MICHAEL'S *NEW* PICKS FOR THE 20S
2020 kicked off with a roar. It was lining up to be legendary. And then it wasn’t. But in between the Zoom calls and unwelcome staycations, 2020 saw lots of stuff change, mostly in a good way. Here’s my take.
Helpful is the new social
We all spent a lot of time online last year. And boy was there lots to look at. Some of it great. But most of it crap. An avalanche of listicles promising hacks to make us healthy, wealthy and wise. Lucky us.
Short of Facebook installing a shite filter, there’s not much we can do to stop it. But there IS stuff we can do for our customers. All the content I learned from, enjoyed and shared was the ‘actually’ helpful stuff. So why not focus on that?
TIP: Rather than crafting content to tell customers about you, why not start the journey with what’s in it for them? Be helpful and people will ‘like’ – and even share.
Easy is the new shiny
If you look at the businesses that thrived in 2020, one thing they all did well was make stuff easy. Couriers, UberEats, Zoom – even Netflix. They don’t let their process trip up of your enjoyment of their product.
And people are happy to pay for that. Ask ten people if they’d like their products and services better or easier, nine out of ten will choose the latter. It makes sense. Action is a function of wants and needs, simplicity and cost. So dial up simplicity and you can dial up the price.
TIP: Rather than focus on adding value with extras, see if you can increase the value by taking stuff away. People love easy stuff. And they’ll pay for it.
Data You-ing is the new Data Mine-ing
Another big change from last year had nothing to do with COVID. The Cookie Monster munched his last cookies. That hasn’t actually happened yet. But it’s happening. The days of chasing people around the internet to flog them some beans are pretty much over.
But don’t worry, it’s a good thing. Businesses who use customer data to make their products better and make stuff easy will always be in high demand. But those who use data to stalk and ambush will start to find that it doesn’t work.
TIP: Don’t think what data can do for you. Think what data can do for your customer.
Woke is the new intolerance
On the scary side of the ledger, we all started fighting. Lots. Not arguing about stuff to make things better, but fighting in our tribes in an all-new ‘us against them’. We even coined the phrase ‘cancel culture’.
Do we have some big issues we all need to solve? Of course we do. We always will. But when people go to war on the people who don’t think like them, the problems gets worse, not better. The key to social progress is tolerance and understanding. You can’t build either in a fight.
TIP: Before you go keyboard warrior on someone’s indiscretions, stop and think about what you want to achieve. Are you helping to grow understanding? Or jumping on the wagon to support your ‘tribe'?
Thrive is the new grow
All businesses are in business to make money. But is consistent growth sustainable? 2020 reset expectations on what matters most to most of us. And money didn’t factor much at all.
When we think about life, success is mostly measured in health and happiness. But business and economics mostly look for growth. It’s just the way we do things, right? But should it be? And can it be? Single-factor metrics have multi-factor costs. So what are the costs of relentless growth on people and the planet?
TIP: Next time you’re thinking budgets, ask yourself: would I rather have a growing business or a thriving one? Aim for the latter and results may well surprise you.
Kindness is the new kindness
Before 2020, asking people to ‘be kind’ felt like something your Nana or kindy teacher might say. It was awkward and patronising. But then it worked. We listened, we were kind, and we kind of got used to it. Kindness found its cool in 2020.
“He waka eke noa”, we learned to say. And we liked the way it felt and we saw the real results. But we’re not just in that waka in the tough times. We’re all in it together in everything we do. Could ‘kindness’ stay a mantra when it all goes back to ‘normal’?
TIP: Tough decision to make? Choose yourself a cliché-free person you associate with kindness and ask yourself what they would do. For me, it’s Lisa Simpson.
Thinking is the new talking
So that’s my *new* take on the twenties. Lots like the old one. Just a couple of refinements as the world settles back into place. Refocusing the stuff that matters on stuff that really matters.
If you, like me, like a summary of the summary that catches the themes in a pithy adage you can whack on a slide and share, here’s one: Stop talking about the customer, start thinking like one.
And dialling up to the bottom line, we’re now in a macro-economic climate where any kind of growth will be hard-fought and rarely won. So here’s another pithy slogan to live by: add value, or die. And when you read that through a glass half-full, everyone’s a winner.
That’s what I reckon, what do you think?
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