One of my favourite things to do for clients is to help them redo their salesletters.
Your sales letter is your marketing dojo. It’s where we start to find out how clear you are.
Marketing is about translation. You’re trying to communicate something you know intimately well from the inside to people on the outside. And that’s not always as easy as it seems.
The following piece is a sales letter I did with my clients Daniel and Cecile of Round Sky Solutions for a seven week course they were running called Mission Traction.
What you’ll read first is the original letter with which they came to me. Indented, you will read my comments on the letter. Then you’ll read a redo of the letter with my commentary as to why I made the changes I did.
You can read of my thoughts on writing a good sales letter (including more examples of sales letter make overs) here.
I hope reading this will help give you some insights onto how to articulate your own work with more clarity. And if you want help to write your sales letter, I can’t recommend anything more highly than Carrie Klassen’s ebook on the subject (NOTE: This eBook is not currently available as she is in the process of rewriting it but click on the link here to get on her advance notice list).
An important note: writing sales letters is incredibly difficult. We are so close to what we do and, after a few drafts of it, it is virtually impossible to see it clearly. Most of us, myself included, can benefit immensely from some outside, considered and thoughtful feedback from someone who knows what they’re talking about (if you’d like me to look over your sales letter, my rates are here). My feedback may seem terse, sassy and mocking at times but what I’m trying to convey is my honest reaction upon reading it and what I imagine will be the visceral reaction of their ideal client reading it. It’s so incredibly important that we are real with ourselves about how our marketing is received. I go over the top to make a point. Daniel and Cecile are two of the loveliest and most sincere good hearted people. But, I suppose this proves the point: we can be such good people and our marketing can still miss the mark.
Also, the new draft we came up with isn’t perfect. There is still work to be done – but we did the best we could given the time constraints with which we were working. But the progress is enough that it makes an excellent case study in two areas in particular: 1) how much jargon can create confusion and 2) the power of a good metaphor in your marketing.
Original Sales Letter:
Mission Traction:
Build Skillful Means to Drive Effective Change
So, here is problem number one. The headline confuses me. What does ‘Mission Traction’ mean? I have no idea… And then ‘Build Skillful Means to Drive Effective Change’. This sounds so wordsmithed. So polished. But I have no idea if this is relevant to me. And this is the very, very, very, very, very first thing that needs to be established in a sales letter – relevance. Can this help me with a problem I’m facing? Or help me get a result I want? I have no idea.
Join us for this 7-week online course for change makers who are looking to increase their effectiveness and develop the skills for working adeptly with widespread resistance to change.
A 7 week online course! Ok! I know what it is! But who are change makers? Am I one? I don’t know. It promises I’ll be better at working with ‘widespread resistance to change’ which would be amazing… if I had any idea at all what they were talking about. What kind of change? What kind of resistance? #fuzzinessisnotyourfriend
At our best, we feel energized and curious, creative and open. Our work in the world is an expression of our highest values, and it sustains and inspires us.
At our best? Who’s best? We still haven’t established who this letter is to so I have no idea what that means. Or the rest of that line. Because I don’t know this, it sounds jargony. And sure, that might be true in a generic sense but why do I care?
We show up fully in our working relationships and respond effectively to challenges, and as a result, we see ourselves making a positive impact on the world around us.
Who is we, again?
When our way of being and working is generative, we can feel ourselves learning and see our core competencies increasing. We can handle more complexity, we display greater wisdom, and we meet and exceed our highest priority milestones.
And here comes the jargon. What does generative mean? And ‘way of being’ for that matter. At this point, the confusion is building and it’s a downward spiral. Core competencies? Highest priority milestones? This is a lot of industry jargon – words that mean so much to the person writing the sales letter and next to nothing for the person reading it. Remember: the confused mind says ‘no’.
Our working relationships are more rewarding, and as a result, our engagements are more collaborative and more productive.
Engagements with whom? And who am I again?…
At our best, we wake up every day with a sense of momentum that grows because we can see ourselves making real, tangible and meaningful progress.
I do? But I don’t even know who I ammmmmmm… Tell me who I am, I beg of you kind sir. You can’t keep me shackled in this Dungeon of Confusion forever you monster!
When we marry our vision and values with a demonstrated ability to make lasting and effective change in the world, we get to experience the unparalleled fulfillment of having TRACTION.
Was that phrase generated by the Dilbert industry-speak jargon generator? This sounds so wordsmithed again. A good sales letter is conversational. It should read at a 12 year old level. Simple words.
What makes a change leader effective?
Aha! I’m a change leader! … whatisthat?
When your personal and organizational systems are optimized to remove process obstacles, your creativity, strategic thinking and capacity to magnify key leverage points increases.
(brain explodes from jargon overload)
What makes a team collaborative?
(please. whatever it is. find it. i beg of you. you’ll need a team to put my brains back in my head).
When you and your team are liberated from inefficiencies and bureaucratic inertia, you feel empowered by a clear sense of purpose and direction, your confidence increases, and you have more energy available to focus on highest leverage priorities.
(he stared vacantly into the distance. his torturers attempts to inflict more confusion and pain had no effect. he could feel his soul slowly drifting from his body as the sun set outside the centuries old dungeon window. it wouldn’t be long now. he smelled toast).
Can an organization become a source of energy and inspiration for its members?
I no longer care.
When the system you’re working in is set up to support fluidity and agility, it allows you to be clearer and more centered in your intentions, more organized in your approach, and lets you increase the time you spend on the projects that matter most.
(sound of a heart monitor flatlining)I recommended they cut the whole section above out of the next draft of the sales letter which, blessedly, they did. Nothing in that section did anything to establish relevance. And, this is the key bit, I really have no idea who I am as the reader. I don’t know who it’s for and so I don’t really understand the overall context.
How can we respond better to complexity?
Of this sales letter? I hope you’ll tell me. Some other complexity? I really, genuinely have no idea.
When the human dimension of your work life is fine tuned for greater flow, you get along better—and making better mission-aligned decisions—with your business partners and colleagues.
Jargon: human dimension, greater flow, mission-aligned decisions. 29 words in that sentence and 7 of them were jargon. If your sales letters are 25% jargon then stick a fork in it because it. is. done. (but like, not ‘good done’. Bad done).
Liberated from bottlenecks and inefficient bureaucracies, we feel more appreciated for the work we do. We can trust that others are going to follow through on their commitments and depend on the systems around us to set us up for success.
Jargon: Liberated from bottlenecks and inefficient bureaucracies (such as what? give me details that help me understand), depend on the systems around us to set us up for success (which system? what kind of success?)
Traction is a deeply fulfilling and effective alignment between your personal vision, approach, your behavior, and your environment.
When your working environment is organized in service of your highest priorities, you experience a “virtuous cycle” of effectiveness. As you see yourself gaining traction, you gain energy and your capacity and skillfulness grows exponentially.
“And the award for most jargon in a salesletter goes to…. ROUND SKY SOLUTIONS!!! Oh my god! Get up here!” (swelling theme music ensues).
You may be a director, organizer, facilitator, advocate, intra/entrepreneur, coach, or consultant. But no matter where you find yourself, what defines your work is that you are mission-driven. You are committed to creating a sustainable, healthy, and socially just planet.
Now I know who I am!!! Why didn’t you tell me this sooner you sadistic bastards… The words above would have made so much more sense. They do a really good job here of giving very specific names to the kinds of people their work is for. This is critical: your marketing must make clear, immediately, who it’s for. When you name them precisely, you don’t to hype things up. You don’t need jargon. You can whisper your message and people hear it. So, in a sales letter, these kinds of words should be very, very near the top (if not in the headline).
You have an inspiring vision and hard-working, well-developed talent. Yet, like so many change catalysts, you face a unique struggle: the path can be painfully hard to walk.
Okay. You’re winning me over a bit. It can be hard.
In spite of your efforts, you feel like you continue to struggle to bridge the gap between the overwhelming need you see, and vision you’re trying to bring to life.
I think I understand from your sort of confusing words that you’re empathizing with me.
Chances are, you’ve struggled to deal with inefficient processes and procedures that can’t change, or leaders who bottleneck team operations. And it’s likely that you’ve been frustrated by decision-making processes that don’t seek enough input or are dominated by strong personalities.
Again, your strange words confuse me but I think you’re meaning to say that my organization could work a lot better than it does. Agreed.
You’ve probably noticed interpersonal conflict consuming more than it’s fair share of attention and impacting deliverables. And it’s very likely that you’ve endured lengthy meetings plagued by misunderstanding and inefficiency that ultimately don’t generate any clear outcomes.
Jargon: interpersonal conflict, impacting deliverables, inefficiency, clear outcomes. But I loved this: “you’ve endured lengthy meetings plagued by misunderstanding and inefficiency”. YES! This is the first thing I’ve read that I can absolutely connect with. I have fully been there and done that. This is what we want sales letters to do – speak to people’s lived experience, what they are actually going through, not to speak in abstract terms. Being real will draw people in. Being abstract will lose people.
Time and again, you’ve seen a lot of talk and no action. You’ve watched organizations falter, unable to keep up with rapidly changing operating landscapes. You’ve suffered with siloed teams, finger pointing, workplace politicking and lack of follow-through.
Okay. Again, this is drawing me in. I’ve totally seen this. Yes!
And you’ve probably felt disheartened by the tendency you see towards institutional conservatism and bureaucracy.
Jargon: institutional conservatism and bureaucracy. But I think I get it and I’m pretty sure I’ve seen this.
Regardless of what organizational context you find yourself in, you also probably feel like you’re always struggling to keep up.
Jargon: organizational context.
- You feel like you take on too much, yet you’re not doing enough. You keep trying to put yourself out there, yet you struggle not to become overwhelmed.
- You strive to be more organized, yet you always feel short on time, and want to be more adept and sorting out priorities for highest impact.
Totally true. You feel me!
Sometimes, uncertainty hits and you question the path you’re on. The loneliness of being one of the few people who sees how things aren’t working can make you question whether there’s anything you can do and yearn to figure out how to make a bigger impact.
- You long for support and maturity in your community and your organizations, and you work hard to take care of yourself, maintain gratitude, positivity, and keep your sights set on the solutions.
- You’re willing to keep going, but sometimes it feels like despite your best intentions, we’re all taking one step forward, and two steps back.
Often it feels as if there’s no end in sight— you have growing questions about how to ramp up your traction and increase your personal resilience as you move forward.
Jargon: traction, personal resilience. But overall, yes. You’re speaking for me.
What the world needs from us
It doesn’t take much looking around at our world’s social, economic and environmental state to recognize that collectively, we face unprecedented challenges as a species. Widespread change is coming—whether we’ve chosen it, or like it, or not. And in many areas of life and for much of the world’s population, calamity isn’t a distant possibility, but a living reality.
We live in a surreal age where we have the information and tools to change course for a new and different future—yet we struggle to do so.
Around the world, there are a great many ideas available to us, and many amazing people devoting their days and nights to creating positive outcomes.
Right. I already get that. I’m a changemaker. Why are you telling me this?
So why aren’t our efforts yielding more results?
Ohhhhh. I see what you did there. Good question! When I read this I thought, “Ah! There’s the heart of this sales letter. That question.” This is what I’m always looking for in a sales letter… the heart of it. What’s it about? What’s the point of it?
Our story, our mission
Over more than 25 years of devoting ourselves to bringing about this kind of change, we’ve researched and experientially studied this question in depth. Not only have we passionately worked towards a healthy planet, we’ve actively studied the forces of inertia in ourselves and in our society.
Jargon: forces of inertia. But your credibility is growing. 25 years is a long time. I feel a bit more connected to you now.
Together, we have:
- Started and run an organic farm,
- Been outdoor educators and studied team building and adventure education,
- Served as members and leaders of intentional communities, where we made and grew everything we needed to sustain ourselves,
- Explored the world’s esoteric traditions on a path of personal growth and spiritual curiosity.
As entrepreneurs, we have
- Started and successfully ran an ecological landscaping and design business,
- Studied adult development, systems thinking, power dynamics, cultural evolution and Integral Theory.
- Worked with internet startups and progressive organizational design thinkers.
- Explored every single organizational process and decision making system we could find, looking for the best tools, skills and principles that could liberate and elevate the innate creativity of groups and organizations.
Whoa. That’s all cool stuff. You’re way more legit to me now.
We’ve struggled to get traction, struggled to balance the demands on our time and energy, and fought against “burnout.”
BUT, we’ve never stopped valuing the importance of succeeding—even though it’s been a long road to figure out how to bring success within reach in the face of widespread system inertia.
Ok. This was another place it hit me. What they’re really offering is to help change makers actually succeed in making change. This is what they’re most craving. It’s amazing to me that innocuously buried here in the midst of the sales letter, in the middle of a sentence is the white hot center of this sales letter. It should be in the headline.
Our journey has lead us to focus on one the most often overlooked, yet essential keys to sustainable change making: the human dimension.
Ok. I’m intrigued…. Tell me more.
Instead of simply struggling harder, we want to liberate human creativity from the forces of inertia that erode our effectiveness and enthusiasm for a better world.
… wut? Your strange language has returned… I have no idea what you’re talking about.
Now, our mission is to share what we’ve found—so that we can help change makers everywhere gain traction.
What do you mean by gaining traction?… And what did you find? I’m still not clear. Something about the dimensions of humans?
So we’ve created this 7-week course as an intensive specifically designed for change catalysts who are hungry for mission traction and ready to roll up their sleeves and make it happen.
What is mission traction? I saw this near the top and it gave me a headache. Then I almost died. Then you won me over. Then I liked you. Now I’m confused again. Our relationship has certainly been a roller coaster…
Introducing Mission Traction: Skillful Means for Effective Change Makers
After working with leaders, individuals, teams and organizations of all shapes and sizes, we developed our 7-week Mission Traction course to give change makers the core skills, tools and processes they need.
Based on our extensive experience as coaches, consultants, managers, entrepreneurs and transformative educators, we’ve taken everything we’ve learned about effective organization, leadership and collaboration, and synthesized it into a targeted learning sequence for change makers.
Mission Traction is a live, highly-interactive course that includes balanced and integrated focus on both individual skills and organizational process.
Okay. I think I get it… The title confuses me but I think I basically get it…
As a learner, you will:
- Develop and refine your own suite of personal development practices that will re-shape the way you work, collaborate and lead.
- Apply your learning and get hands-on practice through carefully-crafted meeting and decision making simulations.
- Be able to share your experiences and get support and feedback from a rigorous, confidential community of fellow change makers who really understand your struggle from the inside.
- Receive individualized attention, coaching, feedback and guidance from our highly skilled and experienced team.
- Be supported to expand your understanding of what causes effective change
- Gain a suite of new tools, capacities and techniques that will empower you to better bring your mission to life each and every day.
A bit jargony but I basically get it. That sounds good.
We expect all participants to achieve the following Learning Outcomes:
- Insightful understanding of what causes inertia
- Increased skillfulness in transforming individual and collective resistance to change
- Improved ability to deliver on intended goals
- Increased agility and effectiveness in group decision making
- Increased personal enthusiasm and energy
- Greater coherence, fun, focus, and collaboration in your efforts
- Improved capacity to drive peer-based accountability towards the intended mission
- Capacity to use efficient, democratic, transparent means to adjust roles and responsibilities
- More engaged, productive, enjoyable meetings with your teams
- A robust framework for measuring progress in yourself and your teams
- More powerful ability to set and maintain your priorities in the face of multiple competing demands
Jargon: learning outcomes, coherence, capacity to drive peer-based accountability towards the intended mission, capacity to use efficient, democratic, transparent means to adjust roles and responsibilities.But overall, this sounds good.
Now. their sales letter continued with some more logistical pieces about the course but we’ll stop here.
Redone Sales Letter:
Attention Change Makers:
Ever feel like you’re spinning your tires trying to do good?
Why is it so hard to make positive change in your organization and the world when everybody seems to want it?
So, as with all sales letters, we start with the headlines. The headlines need to capture people’s attention and quickly move to establish relevance. They need to read it and immediately know if they should read further. I think of the headline as the great filterer. The goal of the headline is not to sell people or convince people. It’s to filter people. If what you’re offering is a fit for them, it should powerfully draw them in closer and fill them with curiousity. If it’s not a fit? They should lose interest. So, we named the generic group immediately, ‘change makers’. Honestly, this is not a super useful marketing term. It’s fairly broad and generic, but it’s better than what was there which was the name of the course. This lifts up a larger point: the headline isn’t about you and your name. It’s about them. Whose name should be at the top of your sales letters, homepages, sales pages, brochures etc? Theirs. Not yours. They don’t care about your name until they know you can help them. Then we address the ‘traction’ piece. While I was reading their sales letter, it finally hit me what it was about . “Oh!” I thought. “Traction! They mean that most change makers feel like they can’t get it. Like they’re spinning their tires!” And there are few things in marketing more powerful than identifying your core metaphor. Once that clicked, it all made sense. If you can start your sales letter with a solid, clear metaphor they can relate to, it allows them to make sense of everything that follows. It’s like it gives them a way to organize all of the info. Then we jumped straight to the big question which we know these people are struggling with, ‘why is it so hard to make change?’. If you can articulate a question that keeps your people up at night, and articulate it better than they can, you will immediately gain relevance and credibility.
Introducing
Mission Traction: Skillful Means for Effective Change Makers
Okay. So now we introduce the name of the program. I’m still not a huge fan of it (I think they may eventually find an even better name) but now, with the tire spinning metaphor the notion of traction makes a tonne of sense. Now it’s just the name of the program. Before it was the headline and was trying to bear an unfair load. The headline has to carry everything, but the title and tagline might not be able to.
A 7-week online course to help people who want to do good be more skillful and effective in dealing with people’s often unexplainable, illogical and irrational resistance to change.
So, here we tweaked the one sentence description of the program. Honestly, I think we could come up with something better but this will do.
Hey there!If you’re reading this, then you’re someone who is working hard to make the world a better place.You might be a director, organizer, facilitator, advocate, intra/entrepreneur, coach, or consultant. But no matter where you find yourself, what defines your work is that you are mission-driven. You are committed to creating a sustainable, healthy, and socially just planet.
As soon as possible, we are naming them as clearly as we can. We’re letting them know, ‘You’re in the right place! Keep reading.’ If you are using a generic term like, ‘change maker’ or ‘conscious entrepreneur’ or ‘cultural creative’ I highly encourage you to, as soon as possible, throw in some more specific target markets. Give them examples of what a change maker might be – which kinds are you most wanting to speak to? Name them explicitly.
You have an inspiring vision and hard-working, well-developed talent. Yet, like so many change catalysts, in spite of your best efforts, you feel like you continue to struggle to bridge the gap between the overwhelming need you see, and vision you’re trying to bring to life – the gap between what you know is possible and what you’re able to make happen.In short, it’s like your organization is a truck and you’ve sunk into the mud and, no matter how hard you step on the gas, you feel like you’re just spinning your tires and getting nowhere. You’re getting no traction at all and you’re running out of gas.
Here we name and explicitly explore how the metaphor relates to them.
Chances are, you’ve struggled to deal with…
- the disheartening feeling of inefficient processes and procedures that can’t change due to institutional conservatism and bureaucracy.
- other inept leaders who bottleneck team operations
- crappy decision-making processes that don’t seek enough input or are dominated by strong personalities.
- interpersonal conflicts that are like black holes which take over everything and mean the job doesn’t get done
- lengthy, useless, time wasting meetings plagued by misunderstanding and inefficiency that produce nothing. Nada. Zilch.
- siloed teams, finger pointing, workplace politicking. Boo.
- a total lack of follow-through
- having to watch good organizations full of good people, falter, unable to keep up with rapidly changing operating landscapes.
Frustrating.
Okay. So here, I went through their sales letter and pulled out all of the problems I could see named that would be frustrating to a change maker. These are what I call Island A in my work. Business exists to solve a problem. Period. If you can’t name the problem your clients have or the result they’re craving then you don’t have a business. You have a hobby. And you want to be able to name their experience (whether what they don’t want anymore or what they do – either works) as clearly as possible. You want to speak about it in such a way that they’re sitting there reading your sales letter saying, ‘Wow. That’s so totally me.’ So, when I gathered and rewrote these problems I did my best to write them in a way I imagined they might. Conversationally. Normal person language. So, instead of saying something like, ‘inefficient decision making processes’ I just say ‘crappy decision making processes’. And I tried to not only name the problem but the impact of those problems (e.g. “interpersonal conflicts that are like black holes which take over everything and mean the job doesn’t get done.”)
Time and again, you’ve seen a lot of talk and no action. Regardless of what kind of work you do, you also probably feel like you’re always struggling to keep up. Many of the clients we work with have, for years, felt like they take on too much, and yet, somehow, that they’re not doing enough. They strive to be more organized, yet they always feel short on time, and want to be more adept at sorting out priorities for highest impact. It can feel overwhelming. Eventually, for some of them, uncertainty hits and they question the path they’re on. The loneliness of being one of the few people who sees how things aren’t working makes them question whether there’s anything they actually can do. They yearn to figure out how to make a bigger impact and yet, over the years, begin to doubt that they ever really will. It often feels like one step forward and then two steps back. They fall asleep each night wondering how they can get more results in what they do but without burning out like they have seen so many others do.
Here, we’re just furthering the empathy to let them know that we get it. We’re continuing to paint the picture of what it’s like to be them so they can keep saying, ‘That’s me’ not ‘so what?’ It’s a powerful exercise to see if you can tell their story. I gave myself this challenge once for holistic practitioners – could I tell the typical story of what it was like to be them? I wrote it up here and many practitioners have told me how eerily accurate it is.
Honest Question: Why Aren’t Your Efforts Getting Better Results?
I hope we can be candid with you here.
I really wanted to just cut to the chase and address the reader directly with a question they’ve been secretly wondering for years. I wanted to talk to them like an adult. Enough empathy now. Now, let’s get down to business.
Here’s what you know better than most: collectively, we face unprecedented challenges as a species. Widespread change is coming—whether we’ve chosen it, or like it, or not. And in many areas of life and for much of the world’s population, calamity isn’t a distant possibility, but a living reality.We live in a surreal age where we have the information and tools to change course for a new and different future—yet we struggle to do so.Around the world, there are a so many incredible ideas available to us, and millions of amazing people are devoting their days and nights to creating positive outcomes.So why aren’t your efforts yielding more results?We’ve asked this question to dozens of changemakers over the years. Here’s a sampling of the answers we get…
- “I just can’t seem to get and stay organized.”
- “I’m too busy, distracted and scattered with all the projects to which I’ve committed.”
- “I work with people who have varying schedules, mental and emotional needs, and working styles.”
- “I don’t manage my time strategically and end up spending time on projects that aren’t consistent with what I think is really important.”
- “The general overwhelm of life just keeps getting in my way.”
- “I constantly feel disempowered and manipulated at work, I just need to find a better place to work.”
- “I don’t know enough people in enough politically powerful positions to make a change.”
- “I need to have a steady income for my family, and so I’m stuck in a career that isn’t aligned with my values.”
I can guarantee that their ideal client will read those and identify with at least two of those statements. Again, this is how people begin to know if we’re a fit for them or not. This is how the logic in their mind goes, ‘If they understand my problem that well, then I can trust their solution too’.
And while we think all of those are a factor, we have found that they aren’t the most important element.So what is that most important piece?We’ll tell you in just a moment, but first, we’d like to tell you who are we and how we come up to the answer we did.
Here I wanted to use the old story telling trick of hooking people in and then saying, ‘We’ll come back to that later’.
Our story, our mission
Let us introduce ourselves. We are Daniel Little and Cecile Green and we’ve been social entrepreneurs since we were in our early twenties. We love to dance, grow awe inspiring veggie gardens and concoct great food, we can get lost in the woods for hours bushwhacking in the gorgeous mountains around our home, and we have passionate discussions around big ideas!Over more than 25 years of devoting ourselves to bringing about real change, we’ve researched and experientially studied this question in depth. Not only have we passionately worked towards a healthy planet, we’ve actively studied why making change is so hard.Together, we have:
- Started and run an organic farm,
- Been outdoor educators and studied team building and adventure education,
- Served as members and leaders of intentional communities, where we made and grew everything we needed to sustain ourselves,
- Explored the world’s esoteric traditions on a path of personal growth and spiritual curiosity.
As entrepreneurs, we have:
- Started and successfully ran an ecological landscaping and design business,
- Studied adult development, systems thinking, power dynamics, cultural evolution and Integral Theory.
- Worked with internet startups and progressive organizational design thinkers.
- Explored every single organizational process and decision making system we could find, looking for the best tools, skills and principles that could liberate and elevate the innate creativity of groups and organizations.
We’ve struggled to get traction, struggled to balance the demands on our time and energy, and fought against “burnout.”BUT, we’ve never stopped valuing the importance of actually succeeding.What’s the point of working for a better world if our efforts don’t make any difference?What’s the point of spinning our tires? Unless we get traction, there is none.
Here, I just hit home the message of the importance of success a little bit harder and more directly.
Our journey has lead us to focus on one the most often overlooked, yet essential keys to sustainable change making: the human dimension.
This may sound obvious, but, in our experience, this soft stuff of the human elements of making change can either be the smooth road we drive on or the mud that sucks us deeper down the harder we try. When it’s handled really poorly, it is 100% quicksand.Instead of simply struggling harder which can have you sink faster we need to deal with the mud directly.
Again, using the spinning the tires metaphor. Having a core metaphor makes writing a sales letter so much easier.
So what we’ve discovered through our research and experiential application is that at the heart of all individual and collective inertia is a lack of understanding and capacity for generative power. Now, power means a lot of different things to different people and that’s part of the problem. We aren’t talking the same language. It’s the tower of Babel, which we all know didn’t end well.
They snuck in the word ‘generative’ again. I think that’s jargon and would use something simpler. I think that last paragraph is a bit confusing.
But that’s not the whole of the problem.
As individuals our power gets derailed when we aren’t clear about what key forces in ourselves we are wrestling with and most importantly when we can’t see, understand, value, and move beyond the hidden assumptions and competing commitments that are getting in our way.
That paragraph begins to lose me too.
Getting a handle on this for ourselves is like opening up the trunk of our stuck car and finding some boards in there that we can get under our wheels and get moving again under our own power.
Tying it back to the metaphor gives me a way to be able to picture it that makes sense.
In organizations, power is frequently frozen in structures that are outmoded and no longer serving a healthy mission. Sometimes this is explicit and other times its implicit, making it even harder to get a handle on. And one of the most significant breakthroughs we’ve engineered in the human dimension, is understanding that we can’t change how power is used one person at a time… we have to change the group mind.And we can’t change how we all think about it just thorough better rhetoric or new principles. All to often at workshops we get bombarded with new information and injunctions to “do it better” and are somehow expected to walk out of the room using power differently!Changing power use as an organization needs to be done through a new set of practices, an organizational operating system, that delivers generative results in action every day, whether or not the individuals involved ‘get it’ immediately or it takes them years…that’s what a practice is all about.
That sentence loses me again.
We become like a disaster response team, whose truck, stuck in the mudslide on the way to the village, jumps into action. We know right where the tow rope, the chains, the shovels are stowed and can immediately put them to good use for ourselves and others we are serving, because we’ve trained for this over time, and we know how to move!
I think this could be said more clearly, but it keeps expanding on a metaphor they understand, so that’s good. This is on the right track.
Sooooo exciting!We can start this training and get powerful results and effectiveness immediately. We no longer have to be held back by individuals who don’t want to participate, can’t stop talking, or who yank power for their own purposes regardless of consequences to the whole, instead we include the value in everyone’s perspective and roll that into powerful, compelling traction for our mission.
I think that could be tightened and said with a bit more clarity but I basically get it.
This is big stuff! And despite it’s deeply researched theoretical grounding, it’s application is 100% practical and embodied. Which is what we feel the people and planet need most right now.
Jargon: embodied.
Now, our mission is to share what we’ve found—so that we can help change makers everywhere gain traction.
Great! Clear!
So we’ve created this 7-week Mission Traction course as an intensive specifically designed for people like you.You might be a perfect fit for our Mission Traction Program if you also …
- long for support and maturity in your community and your organizations
- work hard to take care of yourself, maintain gratitude, and positivity
- face the hard facts of our multiple crises and keep your sights set on the solutions
- know this world needs your talents and yearn for more meaningful impact
- have done a lot of work on yourself already, know you’ve got more work to do, but are also aware that it’s about changing the collective too
- are fed up with big egos running the show
- are ready to get laser focused on your priorities to make a difference and are ready to roll up your sleeves and make it happen.
This program is likely not a fit for you if…
- find the thrill of power more valuable than the results
- don’t want to be uncomfortable with the stretch of new ideas and practical steps you can take right now
- are in the midst of multiple major personal changes like moving, finding a new job, health crises, divorce, or other. The emphasis being multiple, one may be fine. We’ve been here, we know what it’s like, and we wish you grace and flow through the eye of the needle. This program requires some bandwidth, take it for best results when you can breathe and think. We’ll be here.
- find using your mind in addition to your heart and body untasteful or distracting for where you are at
The above addition of ‘This might be a fit for you if…’ and ‘This might not be a fit for you if…’ is something I think should be in every single sales letter ever. Super critical for this to be clear.
Introducing Mission Traction: Skillful Means for Effective Change Makers
6:30pm to 9pm Eastern Time
After working with leaders, individuals, teams and organizations of all shapes and sizes, we developed a highly interactive, step by step, 7-week Mission Traction course to give you the core skills, tools and processes you need to have the impact you crave.
As a learner, you will:
- Develop and refine your own suite of personal development practices that will re-shape the way you work, collaborate and lead.
- Apply your learning and get hands-on practice through carefully-crafted meeting and decision making simulations.
- Be able to share your experiences and get support and feedback from a rigorous, confidential community of fellow change makers who really understand your struggle from the inside.
- Receive individualized attention, coaching, feedback and guidance from our highly skilled and experienced team.
- Be supported to expand your understanding of what causes effective change
- Gain a suite of new tools, capacities and techniques that will empower you to better bring your mission to life each and every day.
We expect all participants to achieve the following:
- Learning Outcomes: Insightful understanding of why you’ve been so stuck in the mud for so long
- Increased skillfulness in transforming individual and collective resistance to change (you’ll feel like you learned Jedi skills from Obi Wan himself “this is not the drama you’re looking for…:”)
- Improved ability to deliver on intended goals (which will have you walk taller and feel more bad ass with every passing week).
- Increased agility and effectiveness in group decision making which create more engaged, productive, enjoyable meetings with your teams (no more useless meetings!). Imagine having your team actively look forward to going to meetings because so much gets done!
- Increased personal enthusiasm and energy (because you’ll be getting better results and nothing is more motivating than that).
- Improved capacity to obtain collaborative accountability (you know what top down accountability looks and feels like, but what about an effective means of being accountable to each other?)
- Capacity to use efficient, democratic, transparent means to adjust roles and responsibilities so that you can keep your teams running smoothly even when you realize that people have totally been given the wrong job
- A robust framework for measuring progress in yourself and your teams. No more leaving it to chance that you move forward.
- More powerful ability to set and maintain your priorities in the face of multiple competing demands. With each passing week, you’ll feel your spine getting stronger and stronger and your gut instinct being more and more finely tunes. All while staying limber and flexible.
Again, I’ve reworded the bulleted points here to speak a bit more to the impact and benefit of all of these things (e.g. “Increased skillfulness in transforming individual and collective resistance to change (you’ll feel like you learned Jedi skills from Obi Wan himself “this is not the drama you’re looking for…:”)). This is really important. It’s an old sales idea of the distinction between features and benefits. The feature is what you are offering them, but the benefit is what it means to them. People are infinitely more interested in the benefits.
* You can learn more about their good work by reading their sales letter in full here or listening to a replay of an hour long interview I did with them about their Mission Traction program.