You only need one strat­e­gy: embrace learn­ing and change

I think we all share this feel­ing that the world has been some­how mov­ing faster since 2020. Some of us still strug­gle to adapt, per­son­al­ly and professionally.

As we nav­i­gate these strange times, we should remind our­selves that con­tin­u­ous learn­ing is key to fac­ing change. Lead­er­ship is not a virtue, but the byprod­uct of our virtues. Bet­ter­ing our­selves and improv­ing our teams helps us plan ahead for real­i­ty instead of run­ning behind it. Busi­ness­es that learn are more sus­tain­able, out­per­form­ing their com­peti­tors. Work-relat­ed stress becomes more man­age­able, and the team’s cul­ture is hard­er to beat.

Drucker’s quote at the top of this email — quite often and weird­ly mis­at­trib­uted to Lin­coln — seems par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­e­vant in this con­text. Adapt­ing our busi­ness­es to the fast-chang­ing piv­otal tech­nol­o­gy break­throughs (look­ing at you, AI), ampli­fies our abil­i­ty to shape our future and serve our audi­ences better.

— San­ti

Learn­ing and Change: Don’t stop me now 👑

“It takes all the run­ning you can do, to keep in the same place”.

The Red Queen Paradox

Learn­ing to learn is train­ing to run twice as fast. Here’s a roundup of fresh con­cepts, tools & inspi­ra­tion we’ve kept return­ing to in our journey.

Where’s your 15%? 

Small and con­sis­tent changes lead to dras­tic trans­for­ma­tion and growth. What are the quick wins you’re not see­ing? How do you chal­lenge your pre­con­cep­tions and explore oppor­tu­ni­ties for evo­lu­tion? Godin’s arti­cle is from 2010 but still bril­liant­ly sim­ple and rel­e­vant. Also this.

The adja­cent possible

Use objec­tive data to learn con­clu­sions and evolve your strat­e­gy. Kauffman’s the­o­ry teach­es us to con­ceive orga­ni­za­tions as liv­ing, evolv­ing organ­isms. Every step for­ward opens new, expo­nen­tial alter­na­tives to dri­ve your com­pa­ny for­ward. Find­ing the time and bud­get to explore and break things always pays off.

Cre­ative Samba

Miguel Ferreira’s newslet­ter on all things sto­ry­telling, copy­writ­ing, and mar­ket­ing gives us a week­ly dose of food for thought. It chal­lenges the sta­tus quo and puts the val­ue back on human cre­ativ­i­ty and love for brands.

A cul­ture of (un)learning

Chal­lenge beliefs and assump­tions with­in your orga­ni­za­tion and be open to let­ting peo­ple chal­lenge the beliefs and assump­tions you, per­son­al­ly, hold to be true about what ​‘right’ looks like.

Far­nam­Street

A trea­sure trove of valu­able insights on per­son­al growth, learn­ing and change. Men­tal mod­els are essen­tial to train think­ing and inno­va­tion. This piece in par­tic­u­lar is a great reminder that true learn­ing requires a will­ing­ness to let go of what we think we know and embrace the jour­ney of learn­ing and discovery.

Friends, Part­ners & Shame­less auto­bom­bo 🎺

The future of B2B is hybrid

Brands in B2B are evolv­ing the fastest. The shift start­ed years ago, and accel­er­at­ed as a con­se­quence of the mas­sive post-Covid shop­ping behav­ior change. Plat­forms like Big­Com­merce are mak­ing the tran­si­tion faster, sim­pler, and cheap­er, lead­ing to fig­ures of up to 50% more revenue.

Push­ing the boundaries

Done in time and with­in bud­get, too😌

Speak­ing of mas­sive change, check out our recent case study on the major release of the new pho​tovideoe​du​.com. A case of build­ing a beau­ti­ful, huge, com­plex, flex­i­ble, and total­ly tai­lored Big­Com­merce store. 

A new hope

The tool is beautiful.

The adop­tion of the M.A.C.H. frame­work by Big­Com­merce, as well as some key acqui­si­tions, have posi­tioned our part­ners as the key play­ers to watch in the B2B sector.

MACH mat­ters because it’s good for every­one. SaaS providers fos­ter a much rich­er inte­gra­tion and part­ner ecosys­tem. End clients have more own­er­ship on their core strate­gic assets, and an expo­nen­tial increase in cre­ative, design, brand­ing and expe­ri­ence free­dom. MACH implies choice, future-think­ing and tru­ly tai­lored architectures.

Check these out for more:

• MACH Archi­tec­ture
• Lat­est Gart­ner Mag­ic Quad­rant for Dig­i­tal Com­merce Report

And of course, Take the AI-Train.

It knows what you’re look­ing for! 😱

Our friends at GetRe­sponse moved their AI prod­uct rec­om­men­da­tion fea­ture out of beta. We’ve just start­ed with the tool, and so far, we’ve seen inter­est­ing con­ver­sion rates and progress.

More inter­est­ing AI-relat­ed fea­tures are com­ing to GetRe­sponse soon, with a full Chat GPT inte­gra­tion on the hori­zon. If you’re inter­est­ed, let us know and we’ll arrange a free demo.

Four Turns Two 🎂

Extra! Extra!

We’ve been work­ing hard at learn­ing to change and chal­leng­ing our own pre­con­cep­tions for a long time. What could be dif­fer­ent? How can we make our busi­ness bet­ter with­out hat­ing our future selves?

This month marks the sec­ond anniver­sary of our switch to a 4‑day work­week. The results have exceed­ed our wildest expectations.

To cel­e­brate this mile­stone and share our lessons learned, we’re releas­ing 4dias​.es. Part direc­to­ry of pio­neer com­pa­nies, part source of infor­ma­tion, 4dias’ mis­sion is to pro­mote the ben­e­fits of reduc­ing the work week, and teach­ing com­pa­nies how to start the cul­ture shift.

Come vis­it! Share! Join!

More about the 4‑day work­week (in Spanish)

Num­bers. Most of them are not fake. 🤞

• Insid­er Intel­li­gence says retail eCom­merce sales world­wide will grow by 8.9% this year. Ini­tial fore­casts were slight­ly above 10% but were adjust­ed due to the world los­ing its mar­bles. After the 2020’s huge dig­i­tal sales boom dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, the gap with brick and mor­tar seems to be shortening.
• 37% of B2B com­pa­nies have imple­ment­ed arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) and machine learn­ing (ML) in some form, and 27% are plan­ning to do so in the next 12 months.
• It takes humans an aver­age of 10,000 hours of delib­er­ate prac­tice to become experts in a par­tic­u­lar field or skill. This trans­lates to approx­i­mate­ly 9 years of dai­ly prac­tice for 3 hours dai­ly. Watcha wait­in’ for?
• The human brain can process and retain new infor­ma­tion at a rate of up to 60 bits per second.
• Dogs can learn the names of over 1,000 dif­fer­ent objects and com­mands and under­stand human ges­tures, with suc­cess rates rang­ing from 70% to 80%, out­per­form­ing most politicians.

Thank you, next

We’ll be back soon to reflect on this year’s biggest shift: free, open access to AI learn­ing models.

What it means to our craft and to your busi­ness, how we use it, and most impor­tant­ly, what we will nev­er use it for.