Don’t preach buzzwords. Show amazing results instead.

I spent this morning sharing my experiences with lean startup techniques and “new ways of working” to a new innovation team from one of the major banks in Ireland.

They were quite motivated with the new things they could do to create value, namely by being more customer centered and validating ideas before creating a 200 slides Powerpoint.

Then someone asked: how can we explain to the CxO the process of generating ideas — hypothesis — experimental design — experimentation — and-another-few-buzzwords?

It’s like explaining to someone what is a VHS or a blue-ray disk. Do you really want to know about that or are you more interested in the movie that stands on top of that old tape or CD? Probably you just want to watch that movie.

So, instead of preaching or teaching about the new buzzwords, try to change the way you work and your team and then show those better results you’ve achieved. Someone might ask “why this is so good?” or “what was the process to get this amazing output”? Then you have a chance to say that you’ve used the technique X, Y or Z.

Photo by arvin febry on Unsplash

The use of buzzwords has always a downside of you being perceived as a geek or nerd or someone who just wants to look cool and up to date.

Others might fear that they will never understand that concept or that you are trying to say there skills are outdated. Fear of not being valuable anymore. Fear that you will get all the attention, promotion or their job.

Instead of being the buzzword guy, try to be the change agent. The one that leads by example introducing improvements without talking too much about the process. If the output is good, your method will sell itself. Followers will come.

Another thing I recommend is to take pictures and create videos of the new things you are doing. Using videos and pictures to document the change you are introducing. It’s going to be useful to share those images to start to evangelize others in the change you want to make. You can also publish on LinkedIn or on your internal network. Others might like and share and your new ideas reach a bigger audience. Curiosity is part of human nature.

Good luck.

Hugo de Sousa

Disclaimer

Opinions are my own.