15. The Weekly - Cooperating Creatively
On game theory, the client journey and learning the truth.
Welcome to the Happy Medium newsletter! This is where I share inspiration and bite-sized musings on creative business each week. Enjoy!
Inspiration
Things that have inspired me this week.
Game theory
Real life is not a prisoner’s dilemma but the broad concept, that cooperation is the key to long term success, rings true. Cooperation has a multiplying effect, small islands of cooperation proliferate and take over.
Omotenashi
The pursuit of efficiency cannot be all consuming. The greater purpose behind what you do is essentially human, making a person’s life and experience better.
Omotenashi's principles of selfless service, genuine care and anticipation of needs—putting the customer, guest or employee first, not the profit—have the potential to reshape the entire customer experience.
(Credit to Rae again for this one!)
Quick thoughts
Creative Journey
As a client, embarking on a creative journey should feel exciting - you are entrusting your vision to someone with the skills to make it happen!
A good process should feel like a painting; blocking the composition, broad strokes, defining shape then adding detail. Touching base at each point to check you understand each other.
Accurate data is better than good data
Once a metric becomes the goal, it stops being useful. A metric should measure your progress towards a goal, it shouldn’t become the goal itself.
If you manage a team and start reporting metrics, it can cause people to tailor their performance to achieve the metric, rather than the broader goal. The human desire to deliver good news is strong.
Accurate data might be painful to hear initially, but it will deliver the insights you need to resolve any problems, not just mask them. This requires building trust that you’ll use the data for improving on your broader goals together, not blaming or pointing at any individual’s performance.
Another way that trust is the shortcut to efficiency.
Keen to have your business running smoothly next financial year, but not sure where to start? I have three two spots left for 1:1 business strategy support before the end of this financial year.
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That’s it for this week! As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments, or DM me if you’re shy.
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14. The Weekly - Pursuing Happiness
Welcome to the Happy Medium newsletter! If you’re new here, this is where I share inspiration and bite-sized musings on creative business each week. Enjoy!
