Productive vs Producing

Productive vs Producing

We are a culture obsessed with productivity. There are perennial best-selling books like Getting Things Done and planners that let you schedule all 24 hours a day (WTF?!?!) and AI to keep your schedule tight. That’s all about getting MORE done in less time.

Those tools are largely looking to create EFFICIENCY.

Efficiency is VERY, VERY good. Agencies all over are becoming more and more efficient in their production. A recent post from a well-known agency leader (I would link to if it if I could find it) talked about how much more efficient creative strategists and designers must be, because the typical social ad creative generates less that $100. (Obviously there are some that generate millions, but that is balanced by the hundreds that generate $0).

That Got Me To Thinking…

I don’t like the idea of thinking about the specific commercial performance of something I have created. I don’t like thinking about how much more revenue I could generate if I could only pump out a newsletter, blog post or video in half the time. I guess since I have ADHD, productivity and I are only barely acquainted.

Producing Work That Works

Quite unintentionally, and perhaps because productivity isn’t my strongest suit, I always try to imagine what’s the best way I can do this thing with the least amount of revision. That’s because of my ADHD, I am very, very bad at allowing myself time to review things before I need to ship them.

So, I’ve created a simple way to produce while not being terribly productive. I always start at the end. I might spend just as much time imagining what the finished product looks like in my head as I do creating it. When I was new to managing a team, it used to drive me insane when someone asked me how to accomplish a task. Why didn’t they understand how EASY it was - start at the end and work backwards until the start, then GO!

But I realized that very few people can look at the world in that way. But thinking that way is essential to the leadership traits that we talked about in Agency Inner Circle #25 - The Strategic Corporal or in my recent blog post The Leadership Lever. You need to have a sense of what you are trying to accomplish in order to accomplish it.

As you are driving your team towards more and more efficiency this holiday season, make sure that your emphasis on productivity doesn’t overshadow their ability to produce.

Blatant Self Promo

OK - listen - I know you guys are all busy. You are so busy that you don’t get to do the stuff for your own business that you do for your clients - you know, marketing. Marketing is, in lots of ways, where your potential clients decide if you are worth talking to…but so many of you made that your responsibility…and that shiz just never gets done.

I hate that.

I don’t want you to miss out on the sale before the sale, so to speak. I want your market to have the chance to understand you - so when someone shows up on a sales call, they are much more ready to move…and much less “Oh…I am just exploring my options…”

So, I created GEN+ - a team lead approach to content creation and outreach…it doesn’t matter if your team has 3 people on it or 300, we can create a distributed program that gets your team involved in growth - without taking away their focus on their primary job. I’ve done this as part of coaching engagements before, but now it is part of a standalone 12 week program.

In those 12 weeks, between 1 on 1 meetings with me and group meetings with other agency owners, you are going to create a machine that can pump out demand gen and lead gen content and campaigns that will keep your pipeline full.

I am doing a beta cohort starting Nov 12. There are 2 spots left. Want to learn more? Book a call NOW!

Interesting Stuff This Week

• CMOs Are Now Chief Growth Officers - But Do They Have The Support They Need? From Campaign, lots of top CMOs are now in charge of growth, but they may not have everything they need. While you may not be supporting F100 CMOs - do you truly know what support your client champion needs?

• We All Know That The TikTok Is Blowing Up, Is It Right for Your Client? The Drum takes a look at #FinTok - the sub-community on TikTok that Gen Z is enamored with… But, #FinTok isn’t right for every financial services brand…get some insight on what it takes to make it work on TikTok.

• Publicis Jettisons Staff Who Don’t Want To RTO: Publicis Groupe let go of 150 folks and are looking to drop another hundred or so. It’s because all these folks just didn’t want to return to the office. Stay strong, you WFH legends, stay strong.

• Oh Yeah - Chat GPT Did A Thing: Is The Borg…uh…Google concerned about this? I would think that SearchGPT might be causing at least a few hours of lost sleep.

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