It’s far too easy to let your proactive strategy, and even the basics of business, fall by the wayside while you respond to short-term results, knee-jerk fads, disconnected issues and opportunities, or even your auto-pilot behaviours. Here are 4.2 ways to avoid all of that.

1 Reflect first, always

You can only intentionally move forward, with purpose, if you consider not just where you’ve come from…but also why. Why that succeeded. Why that stalled. Why that changed. Why that didn’t. Ideally, reflection becomes a lifestyle, because it goes hand-in-hand with intentionally shaping the journey of your business/team/life, rather than purely responding to it. Aim to set aside reflection time at least weekly.

2 Revisit past intentions

There is a never-ending drive for the shiny new thing. In the same week last year, my LinkedIn feed had a ‘stop thinking disruption, start thinking amplification’ ad and, a few scrolls later, a disruption conference ad. What about blockchain? (Please don’t ask me.) What about the applied value of your conference lanyards from last year? Before you chase new knowledge, ideas or initiatives, revisit past insights and intentions. Is there something your business, your team…you…identified as worthwhile, but haven’t enacted? If it’s still relevant, start there. The accumulation of ideas we do nothing with is as bad as the accumulation of things we do nothing with.

3 Re-establish your value proposition

Value propositions morph with time and context. They also exist whether or not you’re intentional about them. If you didn’t ask your market, your conviction of your value proposition may be right off track. And if you once did, are you the same as you were 12 months ago…3 years ago…more? As time goes by, we gain more skills and get better at applying them. For organisations, we should be adding greater value to a (possibly) changing market. Before barrelling ahead, check to see if you’re running off an old idea of your value. If it’s on the money, great, but if it’s not, stop and re-establish what your value proposition is today.

4 Reinstate your priorities

I’ve decided that work/life balance is a rubbish concept for me. Life balance makes much more sense. And what I prioritise to get that balance is up to me. Expand that concept to teams and organisations. They are constantly being told what ‘good’ looks like. However, generic best practice and next-best-things must be challenged for relevance to your context. In marketing alone, it’s impossible to chase every in-vogue idea. Some are wasteful distractions anyway. Organisational life balance is essentially sustainability – where long-term goals and strategy determine clear priorities that aren’t constantly pushed out for reactive reasons. If your year is already feeling imbalanced and unsustainable, reinstate your priorities as your shot-callers.

4.2 Recycle

We really should.

My final advice for an intentional year is to relish the wins, and the journey. Your critical business decisions will be all the richer next time around if you intentionally mark, and celebrate, the strides you make.

Photo by Mahir Uysal on Unsplash

When words are given flight – from the globally renowned likes of ‘just do it’ and ‘I have a dream’ to manifestos known only by their followers – they have power. And, for every few powerful words, millions have negligible impact. Earlier this year, I estimated I had written words of some form for more than 13,500 hours across my career. Here are a few insights I’ve learned about giving your words power.

1. Decide if you need to.

This may seem a little crazy. When wouldn’t you want powerful words? Actually…plenty of times. Instances of pure function need to be understood, but they don’t need to be a rally cry. Often, clarity is all we need as recipients of words. If you’ve ever received a sales email when you’ve already been sold, you’ll understand this. You don’t always need to appeal to the hearts part of ‘hearts and minds’. In fact, misplaced power can undermine effectiveness. If everything you say aims to be anthemic, you’ll lose people just before you really want to win them. Avoid overdoing it if that effort isn’t called for.

“Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say ‘infinitely’ when you mean ‘very’; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.”

-CS Lewis

2. Determine why, if you decide you do.

Note, pen hasn’t hit paper yet. Good…because you haven’t figured out your objective yet. Are you trying to inspire? Challenge? Assure? Get clear on this. It will save loads of time but, more importantly, it will give you some way of measuring whether you might achieve your objective. Decide why your words need power and then care more about your message than your words. The goal shouldn’t be to impress, but to impress upon. It takes more effort, but is mandatory if you want to be genuine. Knowing your objective will also help you know where to draw the line. Great communication should say what needs to be said and then stop – quality over quantity…value-adding adjectives not padding adjectives…sincerity not verbosity. Let your clear sense of purpose drive effectiveness.

3. Make it all about your audience.

Ineffective words abound in written and spoken form. The common culprit is failing to take as much of you out of the picture as possible. This doesn’t mean your powerful words can’t be riddled with self-interest. They can. Sometimes, they should. A less-than self-interested vision is inauthentic even if it’s all about others. But, please, write for your audience. If you care about your outcome, you can’t compromise on this. Caring about your audience is then the difference between patronising ‘dumbing down’ versus thoughtful simplification. It drives length, style, tone, the examples used, the generalisations made and so on. This includes speaking in your audience’s ‘language’ (eg employees), even if your reason for communicating with them is to move them into new language (eg a leader resetting culture). Depending on the context, you may even consider involving your audience in the writing process.

4. Pick up your pen (or writing device of choice) and give it time.

Words with power are words with a strong foundation. Points one to three are about creating that foundation. Then, allocate time based on importance, not length. Vision, mission and purpose statements, value propositions, major campaigns, critical speeches etc, should take as long as they take to get them right. False deadlines are among the bigger bores in business because they are too often linked to ignorance, ego or someone’s inability to manage time effectively. Even things like tenders and award submissions – things that generally have externally-imposed deadlines – can lose out on a great idea that’s poorly communicated simply because people left the ‘words’ to the end. Which leads me to…

5. Recognise that powerful words start at the beginning.

Words that need to be delivered and received with power should be a first responder in any process, because words don’t start when that pen hits that paper. Great words start as soon as you’re framing a problem or opportunity. They start when we are making sense of the world or shaping our place in it. They ultimately hold real power when they are infused with experience. One reason why some of the best books or speeches in history are considered lifetime works is they took the lifetime to get the message.

These aren’t five magic steps by any means. They are more like principles you can follow to hone the art of giving your words power (when you really need to). And please give them a try! You don’t need to be a writer. You only need to be someone who cares passionately about the connection between your message and your audience…for good reason.

Fresh out of The Marketing Conference – Queensland’s own marketing booster – I wanted to share a few tips from the outstanding speaker line-up – and just a few simple ‘tricks’ I’ve come across over the years.

#1 Document your decision drivers.

For Simon Sinek, this includes your why. For David Pich (Chief Executive, AIM) it includes your vision. For Andy Lark (CMO, Xero) and Danielle Duell (Founder, People with Purpose), your purpose is at the centre. For Lauren Fried (MD, Pulse Collective) this includes your brand and values. What is ‘this’? Well, it’s not the bumper sticker statements with no heart that get shellacked to the wall behind reception. This is your set of meaningful statements that get to the heart of why you exist, the value you seek to bring to the world and the behaviours you live by. As Lauren puts it, they become your blueprint and, when done well and simply, they provide a critical go/no-go filter everyone in your team can use.

I had the honour of working with NuGrow, a dynamic environmental company, earlier this year helping their team define their new vision – healthier environments creating healthier communities globally. This (along with some other core concepts) is being used as a litmus test for everything from sponsorships to new business opportunities and, most importantly, is something the team can get behind.

Action point – do you have your core decision drivers set? If you do, are they alive and well and impacting your team’s daily decisions? If you don’t, I encourage you to take the time to map who you are, what you stand for and where you’re going…and give it life in your organisation.

#2 Explore latent demand.

The numbers game of venture capital firms can be packed with insight – at least when it’s led by Thomas Thurston (MD, WR Hambrecht Ventures). Thomas developed MESE™, a quant-based computing system that predicts the likely success or otherwise of start-ups. His insight – if you’re a new entrant and your business strategy is the same as existing offers, and your plan is simply to be better, you have a low likelihood of success. When you have a different business strategy, the rewards and probabilities of success jump considerably. This is particularly so if you tackle the opportunity of latent demand – ie non participants. That’s where you can build up steam and become much harder to beat.

Andy Lark also talked about embracing moments of doubt, dissatisfaction and desire – a twist on latent demand…tackling something in a way no one else is.

Action point – whether you’re starting out or are deep into your business, it may be time to challenge your idea of your market and consider whether there’s latent demand out there.

#3 Prepare for the future.

Yes, as if the present wasn’t tough enough already! But when you listen to someone like Maree Taylor (MD, Colmar Brunton) talk about the progress being made today with artificial intelligence, experiential tech (like the phones that work off a bracelet and a touch screen on your arm) and a shift from ownership to access (seen through movements like car sharing), our ‘round the corner’ is here. She aptly said businesses are usually focused on the next two to three years but the sands will have shifted by the time we get there. We need to start preparing for the future in a different and far more agile way.

This was echoed by Murray Howe (Head of Strategy, Adobe) who said that marketers need to challenge whether they are really disrupting their business because the future is one big upward curve of more change. Effective marketing, as Murray put it, involves the skill of helping a business understand what’s happening up ahead and helping them decide how to respond (or even shape the future).

Action point – Maree recommended the book The Inevitable by Kevin Kelly – maybe as a bit of a wake-up call. Otherwise, grab some popcorn, sit back for an hour (maybe a little unnerved) and watch it here: