If you didn\u2019t guess by now, I love\u00a0quotes.\u00a0 I\u2019m also a fan of books, and frequently mark pages to pull quotes\/excerpts from my favorite authors to comment on.\u00a0 Today I wanted to reference one from Seth Godin\u2019s latest book,\u00a0Tribes:<\/p>\n
Managers manage by using the authority the factory gives them.\u00a0 You listen to your manager or you lose your job.\u00a0 A manager can\u2019t make change because that\u2019s not his job.\u00a0 His job is to complete tasks assigned to him by someone else in the factory.<\/p>\n
Leaders, on the other hand, don\u2019t care very much for organizational structure or the official blessing of whatever factory they work for.\u00a0 They use passion and ideas to lead people as opposed to using threats and bureaucracy to manage them.\u00a0 Leaders must become aware of how the organization works, because this awareness allows them to change it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Are you leading your marketing team or managing them?\u00a0 There\u2019s a big difference, and in fact the best marketing professionals around aren\u2019t just managing projects, they\u2019re leading change \u2013\u00a0both internally for their company and externally<\/strong>.<\/p>\n
Internally<\/strong><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The way society communicates has forever been and will always be in a state of flux.\u00a0 Advances in technology, shifts in society, changes in media \u2013 none of these things sit still, and the Internet has accelerated the pace of all three.<\/p>\n
If you want to forever reinforce the way things are done today, being a communications professional is not for you.\u00a0 Tomorrow is always different.\u00a0 But if you\u2019re leading a team instead of just managing you\u2019ll naturally be open to new opportunities, ideas, experiments and actually making the changes in your industry instead of adjusting to them.\u00a0 And that\u2019s a far better place to be.<\/p>\n
It actually takes more work, is more stressful and far riskier to always play catch-up and adjust last minute than to be the innovator.\u00a0 Need an example?\u00a0 Look no further than the newspaper industry.\u00a0 Imagine if they had been innovating from the beginning \u2013 they might not have\u00a0given away all the free meals\u00a0they have, as Robert Scoble notes:<\/p>\n
Free meal #1. Giving away classified advertising to\u00a0Craig\u2019s List.
\nFree meal #2. Giving away photography to\u00a0Flickr\u00a0(look at\u00a0the photos from the Chinese Earthquake, why didn\u2019t this happen on a newspaper branded site?).
\nFree meal #3. Giving away front page news to blogs like\u00a0Huffington Post.
\nFree meal #4. Giving away \u201csmall\u201d community news like births, deaths, birthdays, etc to\u00a0Facebook.
\nFree meal #5. Giving away real-time news to\u00a0Twitter.
\nFree meal #6. Giving away news distribution to\u00a0Google News\u00a0and Amazon Kindle, among others. With new sites like\u00a0Kosmix\u00a0coming on strong (hundreds of percent of growth month over month).
\nFree meal #7. Giving away restaurant reviews to\u00a0Yelp.
\nFree meal #8. Giving away traffic information to\u00a0Google Maps.
\nFree meal #9. Giving away celebrity news to\u00a0Facebook\u00a0and\u00a0Twitter. (Why is Oprah on both of those, and why didn\u2019t the newspaper industry lock up Oprah and keep her on a newspaper brand?)
\nFree meal #10. Giving away local news to\u00a0Topix\u00a0(at least that was funded by a newspaper brand).
\nFree meal #11. Giving away business news to\u00a0Yahoo Finance\u00a0and\u00a0Google Finance\u00a0(and something new that will get announced tomorrow).
\nFree meal #12. Giving away news ranking to\u00a0Memeorandum.
\nFree meal #13. Giving away astrology to\u00a0Astrology.com.
\nFree meal #14. Giving away comics to\u00a0Comics.com.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nIf\u00a0 newspaper industry executives had been leading instead of managing, they would have been the catalyst of change instead of late to the party.<\/p>\n
By leading instead of managing, your team will be excited about the path you\u2019re blazing and embrace communications for what it should be:\u00a0 a forward-thinking, creative profession.\u00a0 Do this in a way where everyone knows their voice is not just heard, but valued, and you\u2019ll foster an environment lush with ideas and interested in staying at the edge.\u00a0 Great ideas do not simply come from the top, in well-functioning teams they come from all directions.\u00a0 Managing simply does not foster this type of environment in the way that leading does.<\/p>\n
Externally<\/strong><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
To be a truly great marketer it is now necessary to lead a tribe yourself externally of your organization.\u00a0 The web provides tools that make this simple \u2013 the real skill set has always been and will always be marketing ability.\u00a0 Combine that with dedication, patience and\u00a0passion\u00a0and you can\u2019t lose.\u00a0 There are not many good excuses to not be doing this, and so many real benefits:<\/p>\n
\n
- Building a following shows you are genuinely interested in sharing ideas\/helping people and speaks to your character.<\/li>\n
- Creating a valuable and trusted network from scratch using the web is such an incredible learning process involving the use of many different skill sets, why would savvy organizations hire those who have not done this personally (while their clients and\/or stakeholders seek it)?<\/li>\n
- The old processes are becoming less and less effective, while those who continually\u00a0experiment\u00a0are learning and gaining a real advantage in the marketplace.\u00a0 If you have your own network personally, it\u2019s the perfect place to test ideas and take what you learn there to help others.\u00a0 The web is the\u00a0ultimate scratchpad for passionate communications professionals.<\/li>\n
- The process is one of the most fulfilling you\u2019ll experience as a marketer, and you\u2019ll get to concurrently help others while changing your industry for the better.\u00a0 That\u2019s win-win.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Now and even more into the future, marketing teams that manage but don\u2019t lead will be made irrelevant by those with strong leaders who inspire both internally and externally.\u00a0 As more possibilities open up every day and the\u00a0business digital divide\u00a0grows, strong leadership which encourages their team to stay at the edge (while producing results) becomes the key to winning in any economy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If you didn\u2019t guess by now, I love\u00a0quotes.\u00a0 I\u2019m also a fan of books, and frequently mark pages to pull … <\/p>\n