Managing change is part art and part science. Whether you are a CMO in Sydney, manager of a marketing department or a team, you will soon realise something about your success- it is your team who drive it.

Humans don’t like being told what to do or what to think. They like to make up their own minds. For a simple and a valid reason – it is empowering to.

When you study psychology, or attend a client meeting, you meet a lot of people who are defeated. I was once one of these people too, by the way. They are defeated because they don’t feel like they are in control of their lives. It might be a partner, it might be a boss, it might be a colleague – who is forcing them to go into a direction that is counter intuitive to the one they ought to go in – instead.

Giving up on love when you’re managing people or yourself is never an option

In 2013, I made a major mistake on my career as a management professional in marketing. I gave up my first love and secret weapon, developing marketing strategy, for a managing director’s position at one of the world’s leading direct and digital marketing agencies. I had two jobs available to me at the same time. The first as head of marketing and business strategy at a leading, privately owned Sydney advertising agency. The second, in KL, Malaysia as MD.

My heart was with the Sydney agency, it was time for me to return home and to what I did best – strategy and client service. However, I did not follow my intuition, I followed the demands of my first wife and took the MD’s job instead choosing to disobey my INTUITION which immediately walked away from me. As it does.

Managing a direct and digital marketing agency was not a bad job – however, my heart wasn’t in it

When a person’s heart isn’t in what they do – they won’t do it very well. But not only that, their mental health will suffer. They will experience anxiety, they will experience depression and they could head for their first nervous breakdown.

Whether we are talking marketing, business or life – we have to realise that nervous energy is creative energy. Life is not strong, it is weak. And it is from weakness that creativity, sensitivity and other great things – such as the work of artists and philosophers and musicians like Dali, Spinoza and Beethoven, come.

When we tell people what to do, we make them take decisions that go against their grain – their intuition or better sense

This is not good management practice. We all know what we are good at (intuitively) – we all know what we are not good at (and should stay away from) intuitively, as well. What we can and can’t or shouldn’t do is defined by our CNS system (central nervous system).

Some people have very well developed CNS systems – they are less creative but have very high stress tolerance so they make great fighters, leaders and can be trusted in a war to win it. Others have less developed CNS systems – more creative, more intuitive – they are less loud but are more intelligent.

They are the planners, the thinkers, the strategists, the artists, the musicians – they blow the bugle that the others march to.

When we tell what to do, something happens to their INTUITION – it leaves them and they start to under-perform. I’ve seen it a million times.

Should you be ashamed of ‘poor performance’?

Not at all. Poor performance does not mean you are crazy and it certainly does not mean you are stupid. No one is. What it means you have walked from is your Intuition – your inner sense that gives you a quality ride in life.

Many have done it before you. King Solomon was one of the world’s wisest men. Then he went and got 800 concubines and wives (as if one wasn’t enough) – he started listening to their advice – worse, he started taking it. Immediately what left him was Intuition. He died mad- a stark, raving lunatic

Managing people is issuing them tasks – not instructions on how to do them

As I engage with an ecosystem of people half my age – from countries as far as the UK, Malaysia, Singapore, New Zealand, India, Sydney and Melbourne – I start to realise there’s  a hell of a pool of talent out there. People who are way cleverer than I am. Tapping into this pool of talent is critical to achieving the outcomes I desire for D’souza Consulting. The most efficient way I’ve found to do this is to issues tasks – even objectives – but not what is supremely irritating to The Human Psyche – instructions on how to achieve them.

To access this pool of talent to solve the simple and the complicated problems life throws at you, as a Marketing Director or Marketing Manager or Department head or Business owner – please contact me now on 0450 545 725 or email me at patrick@dsouzaconsulting.com.au