... and thinking it will last forever is a big mistake.
There are some marketing and sales tricks I try to teach my kids at work*. Here are a few.
- When there's a problem that needs to be solved, go into the meeting with your candidate solution ready. Almost no one else will have done so. You may not leave with everything you want, but chances are you'll get 80% of it.
- When you brief a VIP, have someone sit in the room and write down the questions they ask. Nothing else, just the questions. No one asks about things which don't matter to them. In a 30-minute presentation, you will get a very good idea of what motivates the VIP.
- Whenever you go into a meeting, whether you're the leader or not, start out by asking the participants to finish this sentence: "At the end of this meeting, we will have ____." That forces everyone to focus on the purpose of the meeting and cuts down on twigging.
Ohioan will doubtlessly have others to add.
The top-level lesson is to always have a set of goals. What is it you're trying to accomplish? Each meeting, each briefing, is an opportunity to get closer to those goals. Don't waste them because you can't get them back.
With that in mind, take a listen to just a few minutes this struggle session. Here's the tweet with some reference points about it. I don't know who these people are and I'm not suggesting they're real movers and shakers, but they sound a lot like our local teachers' union reps, our school board, the SJWs at work and so forth.
They are completely misreading the moment and wasting absolutely irreplaceable leverage. This won't last and when it goes away, it won't come back again.
Davy Jones of the Monkees used to tell a story about being in the cast of Oliver! wherein he was nominated for a Tony Award. The thing was a smash hit and he was very young. At a penthouse party in NYC, he found himself looking out over the city with Liza Minnelli at his side. She told him to soak up the moment because successes like that were so very rare.
I've been struggling on this blog for quite some time to make sense of the racial madness, but I've been looking at it from the wrong end. What should the SJWs be doing with their fleeting moment of power? What can you divine from what they're doing? These three things hit me as soon as I thought about how one might make use of the enormous leverage they've got.
- If you wanted to make a positive difference for the average person, you'd fight for the family. It's the key to life in their communities. Push back on the cultural degenerates. Imagine going on Jimmy Kimmel's show and saying that he and his industry need to stop feeding cultural trash to the public. What could he say? You're the one of the Sacred Ones and you cannot be criticized. This is your moment to turn the ship around.
- There's absolutely zero organization at work here. Oh sure, there's BLM and all sorts of other hangers-on, but outside of grift for the individuals and maybe the sugar rush of some kind of reparations, no lasting change will occur. They have no substantive goals. Fighting hate, fighting an emotion, is like fighting the fog. You can't characterize success sufficiently to accomplish anything real.
- My final conclusion is that everyone is in it for themselves. In the call linked above, most of the participants seem to want to insult and belittle others. Seriously? You've got practically unlimited power and all you want to do is waggle your head and shake your finger at people? That's it? Pathetic.
Amateurs!
Bonus Analysis: The worst part is in the content of that call and point number 3 above. By sneering at others, they are actively shortening their moment of power in exchange for absolutely nothing. Unbelievable.
Solar-powered Garden Sensors
Chatting with some fellow geeks last night, we discussed using solar cells to power a Raspberry Pi. This morning, I ordered a set of soil moisture meters that connect to a Pi. Add a solar cell and a case and I can monitor my raised beds from a web page.
Speaking of that, my TomatoCam now posts its photos to a website I've got within the Catican Compound network. I've only got four pictures, so there's not much change happening, but within a few weeks, there ought to be a visible difference.
My Raspberry Pi 3 shows up tomorrow, so I'm hoping to have it take photos using my Nikon D3500 Artillery Piece by the end of the week. Hurrah!
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| I need a Raspberry Pi to manage my garden. Lord knows these three aren't going to be any help. |
* - Everyone in the office is young enough to be my child. Or maybe I'm old enough to be their dad. Whatever.
I jumped to 2:45 where they shout down Brett Weinstein.
ReplyDeleteI have no idea why anyone would participate, or even listen, on Clubhouse with these crazy, stupid people.
Why is Brett participating in this stuff? It's like deliberately wearing a "Kick Me" sign.
ReplyDeleteKT - Guilty. I do have a couple of things that you are free to steal and use to teach the kids.
ReplyDeleteFirst, if you are the speaker, remember "It is called a 'brief' for a reason." I cannot overemphasize how important this is. There have been times when a speaker goes on and on, and all they do is hurt their case (or, as you have been heard to say, "Never talk past the point of sale"). Heck, you've seen me start flipping the speaker's slides to move them along. Those never end well.
The second is harder but it dovetails into your first lesson. Although having a solution ready is great, never, Never, NEVER offer it until all those who are movers and shakers have had their say (some might even need to have two 'says' - KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE). Take notes as they speak/drone/ramble/pontificate. Use those things they say that fit into your solution as a brief prelude to and make it clear that they are the impetus for the solution. Sure it's conniving, sneaky, and underhanded. But it works!
"they are actively shortening their moment of power in exchange for absolutely nothing. Unbelievable."
ReplyDeleteJust to be clear here, aren't you talking about your political opponents? You are phrasing this as if you disapprove of people you don't agree with losing their moment in the spotlight, and the social trends that you hate gradually dissipating into irrelevance. Shouldn't you be pleased about it?