My spiky points of view: 15 examples to inspire your SPOV
Last month I published Spiky point of view: Let’s get a little controversial. Since then, I’ve loved reading your replies and Twitter or LinkedIn @ mentions about how the SPOV framework is helping you articulate what you stand for.
One common question I’ve seen: “Is my point of view spiky enough?”
I usually suggest drafting a list of at least 10+ spiky points of view. Some of them will end up being pretty tame. Others are spikier and worth doubling-down on.
I learn best when I see examples, so I’ve compiled a list of my 15 spiky points of view to give you an idea of what your SPOV could look like. These are strong opinions, loosely held.
Some of these make me a little nervous to publish. That’s probably a good sign. I like being precise and accurate, and dislike misunderstandings… So part of me wants to add preambles, caveats, disclaimers, counterpoints.
I want to add more explanation because I’m afraid someone will misunderstand.
But the beauty about spiky points of view is they START a conversation. A spiky point of view should be defensible and rooted in rationale. But it’s not an absolute objective truth by any means.
So you’ll get people who say, “I’m so glad someone finally said this out loud!”
And people who say, “Hmm I disagree completely and here’s why.”
That’s exactly the point. It opens dialogue.
You’ll skip the awkward usual pleasantries when you first meet someone and are trying to get an idea of where they stand. Your spiky POV is a conversation starter and jumping point.
With that said, here are examples of my spiky POV to inspire yours:
Launches aren’t a one-time event. Most companies do a ton of work for the launch, but don’t spend enough time on what happens after. A good launch means sustaining the momentum once the confetti settles.
Stop learning how to give feedback. Learn to receive it instead. Most people are terrible at receiving feedback, so you only need to be a little better at this to win.
There’s a trade-off between brand and performance marketing, and it’s hard to get organizations who are rooted in one philosophy to do the other. So you should be explicit about whether you’re optimizing for long-term brand equity or short-term conversions. I call this the Brand vs Performance Marketing Spectrum.
Prototyping is unnecessary in 90% of cases. If you took 15 minutes to think about it intently, you wouldn’t have to do a 5 day sprint at all. Instead, use scenario planning and think through the logic of how your idea would work if you decided to launch it today.
Start with why has done more harm than good. It’s given a generation of professionals the permission to indulge in navel-gazing. No one cares about your “why”—they only care about how you can help them.
The constraints (of your channel, medium, budget, time) are the most important thing to recognize. Only amateurs insist on a blank slate or agree to build without understanding the parameters.
You must have a strong point of view to be valuable to your organization. If you need step-by-step instructions on what to do, your boss can (and should) just hire someone on Fiverr.
The first 90 days on a job are a construct. It can be the first week or month or quarter, but it’s about calibrating. Continually calibrating. That should begin the moment you work with a new boss/team and it never ends.
Getting cheap leads is myopic and rarely a good idea. Cheap leads are actually expensive if they don’t end up converting, referring others, representing your brand well, or require more time/attention. Zoom out and look at the total cost of acquiring and servicing that customer, not just the cost of getting their email address.
Experiments aren’t free. They cost a lot in terms of set up and maintenance. Don’t do them unless you go into it with a plan of how the results will change your future behavior.
Certifications are BS, especially for digital workshops. Who certifies the certifiers? If you took a sales course, you should have learned how to sell. The goal is not to get a framed certificate saying you took a sales course.
There’s so much jargon nowadays that even seasoned marketers don’t know all the marketing jargon. There are literally terms being made up every week. ABM for account based marketing, the flywheel to replace the funnel, product marketing which is just marketing. Don’t get caught up in terminology or let others make you feel out of the loop. It’s a power tactic. All of these terms are the same core principles—recycled and renamed for a particular channel or audience. But it’s still the same core principles. Understand those principles and you can easily grasp whatever new term is the marketing flavor of the week.
There are different schools of thought and “camps” within any function. Know what those camps are and where you fall on the spectrum, and the pros/cons of each position.
Empathy is usually thought of as this soft, static, fuzzy skill rooted in morals. But it’s very much a hard skill that can be weaponized. We need to lean into the functional benefits of becoming more empathic. Don’t be empathetic just to be a nice, understanding person. When you are empathetic, you get in other people’s heads and figure out what they want and why they feel the way they do. This has tangible benefits for you: you can create better pitches, better strategies, more buy-in, and get what you want faster and easier. Empathy isn’t for the sake of empathy. It’s to make you a sharper thinker and negotiator and to create value that’s win-win.
The integrator and visionary model is BS. I haven’t read the book, but every CEO happily mentions it and everyone else they work with (i.e. the integrators) feels diminished and resentful. EVERY PERSON makes strategic decisions, has a vision for the outcome, and executes to make it happen. We need to stop saving “vision” for describing the vague high level ideas bosses have.
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