Improvisation #2 on Reflecting and Scaling
Speak about what you did to grow and flourish
At some point in your life, you have probably heard some variation of: “If you can teach it, you know the subject. You’ve internalized it.” In an educational context, this stems from Edgar Dale’s Cone of Experience. The cone outlines how much information you retain based on what sense is involved in the learning.
By the way, Dale’s Cone of Experience isn’t really his cone! Data and numbers on learning retention have been floating around publications for decades before Dale put it in a somewhat misleading graphic. Lubos Janoska wrote an interesting article about it (if you want to geek out).
But I’m getting off track here. Really today’s improvisation is about extending the ‘age-old-wisdom’ to: ‘If you can teach it, you can replicate it.’ In a business: ‘if you can “teach” it, you can scale.’
If you’re still with me after that tangent in the intro – Thank you! You’re my hero and I appreciate your patience.
Dog Training and Building in Public
This has been on my mind since we had our dog trainer over a few months ago to help us with Dash’s lead behavior. He has been pulling and trying to dash of into different directions which made walking with him more of a chore than a joy. After a 30-minute walk with the trainer, he walked happily by her side paying 80% of attention. Once we were back inside, she started to speak about the walk and reflected specifically on what she did. As she spoke, more and more insights emerged that I wouldn’t have been aware of otherwise. Now, every time I take Dash for a walk, I try to follow her steps as she described it after. Lo and behold, his walk has improved significantly over the last few months!
Not that different from our dog trainer reflecting on her methods in our kitchen and getting feedback on our observations is the practice of ‘building in public’. Many product managers, developers, and entrepreneurs are sharing their experiences about building their solutions with followers on TikTok, LinkedIn, Medium, Discord, and many other places. These stories sometimes result in a considerate hype around the entrepreneur and their idea. Words like ‘authenticity’ and ‘examples’ are thrown around quickly without much digging into the data behind it.
Often, we are shown only the successes and impressive numbers, or the stories of failure, missteps, and hurdles are milked for everything they’re worth. There is a cautionary tale to be told that you should take these experiences with a grain of salt and definitely not as a blueprint on how a project will work out for you. Someone who I’ve been enjoying following on LinkedIn is David Sardi. He is building a LinkedIn analytics solution called Fruitful and openly shares his data and stats with the community. He exudes passion and commitment to transparency.
In addition, his narrative allows for comparison without sliding down into a rabbit hole of despair and inspires to take action on LinkedIn if you’re so inclined.
What about Marketing and Comms?
There is something to be said about the act of reflection and by extension intentionally teaching others. How you do it matters just as much as doing it. Giving people quick growth hacks and templates to follow for their success is never going to work long-term. There still remains a certain sense of mystery for me around many of the concepts and actions in Marketing and Comms. Marketers are seemingly obsessed with their numbers, KPIs and data, but we rarely talk through how they got there.
And no, I don’t mean the: ‘How I got my client six figures in revenue in these 5 steps!’ narrative. Most of the time that’s simple, reductive, bullsh*t. I don’t contest the verity of the statement but the likelihood that those 5 steps will work for their audience is low.
Unless of course you buy their courses that will teach you just how to get there 🤣
Putting out your wins is great, but you need to reflect on how you got there. Not publicly, unless you want to, but maybe it’s in a conversation with your client or team. They can then add to what you might not have considered. In the theater and performing arts world, I have encountered this practice in the form of a post-mortem.
For example, .beyondcomms has been working with Vancis Capital for over 12 months and in that time, we have generated a 98.8% ROI, 663% increase in web visitors, and 30% of growth on social media. How did we do this? By creating and then implementing a brand strategy for the company. Yes, we created content pillars and systems, ads and creatives, updated their website and branding, but it all comes down to this initial strategy and a relentless (and I mean relentless) implementation without wavering. That’s what it boils down to in the end.
If you don’t know what you did, then how are you going to scale?
Back to our ‘not-so-accurate’ Cone of Experience by Dale. What we can take from the cone is the idea that sharing information in a way that others are likely to retain it, will inevitably make us remember more of it. Similarly in business and branding, if you don’t know what you did right or wrong, you won’t ever be able to scale your business. Reflection AND sharing become key activities.
From my biased perspective Brand Strategy plays a crucial role here. The process of creating the strategy forces you to reflect on what you did in your business and then iterate your brand throughout your company for sustainable long-term success. Not only will a strategy lead to legacy documents that you can share, but in the process of creation, you have to unravel and untangle what makes your business special. What are the processes, messages, and values that make the business unique. Is it your team that sets you apart? Or is it how you approach working with clients? Maybe you have an incredibly simple and fast process.
Once you gain clarity on that, you can begin to work on the right messaging and positioning. (But that’s for another article)
Beside these more fundamental activities such as a brand strategy, it simply starts with managing your team or vendors. You can either:
1) tell them exactly what you want and how you want it done
2) tell them the outcome you’re expecting and the why so that they can find their own way through their process
I wrote a little about this in the last improvisation on Prompting and the creative brief, in case you wanted to dig a bit deeper into the mechanics.
Afterwards, have them reflect on their process so that you can collectively learn, improve, and reiterate.
Reflection doesn’t always have to be a ‘building-in-public’ effort. You can reflect by yourself through journaling, meditation, or in your company through team meetings, internal retreats, or simple email chains.
The sharing or ‘teaching’ part can come in many ways too, whether that is saying what exactly you reflected on or implementing your learnings into a new process in your business.
No matter, what version will suit you best based on your circumstances, make sure you do integrate this practice into your day-to-day. It’ll open up new avenues for growth – professionally and personally.