Communication Pitfalls To Avoid

I’ve killed 50+ ERP rollouts before kickoff. Always for the same 6 reasons. And your vendor will never tell you these. If you're about to start an ERP project, pause. Run this 6-question checklist first. (1) Is your CFO actively leading this project or is IT running the show? If Finance isn't in charge, you're building the wrong thing for the right price. (2) When was the last time your Chart of Accounts was redesigned? If it’s older than your finance manager, you're about to migrate legacy chaos. (3) Are you asking for a “like-for-like” system or rethinking broken workflows? If the goal is to copy-paste the past, why even switch? (4) Is Procurement part of your ERP planning team? No? Who’s mapping landed cost, freight margins, supplier controls? (5) Have you audited your master data before selecting the ERP? Or are you planning a $1M migration with duplicate SKUs and ghost vendors? (6) Did the vendor say, “You can customize that later”? That means they don’t understand your business. At all. If you answered “No” or “Not sure” to even 2 of these, stop the rollout. You’re not ready.

How many meetings have you sat in thinking, "This is a waste. It could’ve been an email or a WA message!" In fact, studies show that 90% of meetings are unproductive because participants come unprepared and unaware of the agenda. To tackle this, Jeff Bezos introduced an interesting approach at Amazon. It's the practice of reading a memo before the meeting starts. Every meeting begins with each attendee sitting silently and reading a six-page, deeply structured memo. As he says, "The memo creates the context for what will then be a structured discussion." Attendees are even encouraged to take notes, and then everyone dives straight into the memo without small talk. I'll admit, I've been guilty of scheduling meetings without a structured agenda, given my line of work. Sometimes it works, and sometimes efficiency takes a back seat. Implementing a memo/agenda system is a change I'm bringing to my schedule. I think it respects the attendees' time and also mine. At the end of the day, time is the most valuable commodity, right? I’m a productivity geek. What other efficiency hacks have you cracked? #work #career #productivity #learning #amazon

Most meetings fail before anyone speaks. They fail at the moment structure is ignored. When meetings work, energy concentrates. Decisions land faster. Progress feels earned. I’ve seen this across high-performing teams. The difference is never effort. It is design. 𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗲’𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗱𝗼 𝗱𝗶𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗹𝘆 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝗺𝗲𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸: 1. -> The 2-Pizza Rule.  🍕🍕 • Decision quality erodes as the room expands. • Smaller groups keep responsibility visible. 2. -> No deck, no show.  📝 • Slides dilute ownership. • A written brief demands preparation and clear thinking. 3. -> Begin with 5 minutes of silence.  🤫 • Thought before talk raises the bar. • It prevents premature consensus. 4. -> Keep it standing if under 20 minutes.  🧍🧍♂️ • Posture shapes behavior. • Standing keeps dialogue practical and time-aware. 5. -> Set a 30-minute limit.  ⏰ • Boundaries focus judgment. • Scarcity sharpens relevance. 6. -> Lock the agenda early.  🔏 • Structure before the meeting creates direction  inside it. • People arrive ready to contribute. 7. -> Ask the quietest voice first.  🗣️ • Order influences outcomes. • Early space protects insight from being overridden. 8. -> End with clear actions.  ☝️ • Conversation becomes progress  when accountability is explicit. 9. -> Cancel low-value recurring meetings.  🚫 • Routine without results is leakage. • Eliminate anything that no longer earns attention. Meetings don’t drain teams. Poorly designed ones do. Fix the structure first. Watch the energy follow. ♻️ Repost to support more leaders leading well and others working better together. 🔔 Follow Ronnie Kinsey for daily strategies on better choices, leading well, and success. 🧠 I write a weekly newsletter with more actionable, relatable tips and tools. Join us here, Free: https://lnkd.in/dDSGKM9w

Tired of being the bottleneck? Speak like a leader who inspires. No one teaches us how to be great leaders. Most of us learn by observing those we’ve worked for. We pick up habits along the way - some helpful, others not so much. If we’re honest, we’ve all used phrases that unintentionally demotivate our teams. I know I have. The good news is that leadership is a skill, and like any skill, it can be refined. We can choose to intentionally use words that motivate and inspire, rather than try to control and criticise. It's a small shift, but it can have a big impact. Next time you feel frustrated or find it hard to inspire your team into action, try using language that encourages collaboration and growth. 1/ Instead of saying: "You need to fix this." ↳ Try saying: "Can you walk me through how you plan to approach this?" 2/ Instead of saying: "Don't make mistakes like this again." ↳ Try saying: "What can we take away from this to avoid it happening again?" 3/ Instead of saying: "Just do it the way I showed you." ↳ Try saying: "How would you approach this? Let’s compare ideas." 4/ Instead of saying: "Who's responsible for these mistakes?" ↳ Try saying: "Let’s work together to understand what happened and prevent it next time." 5/ Instead of saying: "I might as well do it myself." ↳ Try saying: "I see you’re struggling with this - how can I help you succeed?" 6/ Instead of saying: "That's not how we do things." ↳ Try saying: "Can you walk me through why you’ve done it this way?" 7/ Instead of saying: "This didn’t go as planned." ↳ Try saying: "I appreciate the effort - how can we adapt this together?" 8/ Instead of saying: "I’ll just save time and do it myself." ↳ Try saying: "I trust your judgment to take this forward. What do you need to make it a success?" 9/ Instead of saying: "Why didn’t you tell me earlier?" ↳ Try saying: "What can we do to improve communication on this?" 10/ Instead of saying: "This isn’t good enough." ↳ Try saying: "What additional support do you need to make this even better?" Leadership isn’t about having all the answers. It’s about creating an environment where others feel trusted, supported, and capable of success. 👉 What phrases do you use to motivate your team instead of micromanaging them? ♻️ Share this post to help your network build stronger leadership skills. 🔔 Follow me, Jen Blandos, for actionable daily insights on business, entrepreneurship, and workplace well-being.

❌ Most founders fail at fundraising for the same reason they fail at sales: they avoid the follow-up. I was talking with a founder recently, and he shared something that really stayed with me. He wasn’t asking for advice he was reflecting on his own journey. “The way I ran my first company almost killed it. The second? I didn’t treat it the same way and that made all the difference.” His first venture grew out of an academic project. Brilliant, technical, endlessly fascinating. He iterated the product endlessly tweaking formulas, perfecting the science, optimising every detail. In doing so, he avoided the one thing that could have kept the company alive: consistent pipeline management. He didn’t chase clients, didn’t follow up when conversations stalled, and didn’t keep opportunities warm. Instead, he buried himself in technical work that felt productive. From an R&D perspective, it seemed like progress. In reality, the pipeline went cold, and deals slipped through his fingers. That company never really had a chance. Since then, I’ve worked closely with him on his second venture a chemical technology company developing scalable, sustainable solutions for industrial challenges. The sector is technical, capital-intensive, and competitive. The founder is still intensely technical, but this time, he approached the business differently. We've focused on building discipline around the work he used to avoid. He treated follow-ups, relationship maintenance, and pipeline tracking as non-negotiable. Every client conversation, every investor touchpoint, and every partnership opportunity was tracked, scheduled, and executed consistently. I helped him design systems, create routines, and hold himself accountable. He trained the “follow-up muscle” he had neglected in the first company. The results speak for themselves. Conversations that might have gone cold stayed alive. Strategic partners became advocates. Investors noticed his consistency and commitment leading to pre-seed investment. What he once dreaded relationship management and pipeline discipline are now some of his greatest strengths. Through this process, he’s learned and applied a powerful lesson: the technical brilliance that drove his first venture can only create value if paired with disciplined commercial execution. Product iteration alone doesn’t build a business. Sales discipline translates directly into investment discipline. Weaknesses aren’t permanent they can be trained like muscles. 🔥 For me, it’s been rewarding to see him transform his approach and transfer lessons from failure into success. Treating the second venture differently, showing up consistently for the uncomfortable essential work, and embedding that discipline into every part of the business became the foundation for growth, execution, and investor confidence. #founderstories #startups #innovation #raisingcapital #newableadvice

I watched a talented professional send 127 follow-up emails after interviews. Got replies from 3 companies. 2.3% response rate. Then she showed me what she was writing. I immediately knew why recruiters ignored her. Here's the truth about follow-ups: Most people remind recruiters they're desperate. Not that they're valuable. The typical follow-up: "Just checking in on my application..." "Any updates on the timeline?" Translation: "Please don't forget I exist." Recruiters read anxiety, not confidence. After years of coaching professionals, I've noticed: The follow-ups that get responses don't ASK for updates. They DELIVER value. Stop following up on YOUR need. Start following up with THEIR solution. Think: → What problem did they mention? → What insight can I share? → How can I make their decision easier? One client rewrote her follow-up: Instead of: "Any updates on the position?" She wrote "Hi [HR Manager Name ], been thinking about the bandwidth challenge you mentioned. Found an approach that might help—similar to what I used before. Would love to share if useful. Recruiter replied within hours. She shifted from "remember me?" to "I'm already solving your problems." The difference between ignored and responded follow-ups? One reminds them you're waiting. The other reminds them why they need you. Your follow-up isn't about checking their timeline. It's about them seeing you as the solution they can't ignore. People who add value get calls back. People who add pressure get silence. Stop checking in. Start showing up as the answer. PS: For more such content subscribe to my newsletter. Check out my feature section.

Top 5 mistakes that SLOWED my Instagram growth for 2.5 years – I ADMIT it: growing from 100k to 200k wasn’t as smooth as I’d hoped. There were lessons I had to learn the hard way – mistakes I didn’t even realize I was making. But each one taught me something invaluable. Here’s what I learned (and what I’m still working on): 📌 Consistency over quality (unfortunately) We all want to put out high-quality content, but visibility wins in this world of short-form content. When you’re inconsistent, people forget. A long break would undo the momentum even when I had great content. Consistency builds trust and keeps you on people’s radar. 📌 Listening to my audience I used to experiment a lot: storytelling one week, pure education the next. But I was shooting in the dark without really listening to what my audience responded to. Now I’ve learned that they’re telling me what they want through their comments, DMs, and shares – I just need to listen. 📌 Opening up about my life I’m a private person and for a long time, I kept my personal life off the table. But the reality is that people connect with people, not brands. Sharing small things like my skill of the month or my current favorite book has helped others relate to me as a person, not just a creator. 📌 Engaging back It’s easy to post and move on, but the real community is built in the DMs and the comments. Responding, hosting Q&As, and staying active in stories have been a game changer. I’m not perfect at it yet, but the feedback I get makes it worth it every time. 📌 Collaborating authentically I used to feel that collaborations had to be with close friends to be authentic. But the truth is, that collaborations help you expand your reach and build a community. It’s not about showing off; it’s about learning and sharing. Real friendships can lead to real impact online. These were my blind spots.  They cost me time but they also led to growth in other ways. Right now, my journey isn’t just about numbers; it’s about self-discovery and creating content that truly resonates. Let me know in the comments if you want me to share more of such an analysis of my social media journey! #drishtiispeaks #socialmedia #instagram #growth #content #creator

You're not bad at communication. You just don't know when to stop. We’re trained early in our careers to show our thinking. Be thorough. Answer questions before they’re asked. So we over-explain. We add context no one needed. We repeat the same point in three different ways. We soften decisions we already made. We keep talking after the message already landed. It feels like being thorough. But it kills impact. The people who command attention in a room do one thing differently: They say less than you expect. And it lands harder because of it. Here’s what that looks like: 𝟭/ 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗽𝗼𝗶𝗻𝘁. 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗽. Say what you mean. Give the essential context. Then let it sit. Resist the urge to soften, extend, or repackage it. The urge to keep going serves you, not the listener. 𝟮/ 𝗖𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗾𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗲𝗿𝘀 "I might be wrong, but..." "This is just my view..." "Take this with a grain of salt..." Every qualifier reduces the weight of what follows. If you believe it, say it. If you're genuinely uncertain, name the specific uncertainty — don't pad everything. 𝟯/ 𝗟𝗲𝘁 𝘀𝗶𝗹𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗱𝗼 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸 Silence after a strong point gives the room time to absorb it. Filling that silence immediately breaks the effect. The people who are comfortable in the pause are rarely the ones who get forgotten. 𝟰/ 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗰𝗹𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻, 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗷𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗻𝗲𝘆 People don't need to follow your thinking step by step to trust your answer. Give the recommendation first. Reversing this one habit changes how you're perceived in every room. 𝟱/ 𝗠𝗮𝘁𝗰𝗵 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗱𝗲𝗽𝘁𝗵 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗼𝗼𝗺 What a frontline manager needs to hear is different from what a senior executive needs. Calibrating how much detail to share based on who's listening reflects an appreciation and understanding of your audience. You don't build presence by saying more. You build it by making every word earn its place. How do you stop yourself from over-explaining? --- Follow me, tap the (🔔) Omar Halabieh for weekly Leadership and Career posts.

If your meeting doesn't have an agenda, it's probably a waste of time. We've all been in meetings where no one really knows why they're there or what's about to happen. Always attach an agenda doc or at least a clear description when you schedule a meeting. Titles like "Project Sync" or "Team Catch-up" don't cut it. A good agenda gives everyone context, shows how to prepare, and ensures the meeting actually moves things forward. Highly unlikely, but if some or all participants review the agenda in advance, the meeting runs smoothly. They come ready with the right information, prepared to contribute instead of reacting on the spot. For you, as the organizer, writing down your questions, objectives, or discussion points also helps. It makes sure you don't forget anything important. Apart from the usuals, this also - Keeps the conversation on track - Pushes the meeting toward clear outcomes - Acts as a record of decisions and action items By the way, it also lets people decide if they really need to attend, or if they can just give input async. That alone saves a ton of wasted time. Most importantly, it shows that you respect everyone's time. You're not pulling people in "just because" you've thought it through and given them a reason to be there. By the way, if you are senior enough, you can even go berserk and be like - no agenda, no meeting. But yes, until then, start setting an agenda in your meeting invites.