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We think agencies are the best. But sometimes they need a little help.

Beware Of Any Tasks That Require a Second Meeting

Make every communication as actionable as possible. If you write someone an email, or leave a voicemail, give them enough information to make a decision. Don’t leave a meeting or hang up on a call until everyone knows what they should be doing next. If you find that you continually need a followup meeting, or […]

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4 Professions That Are Better At Planning Than Marketers

Marketers are the chasers of shiny things. In this field, flexibility can be a more desired trait than being a good planner. Why? Because it’s generally accepted that we work in a chaotic environment. Therefore constant triage is more of the day-to-day experience than dilligent execution of a strategic plan. This is not ideal. Here’s […]

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Why I Want You To Listen To Serial, Hate Mushrooms or Be From My Hometown

Wait what? Hear me out. I spend a lot of time crafting marketing messaging. Always considering the mighty unique value proposition or the key differentiators or the Why-To-Buy statement. You know, standard marketing best practices. And I can’t help but think we might be losing something in the process. What is lost is the reason […]

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3 Reasons Why You’re Thinking About Trust (and Your Team) All Wrong

While reading The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, I was struck by how important the first dysfunction (“Absence of Trust”) is. At first glance it seems straightforward, but it’s not. It’s not one of those touchy-feely issues. And it doesn’t have anything to do with trust falls. It’s a foundational issue that’s commonly ignored as […]

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Why Company Perks Don’t Matter.

There’s a lot of talk about “company culture” these days. Generally companies believe they have culture if they offer employees perks like Ping-Pong tables, Nerf guns, flex time or beer Fridays. But companies who feel they can create culture by simply offering frat-house-style perks, are missing a fundamental understanding of what productive company culture is.

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Improving Productivity By Letting Things Go

I’ve been thinking a lot about quitting. The idea of quitting. When people first hear the word “quitting,” they think of acquiescence, of giving up. They think of quitting jobs, and sports teams, and relationships. But, what about quitting in terms of focus? In terms of how much energy and mind space is taken up […]

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Thrashing: Why Your Project Slipped

If you manage projects of any type, you know what thrashing is. Thrashing is changing things on a project. It’s to beat on a design (or concept) via criticism and feedback. With thrashing, timing is everything. There’s an appropriate time for edits and then there’s a terrible (and expensive) time for edits. If thrashing happens early […]

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Are We Solving For the Wrong Problems?

We tackle problems every day. Different people solve problems differently. Some tackle them head on, some take a step back and ponder, and some simply react with the first solution that pops into their head. None of these approaches are always right and none of these are always wrong. Different problems call for different approaches.

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We Want Less: How The Number of Choices Affects Happiness

We all want choices. In general more choices represents more freedom, specifically more freedom of decision making. And in this day and age, the internet has provided us with seemingly endless choices for everything. There are over 13,044 different men’s shoes choices on Zappos. Netflix offers over 100,000 titles. And somehow this makes us unhappy. […]

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Social Proof and the Netflix Binge Watching Survey

Are you watching closely? Netflix recently contracted Harris Interactive to conduct an online survey about how its users view TV shows. The survey found that a majority of streaming television viewers in the United States enjoy binge-viewing (watching TV episodes back-to-back) and feel that it makes shows more enjoyable. So we all love marathoning Breaking Bad, who […]

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