experience shouldn’t be measured in years.
Like I said in my post, and like you reiterated in your comment, it is important to be tactful when you tell your boss what’s up, and it’s extremely important to bust your hump afterwards to prove that you’re capable. It’s very cliche but talk is cheap.
Thanks for your contribution!
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March 25th, 2009 at 2:21 amI think #3 is something that people shouldn’t be afraid to tell themselves, let alone their boss.
Forget that, they shouldn’t just tell themselves it, they should embrace it!
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May 4th, 2009 at 12:59 pm