Nov 22, 2023 | Change, Communication
Last week I was copied on an email one of my clients sent to a now former supplier.
It was polite, respectful, thanking them for their service, and wishing them well. What struck me immediately was that it was not in the ‘voice’ of my client. A moment later, I realised it had been generated by AI. There is nothing wrong with that, AI is a tool, like any tool, that enables leverage to be applied to your time and effort. There are many situations where that leverage is enormously valuable. Not using it to free up cognitive capacity to do something more valuable with your time would be dumb, even irresponsible.
However, writing has a crucial and increasingly unacknowledged role. The generation of wisdom and understanding.
I write a lot. There are almost 2,500 published blog posts on StrategyAudit, a bank of thoughts, ideas, opinions, responses, and a few rants about things I believe in. It is the product of 14 years of reflection, thinking, and understanding.
Writing for me is way more than just putting words on paper, or out into the ether. It is the way I explore, clarify, focus, and reason. It is an essential tool in my thought processes that build understanding. It is also the way those ideas are shared, inviting response, in whatever form it comes, building greater understanding in the process.
Over a commercial life of almost 50 years, I have accumulated a wealth of knowledge and experience, the latter often gained at the expense of some pain. Writing about all this has made it much more real, visceral, and readily available to those few I work with.
The machinations at OpenAI, the sudden firing of CEO Sam Altman, and conflagration that is still unfolding will be a tiny ripple in the exponential process of AI development. It will do little more than create some headlines, and the opportunity for commentators who have no inside knowledge at all to express an unfounded opinion. It seems the fight is, as usual, about money. OpenAI was founded as a nonprofit with a mission to ensure responsible deployment of the emerging AI technology. Potentially a fragile mission in todays world.
I worry that the world we are leaving our grandchildren (my kids are all making their own way now) is one where superficially attractive output camouflages a lack of real understanding of the drivers of those outcomes. To overcome this, we should encourage them to read, and write, a lot. Put down the devices and read books, real ones, with highlighter and pen in hand to emphasise the points of new understanding, and those that need further thought and investigation.
You cannot achieve that by skating over the surface, outsourcing your thinking. Using tools that cannot think is no substitute to doing the work yourself.
Nov 3, 2023 | Communication, Marketing
Over the course of writing 2,500 plus blog posts and many articles and presentations while reading widely on the advice to copywriters, usually published by those desperately seeking to sell some sort of course, the commonality of advice is clear.
- Without an attention grabbing headline you are toast. David Ogilvy noted: ‘On average five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you’ve written your headline you have spent $0.80 out of your dollar”. Find a way to insert your key benefit into the headline
- Have an early hook in the copy. This could be a question, surprising fact, contentious observation, a statement of the bleeding obvious, or even a one line joke. All of these will encourage the reader to get further into the copy.
- Employ the bouncing magnet. Everywhere use the device of bouncing from positive to negative, to positive, back to negative, back to positive. For example, copy selling a cash flow service might read as follows:
Imagine a future where your business is thriving, cash flow is strong, and financial freedom is beckoning.
Sadly, the reality for many business owners is quite different.
Cash flow problems seem endemic.
Payment of unexpected expenses, slow debtor payments, losing a significant order, can make life a nightmare.
Don’t despair, we’re here to help you regain control.
Our proven financial management solutions have empowered many businesses to turn the cash flow challenges into opportunities for growth.
It is a fact that many financial advisors and software tools promise the world and deliver little. You’ve been burnt by these claims in the past.
Our approach is different.
We do not offer quick fixes or empty promises, we provide a tailored, data driven plan that aligns with your unique business goals and challenges.
You have a right to be hesitant given the previous promises made and broken.
That is why we offer a satisfaction guarantee: if within 60 days you are not experiencing a noticeable improvement in your cash flow, we will refund your investment in full.
Take control of your financial future today, join our satisfied clients who have seen their cash flow transformed, and dreams become a reality.
- Consider the ratio of copy to surrounding whitespace. Blocks of dense small font copy tends to be intimidating and uninviting to the casual visitor. It is much better to have lots of white space surrounding the copy with numerous paragraph breaks to make the reading of it easy and inviting. If you need evidence of this, copy the above cash flow tool sales pitch, remove the paragraph breaks, and see how less readable it is then!
- Say more with less. Enough said.
- Recognise the first draught will be rubbish. First draft is what you’re setting out to say, the 3rd or 4th is how you really want to say it. There are editing tools in Word, and other commonly used writing software and AI is throwing up new editing and copy improvement tools like mushrooms after rain. Use them to assist the development of your copy. Good writing like anything that is good takes time and effort on top of some level of talent for the task.
I try and do all this in my writing, but generally I’m only able to reach a level I would consider OK. I’m a scribbler rather than a copywriter. However as a means of organising and extracting from between my ears all the stuff going on, it is an absolutely necessary exercise. The quality of the writing in technical terms is an entirely different matter, and ultimately up to the reader
PS. Where do I buy that cash flow tool?
Oct 27, 2023 | Collaboration, Communication
Throughout human evolution, we have existed in small groups, tribes and clans. Individuals have worked together for the common good of the small tribe, and often, perhaps most often, been at odds with the tribe across the river.
British anthropologist Robin Dunbar introduced his theory that humans can maintain stable social relationships with no more than 150 people. This is a theory now so well accepted that ‘Dunbar’s number‘ has almost become a cliché.
The phrase ‘Stable Social Relationships’ has particular relevance in the age of social media platforms. How many friends do you have on Facebook, connections on LinkedIn, followers on Instagram?? For many, it is way beyond 150.
Question: How do you maintain ‘Stable Social Relationships’ with that number of people?
Answer: You cannot.
Social media gets the blame for all sorts of things, rightly so, but it is not the fault of the platforms, it is the fault of evolution.
Our application of technology has run well ahead of our evolutionally capacity to manage it and retain the relationships that made us the most successful species ever.
It seems to me that the growth of private messaging, reversion to personalised even handwritten notes, and emotional engagement of ‘Local’ things is a response to the ‘platformisation’ of our social relationships.
I think it is a trend that will continue and grow.
Now we have the relative unknown of AI coming at us like a train, changing again the basis on which we interact.
Dr Dunbar has little advice on that score.
I wonder if ‘friends’ will ever include Robbie the Robot?
Aug 25, 2023 | Branding, Communication, Marketing
Context. The word is ‘Context’
Marketing is a fundamental contributor to our commercial lives.
It is about defining and leveraging the value you create for another, for which they are prepared to pay, while not being about the transaction.
The beach and Heineken experiment as told by behavioural psychologist Richard Thaler describes beautifully the importance of context.
Two blokes on a beach, very hot, and desperate for a beer.
If they are told there is a shack a kilometre down the beach from which they can buy a Heineken, how much would they pay for the beer?
Same situation exactly, except the shack becomes a 5-star hotel.
The price they are prepared to pay for a Heineken from the 5-star hotel is roughly double the price they expect to pay for the same product from the shack.
This is a classic case of context and expectation; people expect to pay more for the identical product from the 5-star hotel than from the shack.
The utility they get from the beer is identical, only the context of the purchase is different.
How do you leverage the context in which your product is presented to potential customers to maximise your revenue generation?
Aug 14, 2023 | Communication, Customers, Marketing, Small business, Social Media
When my kids dropped a piece of toast, or bread on the floor (almost always spread side down) we used to invoke the ‘3 second test’. This was simply that the bugs took three seconds to wake up and realise there was a feed nearby, so if it was retrieved inside that time, it was OK to eat.
Same with a website, almost.
We are all busy, our attention is stretched beyond reasonable limits, and we have no time to waste. So, when your potential customer is researching, or just loitering on the web, you have perhaps 3 seconds to engage them, such that they have a closer look.
In those 3 seconds, you must communicate three things if you are to get them to pay you any of their scarce attention:
- What problem you solve.
- Who do you solve it for. In effect, a written ‘elevator speech’, what you do and why they should listen.
- Call to action. What you want them to do next.
Pretty obvious?
Give yourself 3 seconds to look at most websites, and ask yourself those three simple questions.
How does yours fare?
PS. For my readers outside Australia, ‘Vegemite’ is a spread for bread and toast we Aussies are brought up on, which the rest of the world thinks looks and tastes like old axle grease.
I bet every ‘Matilda’ has it almost every day!
Jul 14, 2023 | Communication, Leadership
Our corporate culture demands that we forecast outcomes in the early stages of almost any project.
Accountants feed on the IRR numbers, and these outcomes find themselves incorporated into all sorts of budgets for which people are held accountable. They change from being a forecast, an assessment of what might happen given a set of assumptions, to become a set of predictions, upon which people careers have become dependent.
Not a good outcome for building a culture that is supportive of innovation, which by its very nature is risky.
Prediction and forecast are often wrongly used as similes.
A prediction is a statement of what will happen.
The sun will rise tomorrow.
A forecast is a statement of what the forecaster believes will happen. It will be subject to all sorts of variables and new information, but it is the best guess given the circumstances.
I have written many business plans that included forecasts, my best guess at what the future would look like. Those best guess forecasts then tend to become the targets, against which performance was measured. This has usually resulted in a balancing act between the IRR numbers, and the forecasts being as low as possible to get a guernsey. Neither is a healthy way to make resource allocation choices.
If you want a prediction about the future, go to the local fair and pay somebody with a crystal ball to tell you. If you want a forecast, find someone who has records, and a routine that updates those records on a fixed timetable, adjusting as they go.
I strongly encourage all my clients to do a weekly 13 week rolling cash forecast. What always happens is that over time, the forecast of the weekly cash balances become increasingly accurate as the many variables become better defined and understood.
Often it is a matter of the choice of words.
Current governor of the Reserve Bank, Philip Lowe chose to set a specific time frame around his forecasts relating to interest rate rises when he said in March 2021 that ‘the cash rate is very likely to remain at its current level until at least 2024‘. This forecast became a prediction upon which people based their decision to buy a house. After all he is the Reserve bank governor so should know.
Had he just altered his words a little to be more specific about the caveat contained in the term ‘very likely’ to something like: ‘the odds are that interest rates will hold steady for some time‘ it would have remained a forecast, and he might have retained his job when it come to the end of his current contract in September.
For what it is worth, in my view, he should retain his job. He is a talented, experienced and highly qualified economist, not a political wordsmith.
Addendum. Within an hour of publishing this post, it was annpounced that Philip Lowe was to be gone. No extension, pick up your money and go. Nice words all round about how great he was, but piss off, here is the gold watch, go away.
The irony, at least it is to me, is that the current deputy has been appointed in his place. Irrespective of the qualities of the deputy, the job description calls for a culture change in the reserve. Appointing someone to lead that change who is now top cocky because they were able to leverage the existing culture to their benefit is an utter nonsence. A failure of any understanding of the basics of leadership and culture change.
For me, it evokes visions of deck-chairs and icebergs.
