Category: Leadership

1:1 (pronounced ‘one-to-one’)

The 1:1 is a term given to a meeting between two people.

Here we are talking about the 1:1 between a manager and a direct report – here is where the 1:1 becomes impactful. Impactful for both the people and the business.

Since I’ve worked in big tech, both as an IC and as a manager, the 1:1 has been the most significant tool/technique/approach which has had the most impact on me, my performance and my growth.

So what is it?

It’s a 30-minute to 1-hour meeting (depending on what you both agree is a good length) and you do it every week. And, we prioritise that meeting above all. The rules on cancelling are that the direct report can cancel when they want (even 2 mins before the meeting), but the manager should not.

Everyone does them differently.

When I do them with my direct reports I sometimes have an agenda, but mostly it’s whatever the IC wants to discuss. It is their time, dedicated to them.

We cover all sorts of things. We might start with a general chat like “how’s life?”, we might talk about progress on a specific project, or we might talk about a cross-team relationship that someone is struggling to build. It really could be anything. It’s whatever is on the direct report’s mind.

A few times per quarter I’ll dedicate time to career conversations. We’ll talk about aspirations, bounce ideas off each other, discuss growth opportunities and even make some plans.

For 1:1s with my manager, I mostly turn up with 2 or 3 key points I want to get feedback on. It could be – “I’m struggling with X”, or “X is on my mind, what are your thoughts?” or if I need to I might just give an update on a project which I think is important to share.

Overall, 1:1s are a big commitment. But they are hugely important to everyone involved.

So what makes it successful?

  • It develops a culture of fast feedback. Problems don’t sit for longer than a week, we talk openly about them.
  • It gives you a dedicated channel every week which is dedicated just to you.
  • It builds trust and shows care.
  • And by the manager prioritising it every week it shows that people are valued.
  • I use mine (with my manager) for advice and guidance, and for highlighting when things are not going so smoothly.
  • I also encourage my team to ‘manage up’, they should tell me when I’m wrong and help me understand if I don’t understand something, this is a forum for that.

A simple way to improve your internal communication

A simple technique is the HPM. HPM stands for Highlights, People and Me.

It’s a weekly email that is sent to your manager and/or team or cross-functional teams covering those three parts – Highlights, People and Me

It does what it says on the tin, you write a couple of short bullet points and it should take less than 10 minutes to write. If it takes any longer then you have written way too much.

Examples of what you might cover:

  • Highlights – what impact did you drive this week? which milestones did you achieve? any blockers?
  • People – what’s happening on the people’s side? did your team have any visitors? did you meet with someone and want to share that with the team/manager? do you have some PTO coming up soon and do you want to remind your team?
  • Me – anything you want to share? a personal update? something going on in your life which you want to bring to the attention of the team? any personal blockers? any support you need?

Many teams handle the HPM in many different ways. The best way I have seen is where they get rolled up (summarised) via the different levels. For example…

  • each IC would send one HPM on a Friday morning every week to their manager
  • every 2 weeks the manager would take the H’s and the P’s from their full team, extract the key points and create a team HPM, the difference here is that the manager would remove the M part from the ICs (treated as confidential) and put their own M part in.
  • this would role up another level, and be repeated at every next level

By the end of the process, you have a weekly communication with your line manager and a full team and org HPM every two weeks.

Effort vs Impact

Effort – It should take less than 10 minutes per week to do for an IC. It might take a manager 30 mins every 2 weeks to combine the team’s HPM.

Impact – the individual and the business gets so much out of it

  • Individual – a channel to showcase your progress, and highlight issues/blockers and it’s also another channel to communicate with your manager, which can feed into that weekly 1:1.
  • Team – everyone has a clear sight of projects and progress. Think of it as a bi-weekly team newsletter but in a simplified format.

In short, it improves communication between managers and direct reports, across the team and across the wider organisation.

The Marketing Funnel

Recently I’ve been thinking about and giving advice to a bunch of friends, colleagues and ex-colleagues who want to drive more sales.

Please don’t ask me how I got into this situation, but it seems coincidental that multiple people all asked me the same question in the same week.

The other commonality is they all want to sell more. Some want advice on how to run Ads to sell more, some want advice on how to sell more without having to spend money on Ads.

All of them do not have any awareness of the marketing funnel. So this is for them, and all the people who might find themselves in this situation in the future.

So what is it?

Think of a funnel, a wide open area at the top which narrows down to a small hole at the bottom.

In its simplest form (in relation to marketing and sales), the wide opening at the top is trying to suck people in and push them to the small hole at the bottom which is something like ‘selling a product’.

In more generic terms, the opening at the top is ‘awareness’ and the small hole at the bottom is ‘conversion’.

In reality, people don’t move from awareness straight to conversion, instead they pass through multiple states. Using a basic example from Hubspot we can see the addition of ‘consideration’.

So here, a whole bunch of people are aware of our products/brand, some might consider buying (not all, some), and not all of those who consider it will actually buy. So we have a lot of people at the top of the funnel and a few who actually go on and buy from us.

This funnel can be broken into multiple levels, and there are many different views (as shown in the image at the top taken from Shopify). You can find marketing funnels for all different industries/markets – have a look.

So what does this mean? And what advice have I given so far?

Example 1

In one instance, someone I know wants to buy adverts on Facebook/Instagram to sell in-person courses. The TLDR here is…

  • They haven’t posted on social media for 4 months, and before that, they only had 3 posts.
  • Their website isn’t set up to convert – their courses are split across multiple pages and there isn’t a ‘buy now’ option. Or a buy option of any kind.

In this example there is a couple of pieces of advice:

  • Post more regularly on social media – this will grow ‘awareness’ organically
    • additionally:
      • when people land on their social media profiles – they expect to see it up to date with content
      • it has to be relevant content too, not post after post saying ‘buy our courses’
  • Modify the website to make conversions easily
    • Currently, people would land on a page that has some info on a course, but they would have to look for the contact details and reach out to a person – which is not a streamlined process
    • OR – instead of generating ‘sales’ generate ‘leads’ – make the landing page have an email capture form saying “enter your email address and we’ll be in touch with our up-to-date course information”
      • admittedly this adds an extra barrier to conversion, but it also increases the likelihood of engagement from people at the consideration stage of the funnel

Once this is done, especially sorting the destination/website out, then buy Ads if they still need them.

Example 2

An online e-commerce company wants to know how to increase the number of people buying from its site.

But, and here’s the but… they are asking for sales – not asking for ‘awareness’ (not always a problem but in this case it is).

In fact, they have the whole funnel upside down. They drive traffic to their social media accounts from their e-commerce site – not the other way around. Crazy!

So some advice:

  • Focus on building their social media presence (lots of separate advice on this)
    • they have a unique style and operate in an interesting niche – people would be interested in their social media content – if they started publishing it
    • be clear on the intention of the social media accounts – acknowledge they serve at the upper end of the marketing funnel (awareness/branding).
    • Jab, jab, right hook – it’s a Gary Vee term (and book) – the jabs are posts that offer value to an end user, this could be information, amusement, entertainment, education, etc. The right hook – buy my product.
      • really this should be – jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, right hook
      • this company’s Facebook page is – right hook, right hook, right hook, repeated over and over – obviously with low engagement.
  • Remove any barriers for the buyers – the website is great, the products are great but…
    • One trivial thing – they don’t specify anything about shipping – it’s a US-based company – do they deliver to Ireland? how much? when? etc.
    • This is a barrier for some and when I visited the store I wanted to buy something, I put it in my basket and went to the checkout -but I wasn’t confident they would deliver to Ireland so I quit…

Summary

So there you go, a quick summary with examples of the marketing funnel.

Key takeaways…

  • At the top – Do things which bring people into the funnel – raise brand awareness and get people interested
  • In the middle – Understand the marketing funnel relevant to you and your customers – then do things to try to maximise the number of people who pass through each layer (or minimise the number of people who leave the funnel)
  • At the bottom – Make it easy for people to convert, after all, you’ve worked so hard to get them here – now help them convert!