"The Hardest Worker in the Room"

For those not familiar with a “Word Cloud” it’s the result of a metadata exercise which visualizes text data and is used by marketing for value proposition exercises, messaging exercises, and customer persona exercises (all involving a bunch of important people in a room and sticky notes) — marketing people love Word Clouds because they’re very colourful and kick off a slide deck very nicely. I only bring this up because, as the saying goes, I needed to “set the table”.

At my gym the walls are covered with sizeable words I assume are meant to motivate. They were most likely the result of some sort of word cloud exercise and I can almost see the bowl of candy in the middle of the table used to keep everyone’s energy up.

Excellence. Power. Motivate. Inspire. Performance. Intensity. Powerful. Achievement. Innovate. Elevate. Challenging. Motivation. Competitor. Perfection. Excel.

Coincidently, as I was counting words and scribbling them into my workout journal, I saw a club member walking around with a T-Shirt that bolding stated, “The Hardest Worker in the Room”.

There is a lot to “unpack” here with five or six bunny holes available, so to save us all some time I decided to focus my efforts on this.

Words are important and they drive action; the right words drive the right action and words without action offer little.*

In fairness, I have no idea what the objective of the word cloud exercise was but most of the words on the wall reflect the results that come with the actual training, so I assume they are meant to motivate. As motivators I suppose they work but none of them help me get to my goal; there is much work to be done between the idea of getting into good shape and having cocktails on the beach looking buffed. Words drive action so it is important to have the right words.

Discipline, perseverance, knowledge, resolve, and ownership better frame what is needed to be successful in the gym. And this brings me to my friend in the T-Shirt.

He didn’t look like he spent much time in the gym — he wandered around looking at his phone and I don’t think I saw him do anything (n fairness though, I was spend much of my time working out and scribbling words in my journal). He may have been having a good time being “ironic” but I can only react to what is presented to me, which in this case, was a juxtaposition to what was on his T-Shirt. And in the context of the gym, this represented a complete lack of any credibility or serious competency. A reminder that words and action represent who you are; aligning words and action are crucial.

Sure this is just a fun example of a moment in a local gym but it really isn’t hard to transfer to something more important.

iamgpe

*I suppose I could have just said, “Talk is cheap so get to work” but then I wouldn’t have had any opportunity to talk about Word Clouds or being ironic.

"How are you doing?"

Decades of sitting behind desks, in airplanes or in a car has blessed me with very tight hips which, when not tended to, can be a crippling and painful proposition until the anti-inflammatories kick in. One of my preventative strategies is to walk each and every day which not only helps me deal with the bane of my existence but also gives me an opportunity to enjoy the neighbourhood, and its cast of characters (myself included).

The bows in his legs reminded me of cowboy caricature, like a cartoon character you would find each Saturday morning shooting his way through the wild wild, west; the six-shooter in each hand however had been replaced with canes. It was obvious as I approached each step was a painful venture and as I passed him I nodded and habitually asked, “How are you doing?”

I heard him quietly reply, “I’m not doing as well as you are”.

I will admit this was a number of weeks ago and I’m still trying to unpack and understand the response — was I surprised with his boldness for not offering up the obligatory response to a stranger, was it the realization that my sporadic mobility issues pale in comparison to real challenges, was it a reminder that perspective is everything, or maybe simply that life is sometimes an unfair proposition. In the end, the interaction has reminded me that success and happiness need to be aligned with personal benchmarks.

I can only speculate what his answer would have been if we had met as I hobbled along piloted by an anti-inflammatory haze; probably something different would be my guess. None of this is meant to discount the challenges we all face as we make our way but I think this is a nice example of the importance for measuring to internal milestone because as we all know, at any given time, you can always find someone who is richer, smarter, prettier, faster, healthier or stronger… just check out your social media feeds. “How are you doing?” (or in a slightly wordier form“How is the progress to your goals going?”) can only be measured against the milestones you set for yourself, and these become the reference points when you are looking for the answer. Remember the operative word in this question is “you” and it is “your” progress.

Looking for outside references simply surrenders ownership, and as you probably know, there can only be one owner. It’s best that it’s you.

iamgpe

PS: I hope everyone is doing well and everything is going according to plan!

"It's all about revenue..."

This came out of a recent “Think Tank, Brain Trust, Support Group” meeting, or TTBTSG for short — it’s a trusted group where many things get discussed, and sage insights are given (well, at least on the part of the other members).

Somewhere in our discussions I happened to say “It’s all about revenue.” This is interesting for a couple of reasons that I will get to in a moment but first I want to get to the obvious response from the finance people in the group. There was a little light hearted mockery in the response as it was pointed out that in fact it’s always about revenue. I went on to defend myself by pointing out that lately there are a large number of high valuations out there for companies that don’t generate much (if any) revenue. The conversation died quickly as it was off topic and neither of us had the energy to debate it out. As an aside, what I really wanted to say but couldn’t find the words quick enough, was there seems to be much more interest lately in raising money and debt management than good ol’ revenue generation — it’s actually a good thing I didn’t go there because I am ill prepared to have this kind of discussion, particularly with people who have spent a lifetime in the world of high finance.

What really makes what I said interesting is it’s a reflection of what is at my core in terms of how I define business — for me, it is all about the generation of revenue as a result of marketing and sales activity (and I suppose a nice validation that I have good alignment of my skill sets). It was also a reminder that sometimes I can be loose with my language because what I meant to say was “It’s all about the measurement of revenue…”. I was trying to convey that revenue is important and it needs to be measured — like anything that is important to your broader goals and objectives. In the end, it was really more of a comment scratching at the importance of “measurement” :

Measurement identifies what is needed for success and is a proxy for what you should be (and not be) doing

Measurement requires objective data to determine if you are meeting your goals, exceeding them, or falling short

Measurement establishes benchmarks for improvement

Measurement of leading and lagging indicators is key for understanding progress.

I will always think of profitable revenue first because frankly it’s baked into my DNA but I will also say I’m acutely aware of the other functions that make up a healthy business, and the importance of good synergy. And if I can offer up one last thing for my respected members of the TTBTSG, who I know must shake their heads at the the antics of this “sales and marketing guy”… I’d like to simply say, "Find the galoshes”*.

iamgpe

*a classic sales and finance joke… I will tell it to you sometime.