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Tag: Development

The Weekend Wind-Down #3 – March 10, 2024

Wrapping up a bit of a tough week, came down with some kind of bug, but got through it and had a great executive roundtable event on Thursday. Took this weekend to relax and recharge and finally get back in the gym, so I had a great end to the week!

Quote I’m thinking about this weekend
OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman said, “95% of what marketers use agencies, strategists, and creative professionals for today will easily, nearly instantly and at almost no cost be handled by the AI”. He predicts this will happen with the advent of Artificial General Intelligence, which will happen in around 5 years. Whether or not he is right about the timeframe and usefulness of AGI, I think this reinforces the idea that marketers and other knowledge workers need to be evolving to work together with AI to be more effective and efficient. AI may replace some jobs, and a portion of people from other jobs, just like previous technological advances have. But I believe that AI will be a powerful tool for those who embrace it, not a competitor.

What I watched this week
I meant to watch Slumdog Millionaire before my India trip, but I ran out of time, and in the end, I’m super glad I waited until I’d already been there. I think if I had watched it earlier, my view of Mumbai may have been skewed by the extreme nature of how the movie portrays it, which was clearly for storytelling purposes. In the end, I loved the movie and the city. There is certainly far more to Mumbai than the slums and gangsters the movie showed, but honestly, the movie could have been set in many countries around the world. So I don’t think it was meant to show India in a bad light but rather, it served as a vibrant backdrop to a classic story of hardship, love, and redemption.

Most interesting study I saw this weekend
This study by Ispos asked participants how confident they feel the global economy will be in 2024 versus 2023. The striking thing to me, was that the top six countries with the highest confidence were all in Asia. India, Indonesia, and China led the way, each with over 80% percent confidence. Singapore came in at 59%, while the US, UK, and Germany all were below 50%. How much this variance is due to the economic realities in each country, will have to be seen, but it does point to Asia (or at least Asian confidence) being on the rise.

Ipsos Global Advisor – 2024 Predictions

What I’m pondering this weekend
I was incredibly inspired by International Women’s Day on Friday and the multitude of activities and posts I saw celebrating women and driving conversations around equality and empowerment. I’ve always been supportive of DEI initiatives and had many incredible women bosses, leaders, and colleagues throughout my career, but with a young daughter, I’m paying more attention than ever. And it got me thinking, what can men like myself who aren’t hiring for leadership positions (Forbes found that women still only make up 32.2% of senior leadership roles), do to be an ally? Is just treating women as the equals they are, standing up in the face of microaggressions, and calling out misogyny when we see it enough? Or is there more we can do?

What I listened to this weekend
Speaking of diversity, The New York Times podcast The Daily had an episode on Google’s Gemini AI chatbot, which made headlines in February when users found out that it would create inaccurate images by injecting diversity into prompts such as those for “a US senator from the 1800s”, “a 1943 German soldier”, and more. This seems to be because Google had included some additional prompting baked in, which was meant to counteract the problem of underrepresentation. But instead, resulted in inaccurate images being generated. Google had to put guardrails in place which stopped Gemini from generating images for certain types of prompts at all. The two main factors leading to this result were Google’s rush to catch up to OpenAI and Microsoft, and measures to “force” diversity into the results. Seems like a pretty clear microcosm of the question of how much affirmative action is the right amount.

Biggest marketing learning reinforcement of the week
I’ve always preached delivering value over sales pitches at conferences, webinars, and roundtables – and sometimes have had to deal with pushback from some people who want to pitch in front of every audience. There’s a time and a place for that, and it isn’t at top of the funnel events. With many solutions I’ve worked on having sales cycles from 6-12 months, there’s no rush to try to sell, it is far better to deliver valuable content and build up thought leadership and relationships first. This was reinforced when talking to my roundtable provider this week when he shared with me that many of his clients end up presenting a long slide deck or demo, only to be unable to run similar events in the future because people don’t want to sit there and listen to boring sales pitches.

That’s it for this week, I hope you had a great weekend and are looking forward to next week!

Note: My goal is to eventually move this newsletter to email format which will land in your inbox every Sunday evening (Singapore time). Subscribe here if you want to receive this by email after I make the change.

March 10, 2024
How To Make The Best Of a Bad Job

It is every professional’s worst nightmare. You’ve sent out dozens or hundreds of applications, gone through countless rounds of interviews, finally got one or more offers, chosen which to go with, negotiated your package, and then, a few days, weeks, or months in you realize that you’ve made the wrong move. Maybe the company is a mess, your colleagues are toxic, the job isn’t what was promised, your boss is a tyrant or countless other possible issues. But it is too late, what can you do? You just moved, it won’t look good on your resume to move again so quickly, plus you are already burned out on job-seeking. So you decide the best thing to do is to suck it up, keep your head down, and endure the misery for at least a year or more until you can find something better. But that’s not actually the best thing you can do, in this article I’m going to share some strategies with you to not only survive a bad job, but actually turn it around and thrive.

Focus on what you can control
Obviously, you won’t be able to affect if there is an awful CEO or develop a new product if the current one isn’t making it in the market. But by focusing on the things you can control, you can improve the situation around you. For example, if the processes are super disorganized and manual, make sure the work you do is as organized and automated as much as you can. Find the little things around you that you can control and improve instead of the bigger things you can’t affect and it will make your day-to-day work life better. The more time you spend improving what’s around you, the less effect it will have on your psyche and the stress of big-picture problems. And if you are able to deliver good results in a tough environment it will make you that much better of a professional and able to thrive even more at your future companies.

Photo by kate.sade on Unsplash

Do as much job crafting as possible
Job crafting is a term I learned early in my career and I have implemented it in all my roles, which has really helped my professional development. The idea of job crafting is to influence your tasks and projects and mold them in the way that is most advantageous to you. That could mean diving into an area you want to gain more experience in, focusing on doing things that align with your strengths, or building out strategic projects that get you noticed by leadership. Now this doesn’t mean you can do whatever you want and ignore the basic requirements of your role, but what you can do is prioritize and modify what you are doing to give you the most benefits in the long run.

One example of this I did in my career I’ve already written about here. That was to give myself more experience public speaking and improve my skill at it, or at least get over my fear of it. I was able to craft opportunities for myself to speak in front of audiences in the course of the work I was already doing. Another example was when I wanted to get better at video editing, I started several campaigns that would have video elements, and not only saved the company money by doing them myself but also improved my skills and created some great results.

Start growing a garden around you
At many bad jobs, you will find a lot of people who are pessimistic, stuck in their ways, and beaten down from having been in the environment too long. One way to combat this is to notice who the “gems” are and build relationships with them and help each other do better work and have more success together. They may not be on your exact team or someone you work with every day, but you will be able to see the people who care about their work and want to do better compared to those stuck in the mud. By building each other up, not only will you get better results, but you will also increase your and their morale and enjoy going to work more.

I had this happen at a company I worked at previously where there were many old-timers who were just doing enough to get by and this had rubbed off on some of the newer people as well. In general, the culture was negative, new ideas and ways of doing things were always shot down and it took forever to get things done. At first, I became enmeshed in this atmosphere as well, it’s really contagious! But as I started to work on more projects I came across people who I could see wanted to do more and have more success. I didn’t become a ringleader or anything, but I did manage to work with them as much as possible and it made our work better and more fun.

Make your accomplishments visible
Even if your immediate team and boss aren’t great to work with, you can still build your network for your future career by doing good work and making sure it is noticed. Of course, you need to be balanced and not come across as a show-off. But there are ways to make sure you and your accomplishments get noticed without talking about yourself all the time. Personal branding isn’t just for influencers and entrepreneurs, your personal brand is also about how people see you within your company, and you should be actively working to improve it all the time.

For example, in many of my roles, I have gone above and beyond to help other teams not related to my job function like HR, recruitment, and office management when they had things that would be improved with marketing skills. I have also taken on employee resource group leadership positions to support communities within the company and get a chance to know people outside my function and location. All of these kinds of actions, along with consistently delivering good work and getting your big accomplishments noticed by other teams will not only help you in your current role but also set you up for success down the road. You never know who will move to a new company and remember you as a great colleague and expert in your field.

Photo by Andrew Teoh on Unsplash

Plan for your exit
While you are doing all of these things to make your current bad job as good for you as you can, you still should be setting yourself up for your next move. These days, especially in industries like tech, job-hopping doesn’t have nearly the taboo it used to. It is common for people to move after a year or two, especially if it is in an upward trajectory, it likely won’t be seen as a bad thing to future employers. You should always keep your resume updated, it will also help you with your yearly reviews with your manager when you track your accomplishments. It also helps to be active on LinkedIn and in-person networking. Once you feel the time is right, you’ll be ready to start applying for a better job, and you never know when someone might recommend you for a role, so you should always be ready.

Hopefully, we all have the good fortune of never having a bad job, but the reality is most of us will eventually find ourselves in this situation. With the advice from this article, I hope you are able to make the best out of a bad job and come through stronger and more competent. I’ve also written specifically on how to deal with a bad boss here.

September 25, 2023
Best Strategies for Dealing With a Bad Boss

There’s an age-old cynicism about having a bad boss that has resulted in countless memes, jokes, TV show plots, and more. But the truth of the matter is, whether you have a great or horrible boss, it is in your best interest to impress them and do your best to make them appreciate you and your work. You should be actively thinking of ways to make your boss see your value, actually even more so if you think they are a “bad” boss. I’ve had amazing bosses and truly awful ones in the course of my career, and frankly, I wasn’t able to keep to this goal all the time. But now, with a lot of working life under my belt, I think those of you who are struggling with bad bosses can learn from some of the lessons I’ve learned and strategies I’ve developed.

Don’t take things personally
If you really do have a bad boss, you and everyone else around you probably knows it. Sometimes it may feel like you are being singled out or taking the brunt of the criticism, but try not to take it personally. This isn’t about you, it’s about them. It can be frustrating when you are working hard and doing your best, but your boss doesn’t recognize it, it may even feel like your co-workers and other leaders won’t notice either because of all the criticism you are taking. But more than likely they do appreciate your good work, it is just hard for them to stick their neck out on your behalf.

If you are able to let the criticisms and way your bad boss treats you go it won’t take such an emotional toll on you. In fact, you may be able to see it as a positive, if your boss didn’t see you as capable, or even as a threat, they likely wouldn’t pay so much attention to you at all. Or on the other hand, if they treat everyone the same way, then it really isn’t personal and you can let it go. At one of my jobs, I got yelled at by my boss on my second day, she was explaining how a system worked to me and I asked a follow-up question using standard industry terminology. She instantly started berating me and acting like I was stupid because that wasn’t the phrasing they used at this company. I felt horrible for a long time afterward, especially because this happened in the middle of a sea of cubicles and I thought everyone else agreed with her and thought I wasn’t an idiot. It wasn’t until later when I became closer to some other colleagues that they told me how ridiculous she was being and I shouldn’t feel bad.

Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

Rise above the noise
With a bad boss, or in any toxic workplace, it is easy to get bogged down in petty drama that doesn’t matter. Especially if you are junior, you can get pulled in many different directions and now know where you should be putting in your efforts. I’ve found that it is best to pick one or two areas you know you can make measurable and visible impact in and focus your efforts there. Do the minimum to do what is required in other areas, but make a bet on these keystone projects and be sure to see them through to a successful conclusion.

If you have chosen the right projects, other teams and leaders will see your success, and even if your boss resents it, you will have accomplishments under your belt and have gained good experience. If you can combine this with the last strategy of making your boss look good, then it will be a win-win for everyone and may even start to turn the tide of your relationship with them.

Become indispensable
This is good advice even if you have a great boss, but if you have a bad boss it becomes even more important. And this doesn’t just mean kissing ass and becoming a lackey for your boss. But become a trusted indispensable partner for the teams you collaborate with as well. Honestly, there are enough bad workers in the world, it doesn’t take much to be someone people love to work with. Be polite, respond on time, be proactive, don’t shove responsibilities off on others, bring ideas and your expertise to the able, and you’ll already be far ahead of most people.

If you become seen as someone who is reliable and indispensable to getting things done in your function, even your bad boss won’t be able to get in the way of you being recognized by the overall team. Of course, it also helps to build the relationship with your boss as well, with both bad and good bosses I have done things like going the extra mile to help them with urgent projects, stepping up to do things that don’t fall under my scope and made sure to deliver what they need. You don’t want to be walked all over by a bad boss, but sometimes by doing a little more at the right time, you earn their trust and ease the relationship bit by bit.

Photo by CoWomen on Unsplash

Adapt to them
This is also actually true for both bad and good bosses, but much more vital for the poor ones. Jocko Willink has said “Sometimes you just have to play the game.” and I completely agree. If your boss has some request that isn’t logical or there is a better way, you have to judge which battles to fight, and a lot of the time it isn’t worth it to be right, it is easier and helps your relationship more just to do it the way they ask.

I think this is also really important in a more general sense of your boss’ working style and priorities. In my last two roles, I went from a boss who was very big picture-oriented, they didn’t care how I got things done as long as they were done correctly. And the projects they were attracted to were big and ambitious, things that would be highly visible and make a splash. My next boss was extremely detail-oriented and wanted to know everything down to the tiniest element. They were also super conservative and wouldn’t give the go-ahead for any initiative that didn’t have an almost 100% chance of success. Going from these two extremes took me a lot of time to adjust to, but when I was finally able to adapt to the new boss our working relationship got a lot better and we were both happier.

Make your boss look good
This can be painful, especially if you and your boss really don’t like each other, but it might be the most important strategy. This can be little things, like when you are talking to people about your projects, use “we” instead of “I”, even if your boss or coworkers didn’t do anything on it. I also have made it a point in several of my roles to find awards and recognitions I would put my boss up for, I tried to make them look good by giving them PR opportunities in media, having them highlighted internally, etc. This also may be harder if you have a bad boss, but it feeds their ego, which is the source of a lot of problems for toxic managers. In the end, if your boss looks good, you end up looking good too. And even if they don’t admit it out loud, they will see you are making efforts to up their status and will appreciate it.

With all this being said, sometimes when the boss is bad enough, you just have to cut ties and get out of there. But I believe with these strategies a lot of “bad boss” relationships can be improved enough to at least make them tolerable to the point you can keep progressing in your career and experience even if you are stuck in that role for a while. If you liked this article, click here to read about The Worst Career Advice I’ve Ever Heard.

September 19, 2023
The Worst Career Advice I’ve Ever Heard

I’m sure you’ve heard it as well, “Underpromise and over-deliver.” This phrase is commonly said to get you noticed by leadership, build your personal brand, pave the road to promotions, and make you the best teammate ever. But I think it’s bull. Sure, it sounds good when you first hear it, at a glance, you will be more successful and do better work than people expect, so you’ll look great. But if you really think about it, it’s not only unrealistic, but if you live by this motto you will frustrate your managers and are likely too egotistical to be a great teammate. Don’t follow this horrible career advice if you don’t want your career to go up in flames.

The first part of the saying “under promise” is a surefire way to ruin your reputation. Let’s say your boss asks you to complete a report in 5 days, you underpromise, telling him you need 7. Does that sound like a good way to do things? In other cases, it isn’t even possible to underpromise. If you are delivering an event and you play down the expectations for how great the content and decorations are going to be, what good does that do you? I think this phrase appeals to people with imposter syndrome, who aren’t confident in their skills, or want an out if things don’t go well. If you consistently tell your boss that you can only deliver a percentage of what they are asking you to, you aren’t going to have a great relationship with them.

Photo by Sigmund on Unsplash

The second part of the saying “over-deliver” sounds nice, and it would be great if you could always do that. But it just isn’t possible, realistic, or in some cases even wanted. Honestly, if every time you outperform what you said you can deliver, first of all, it becomes pretty obvious what you are doing, secondly it means your predictions are wildly off-base and you probably don’t have the expertise or handle on your time management that you should. For salespeople, they often need to set forecasts of how much in sales they expect to bring in the next quarter, if they consistently under-forecast, something is wrong and their boss will work with them to fix it. It is nice once in a while to have a good surprise, but consistently being wrong in your forecasts just shows you don’t know your business well enough.

In my opinion, much better career advice would be to “Manage expectations and deliver high-quality work.” But that’s not nearly as catchy. There are definitely times when you need to manage expectations when you know from your expertise that what you are being asked to deliver is unrealistic. It is an important skill to communicate that clearly and effectively while not sounding like you are making excuses or not willing to work hard. If you follow the second half and consistently deliver great work with measurable impact, you will be on track to outperform the vast majority of other workers.

So don’t underpromise and over-deliver in the hopes of making yourself look good. Look good by being good, and you’ll go far.

September 8, 2023
5 Ways to Get The Most Out Of Marketing Interns

Over the course of my career, I’ve had the chance to mentor interns in several different roles. I’ve also had full-time employees reporting to me, but I feel the role of mentoring interns is a bit different, so today I want to dive into the lessons I’ve learned and the best ways I found to make their internships productive for both of us. In Singapore, it is common for university students to have multiple internships of 3-6 months before they graduate, so it can be a great way to supplement your team while you are in the growth phase. Longer internships are definitely better, but if you follow these lessons, you can feel great even about shorter time frames.

Utilize their strengths
Although interns don’t come in with much work experience, they do have transferrable skills from school that you can put to use on day one. I’ve found that research and writing projects are especially good to start with because not only will the intern be able to learn about your industry and solution at the same time as doing the work, it is also an easy kind of project to monitor and provide feedback on. I’ve had all of my interns research and write blog posts as some of their first tasks, and eventually, they even came up with topics I hadn’t thought of before. Competitor research was another area that I had interns work on, and since something like a battlecard has a fixed format, it is easy for them to replicate.

Let them try a variety of projects
I’ve heard from my interns that in some experiences, they get tasked with doing the same thing, like data entry for the whole internship. That’s not an ideal situation for anyone. First of all, if they are bored and feel under-utilized, they won’t be motivated to do good work. Secondly, you should be fair to your interns and give them a chance to learn new skills while they work with you, not just pass off work that no one else wants to do. Thirdly, as interns are new to the working world, neither of you knows what their strengths are or what they might excel at. I had one intern who I started having edit videos, and even though she had never done it before, ended up doing an amazing job.

Leverage their new perspectives
Interns come in with fresh eyes and a different outlook than other employees. If you play your cards right, you can translate that into new ideas and ways of doing things that break the mold of what you’ve already been doing. Since it will likely be the first time they are doing a lot of tasks, they can come up with out-of-the-box ideas that we have blinders to, just because “it’s always been done that way”. In one of my roles, we had a lot of customer queries coming in, we had a system in place to rotate the responses, and it worked well enough, so we hadn’t bothered to improve it. After a few weeks on the job, a new intern came to me with an idea to streamline the process and make everything more trackable, after working out a few kinks with her, we gave it a shot and it worked great.

Provide guidance, not instructions
When you’re experienced at doing something, it is hard not to tell someone you are mentoring exactly what to do step-by-step. But doing that isn’t going to get you the best results, and it isn’t good for your intern’s development either. It is much better to provide the goal, the parameters of what you need the outcome to be, some suggestions on how to get started, and then let them go to work. Check in regularly to answer questions and provide feedback if needed, but don’t micro-manage, let them figure things out on their own. During the pandemic I had an intern who I tasked with creating paid ad campaign reports, I showed her an example of what I had been using, let her spend some time on training resources, and told her how I was using the reports, and sent her off. Within a few iterations, she had more comprehensive and readable reports than before, and we were able to make some critical decisions based on what they showed.

Create opportunities to work with different teams
I view an internship as a two-way street, you are getting the benefit of an extra pair of hands without the cost of another headcount, and they are getting experience and exposure in a role they wouldn’t qualify for full-time. I feel I owe them the opportunity to see different parts of the business and learn how other teams work, not just keep them stuck in a marketing bubble. This will help them later on in their career and may even change their career path. In marketing there are always good opportunities to collaborate with sales, business development, product, and customer teams. By having interns involved in projects with some of these teams they will not only be able to better understand how marketing impacts the business, they will also see what other functions they might be interested in, and give those teams fresh perspectives as well!

So these are the best lessons I’ve learned about making marketing internships most beneficial for both sides. I hope you learned something and have success with your future interns!

September 1, 2023