This is going to be a really short blog because time is tight for me today. BUT it's an important one as time is at the heart of what today's ramblings are going to be centred on.
You're busy, I'm busy, everyone in the modern British workplace is busy. Quite often because we're all so very busy it's often hard to just STOP, wait, think and consider whether what you're doing is actually worthwhile vs. the reward it will bring.
There are many examples within my career where I have had to do this and sometimes it's tough to push back. There is often resistance to change, but ask yourself, can you genuinely say that every task you've done today has or will return a reward justified against the time you spent doing it?
Businesses are not like Rocky Balboa. Just because you train hard and work hard it does not guarantee that you'll win if you're focused on the wrong thing.
As a marketer I've often been involved in working in and around events and these lovely gatherings are a prime example as to how very often time and reward don't balance. Events can be fantastic, but they take a long time to do properly and can be expensive. If you nail it then their can be clear benefits but all to often there can be an element of 'meh' around events.
Why do we do it? Well that question might be answered by some with a "Well that's how we've always' done it" response, a personal pet peeve of mine and will probably be the subject of a blog on it's own. But let's consider an event that you have a stand at you need to man that stand or pay someone to do it, you need design work and printing for the materials you display, you need briefs and you need to pay for the space and complete the relevant risk assessments etc. A fair amount of time involved in doing all of this.
Now what if the event you've done all of this work for flops, logic would say well we tried to the best of our efforts, lets not do it again. All to often though these mistakes are repeated as activity just becomes the norm in the workplace.
I don't want to be mean to events because they can be fantastic and can provide great business results and superb PR but sometimes there are alternatives.
I used to work in radio and we often had discussions around fireworks night and Christmas Lights switch-on's and whether we should attend. Quite often the discussion would split the room. There was no doubt that the audience matched the demographic. However, quite often these events had multiple stakeholders so gaining brand cut through could be tough. These events were not simple either as you were dealing with a lot of people in a tight space, partners with their own message agenda, and the red tape of the city councils on top.
The questions were always what's in it for us, will there be brand cut through, is there revenue attached to it and can we get the same result doing something else? The final point was always one I focused on.
In all of the research I was a part of not once did a listener say that they changed to the radio station because they had seen us at a show. So the shared PR from an event in front of 10,000 people didn't guarantee to shift the dial in terms of audience.
However, a quality social media campaign could return genuine evidence of new listeners, engagement and reach for a fraction of the time. This showed that these events are often vanity projects and for me a poor use of time vs reward.
Given the drive for quick returns and positive results within the business world it is easy to see why a pressure to get things done NOW leads to a hazy outlook on whether what is being done is actually the right thing to do or if your workload has just become a conveyor belt. You dare not say anything as you don't want to rock the boat or expose your job to risk.
The opposite is most probably true. If you said to your Managing Director that the tasks you're doing are wasting your time and that of the business and if you provide a solution that 'X' will be more efficient with a better return, you'll probably we showered with praise, diamonds and champagne (ok, maybe just praise).
So your homework this month. Look at your workload and really ask yourself if the time that goes into this justifies the reward and if not what's a better alternative.
Comments