Hey friends, in today's email we will be discussing:

Clarifying tasks: If you're manager asks requests things that don't make sense, ask questions.

Google Shopping Annotations: Use the new annotations feature in Google Shopping to get more clicks.

Strategies to Clarify Unclear Requests from Managers

For the last couple of years, I have been very happy with the leaders around me. This wasn’t always the case. I had “leaders” in the past who loved to delegate work but did not give any insights into what they were looking for. If you’re dealing with a “leader” instead of a leader, then this is for you.

Firstly, I believe that there are leaders and managers. Leaders want their teams to succeed and have them work closely together to get things done. They set northern stars, so it’s clear what the objective is. They will not tell you how to get there, they are there to help you when needed but believe in your skills to get closer to that northern star.

Managers like to set the northern star, but then also tell you how to get there. They believe that they need to come up with the ideas to be successful. They don’t believe that someone below them can come up with a winning idea that would help the company. And if that happens, they feel threatened by the person who came up with the idea. They want to have full control of anything that is happening. Delegation is a big part of this.

I’ve dealt with these managers a lot. They think they know it all. They’re not open to feedback, as they feel like they are failing when someone below them teaches them something.

I know that there are a lot of these managers out there and it’s a pain to work with them. One thing that they love to do, is delegate work. They love to ask you to do work and tell you how to do it. Sometimes, they just want to show who’s boss by sending you away with a task where you have no idea what to do. You’ve probably been here. You get a request and have no idea what they mean by this. However, they make it look so simple and send you away.

You’ll take some time to think about what they meant, but it’s never really clear. You might even ask some colleagues for help. When the deadline approaches, you start working on something, but you still don’t know if it’s good. The moment you share the outcome of the task with your manager, they get angry because that’s not what they are looking for.

Yeah, I have been there. Really annoying. Especially because you feel that you’re manager isn’t open to questions, so you can’t ask them.

A couple of years ago I was asked to make an advertising matrix. To this day, I have no idea what my manager meant by this. So I asked him: “This sounds like a great idea! I do want to make sure that you’re request is in line with my outcome, so could you give me an example of this matrix? It sounds really good!”. With this approach, I show respect to my manager (which they find very important). I tell them that this is a great idea! However, I also ask them for an example. Asking for an example can really help you get out of awkward situations.

My manager was stunned when I asked him. He looked at me and said: “That is a great question. Uhhh. Yeah, good question, what would that look like. Uhhh. You know what, I will get back to you with an example”. Guess what, I never got anything back. My manager wanted to send me on a task, great! But because I simply asked for an example, he backed down.

Sometimes it’s easy for a manager to send you away with a task. You’ll spend hours on it not knowing what the outcome will be. To make everything easier, start asking questions to clarify the request. You can ask for examples, or more information, or even ask for a starting point. If the task is bullshit, the task will disappear, if it’s important, they will share information with you.

It’s never a bad thing to ask questions, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. If it’s not clear what you need to do, you’ll be wasting your time.

Increase Clicks and Trust with Google Shopping Annotations

Last week, Google launched a new feature for Google Shopping: Annotations. This feature uses the social proof influence principle (explained in my previous email) to nudge people into buying your product.

What does this mean

When searching for a product, you can see how many times this product has been bought. Or you could see something along the lines of “best-selling product”.

This social proof principle would encourage people to buy the product that they see because x amount of other people have done this as well. And if so many people already bought the product, the product should be good, right?

The brand should also be reliable, as so many people have already purchased here before.

Using this logic, Google would be able to increase the click-through rate of your shopping ads and create more trust between the potential customer and the brand.

How to use this feature

For this feature to work, you’d need to have conversion tracking set up in your Google Ads account. Besides that, you’d need to make sure that your Merchant Center has conversion tracking enabled.

If you would not want to use this feature, you can choose to opt-out.

Podcast episode(s) you'd love

• ​Think Fast, Talk Smart: An Invitation for Innovation: Why Creativity Is Found, Not Forced. Innovation comes from collaboration between diverse individuals. To innovate more easily you need to put the emphasis on experimentation and quick learning. It starts with embracing this.

Found any interesting articles? Please share them with me, as I am always interested in learning something new.

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