With the new year now in full swing and the recent holidays already an almost distant memory, everyone is pushing to get things done.
The dozen calls with sales pitches I used to receive by mid-morning show the redoubled efforts - they are as many more.
There is an insistence, an urgency in the voices, the messages and the emails. Not quite desperation, but very close to it.
The type is bolder, the voice is more forceful. Everyone is shouting - pick me, buy my stuff, sign up here! The sense of urgency is good, the energy is misplaced.
Because what is louder than a shout? A whisper. Social media is a way to get next to your customer and speak only with them. Whispering is intimate. It's done up close. And it's closely related to listening.
Getting things done is good - but are they the right things?
With so much noise and so little signal these days, it's getting easier to tell what is not going to work - for those who are paying attention, who are dialed in it is quite obvious. Not so for the others. They are busy turning the volume up even louder and diminishing their returns with it.
There needs to be balance between getting things done and leading.
Whenever things swing one way, there can be a big backlash - too many leaders and nothing gets done. Too many people getting things done and nobody is leading. I included the magic quadrant up top. Feel free to use it as a reminder that it is within our control to care for the micro-interactions.
Micro-interactions become the context in which customers experience us. By customers I mean everyone you touch in a day. If we care to excel at executing the balance in small ways, we can scale to envelop entire businesses, and the marketing results that go with them.
We're human, we like to copy what others are doing - let's start by giving people the right things to copy.