Disclaimer: This post is inspired by true events of complete failure and bitter humiliation. If you are a kind-hearted person continue reading at your own risk.
We recently hired a marketing manager.
Being a new ‘leader’ I was struggling!
How do I get her to see, understand and be a part of the nucleus of our company?
The core of a company is easy to feel from the inside but really hard to describe.
Our core is user-centricity.
But when I tried to describe to her what it really means, I failed! miserably!
Then a brilliant idea struck!
What if I treat her as the user in this case and create something to demonstrate user-centricity instead of trying to verbally explain what it means!
Came up with the idea for a brilliant article: Once upon a time… A timeless tale of user-centricity
After finishing this I had some doubts.
I showed it to a colleague without giving any context.
As he started talking, all my fears came true… one by one…
- There are so many images I didn’t actually read the first time
- The font sizes are literally all over the place.
- And sorry! But what was the point you were trying to make?
So… turns out the idea was only brilliant in my head.
So what did I do?
Took all the learnings… and create version 2 of the article: REWRITTEN – Once upon a time… A timeless tale of user-centricity
And tested that with another colleague…
This time the point landed!
What’s the point?
Until you get enough practice to intuitively know what works! Test everything you publish to find out what doesn’t work!
Because when you are starting out – you have to get through 200 ideas that don’t work to get to the 10 that do!
And User testing is the only way to find what works and what doesn’t!
If you have read this word for word and now you are wondering What is the bitter humiliation I had mentioned in the first line
High on my presumptive genius, I sent her version 1 BEFORE receiving the critical feedback that lead to this article,
And after the article a couple of lengthy messages on my ‘perfect’ ideas of user-centricity.Now imagine yourself as someone boasting non-stop about how perfect you are when you don’t even realize how badly you’ve JUST fucked up.
Exactly!
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