#4 There’s no title this week.
Because I’m off organising some already organised stuff.
Hi,
This is Room To Fail, a newsletter about learning how to become a strategist right beside me, a junior-strat that is constantly (and fearfully) looking for things to do wrong & fail at, just to only get them right the next time. Or the next.
I’m Irina. Welcome and buckle up, it’s going to be a bumpy ride. Hopefully.
Today’s read takes 8 minutes.
🧠⚡︎BRAIN FAILURE
I don’t know about you but I can name this week “Procrastination Week”.
Maan, it feels so tough to get out of bed, couch, hammock or whatever I'm sitting in, put my ass to a desk and do some work. On Friday (or whatever day that was) I even took a 3 hours bath (I usually get bored and cold in half an hour) while reading a book and killing a lot of this planet’s water and energy resources to keep me warmly floating. And the book was about starting a business & being productive. Oh, the irony.
Even though the lock-down started more than two months ago and already eased a bit, this week is when I started having trouble with productivity. I had a lot to work on till two weeks ago and that kept me sharp and active. Now it’s just “Do I really have to do that? Maybe I can do some laundry instead.” But I’m kind of ok with this. I try to be. Empathy, remember?!
Better we talk about the book. It’s Rework by Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson, the founders of 37signals, a software company that created Basecamp - a project & team management tool I use. It’s a nice big-small book: around 260 pages with half of them illustrated. Fast and easy to read, it felt like a liberation for any new endeavour you want to step into. Its ideas are simple and push you to be creative, forget about how things should be done and imagine a different path, set your own boundaries.
Even though I don’t want to start a business (right now), I learned about what’s important to gather into a portfolio (from a business-owner’s perspective) and even some truths about productivity. Basic stuff like: meetings are mostly toxic (yeah, zooms too), interruptions are the enemy of productivity (oh, how greatly I fail at not interrupting myself!), short lists are better because you have a sense of success earlier, sleep more (focused on this one right now), make small decisions to keep you going.
At this point I’m just glad I have this newsletter that gets me to my kitchen table and puts the mind to work. I guess routine feels good. And not wanting to fail at sending this. :)
How do you keep going when you feel like doing nothing? How are you productive these days? I really want to hear from you.
🤯 “HOW DID THEY THINK ABOUT THAT?!” SECTION
This week’s links are for people with ears. (Yeah, Van Gogh, you too.)
Because it’s podcast time! I used to listen to a podcast every day on my way to work, but now there’s no place I need to be. So I’m looking for a proper time to do that in this new life arrangement.
When is your podcast time? Doing dishes, running, laying there like a couch potato?
I have a big library of those, but here are the 3 that helped me most in this newly-strategist-newly-freelancer journey:
Work Life with Adam Grant, an organisational psychologist that has a cool way of explaining stuff, makes work seem fun and feelings about it manageable.
Awesome people talk about their successes and failures & what they learned from both in Without Fail with Alex Blumberg. You can imagine why I love that.
And a strategy one: The Overthinkers with Rachel Mercer & Shann Biglione. I enjoy how these two talk about different industry subjects and they always help my brain unfreeze.
So go ahead, put the headphones on and learn some stuff while you’re procrastinating!
Nope, mostly talking to myself now.
🍴INTERESTING TOOLS TO GET WRONG
This uncertain-weather week: the perceptual map.
This is a framework consisting of two axes, one vertical and one horizontal, that have opposing attributes at their ends. Yeah, that’s it. Take a look at some examples here.
I find this framework really helpful when I try to organise the info I get from (last week’s) competitive reviews. Also, it’s a visual way to explain the position of a brand in the consumers’ minds.
This is a good input of what it takes to start a perception map from Underthink it by Adam Pierno. (How great it is when you read different things and they connect!)
When designing perceptual maps for a brand, we will often draft a dozen or so using different labels on each axis to determine the most useful options. Here, useful means meaningful to consumers and actionable to the client. As always, the more specific you can get with the descriptors, the more powerful the map will be.
“Is this meaningful & actionable?”
“Is this meaningful & actionable?”
“Is this meaningful & actionable?”
That’s how I feel I get closer and closer to the right answer. Sometimes it helps only to get things on two axes for a bigger picture to contemplate at in search for ideas and options.
📚 THE STRATEGY BOOK CLUB
(Underthink it, Adam Pierno - COMPLETED: Y/N, 92 pages)
At this point, Adam Pierno had strategy structured in 3 phases: Foundation, Campaign, and Post. At Foundation you start a brand from scratch, in Campaign the client has a brief and we also write a creative one to the specifics of the objectives, and in the Post phase we measure the results and dig for information that feeds a new campaign.
I went through the first phase where you get all these different frameworks for painting a brand the right way, checking out the competition and defining the personas and consumer journey. Kinda’ like a competitive review & brand pyramid combo. One of the frameworks for mapping competition is the perception map I mentioned above, but there are more. Here are some for a little bit of googling without reading: the value grid (he refers to this one), Michael Porter’s Five Forces Model, STEEP Analysis (or PEST), The Boston Matrix, McKinsey’s 9 Boxes and the old SWOT analysis. Check them out and maybe we’ll talk about some of them when I get to use each.
Because I like to observe people and imagine their lives, the drawing-a-persona part captured a lot of my attention. Responding to why it is better to create a person to target instead of cross some demographics, Adam Pierno gave this great example:
If I told you to buy a Mother’s Day card for any mom, it would take you about 11 seconds to choose one. Find the Mother section in the card aisle, grab a card. This one should work. Or you might spend a few seconds finding a card that reflects your sentiment or style. Now, what if you were buying a card for your own mother? The type of thought you’d expend would be deeper. You know what buttons to push to make your mother happy. The more specific, the better.
So I take away this from all I’ve read this week: dig deeper, get to the specifics, ask more WHYs. After you stop procrastinating.
That was #4. Thank you for reading.
Happy “Procrastination Week” to you too!
And don’t forget to stay curious and keep failing - only to become better,
i.