What If I Get It Wrong?
What if I get it wrong? Another negative self-talk mantra favorite alongside, What if they think I’m weird?
The weekend before I planned to launch the More Movement with Marketing website, my thoughts started pestering me with what-ifs. What if I should’ve vetted the content with more people? What if I say something wrong? Worse yet, what if I say something unintentionally offensive or show how much I don’t know?! The Sunday night before launch, I blurted these all out to my husband, Matt, in a storm of self-doubt clouding up our nightly ritual of sharing what’s on our minds.
I knew that I couldn’t let my fear of failure or embarrassment hold me back from moving ahead. And even as the voice of self-doubt was attacking my mind, there was another voice responding simultaneously–”that’s the point.”
I hope More Movement with Marketing engages our industry in making a stand to do better with the tools at our disposal. But it will require learning and taking risks for every individual involved. If nothing else, one of the most important things I can do in this process is demonstrate that coming to the table with uncertainty and lack of awareness or needing to educate oneself is the point. While we’re hoping to change mindsets of the general public, this process should also better the minds and talents of our industry with new ways of thinking about these issues.
The model for More Movement with Marketing relies on our talents in changing mindsets and behaviors–but it also requires we in the industry learn the best way to change mindsets around ESG issues. No one is expected to be an expert. The process requires learning and that learning is yet another positive outcome of this model. So even if the model never actually took hold, the process to get to that end would still be worthwhile.
If everyone who felt fear at the risk of potentially “getting it wrong” refrained from participating, we’d never get the volume of participation we need to create the intended cacophony of noise for the greater good.
There are lots of quotes attributed to different brilliant minds that speak to the risk of not taking risks. This is my favorite, “There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long range risk of comfortable inaction.” – John F. Kennedy
We’re asking the world to step out of the comfort of their own beliefs sets and shift how they might think about a particular issue, to look at the hard stuff, challenge their viewpoint and maybe open their minds to someone else’s narrative on a topic. Seems only reasonable that we should challenge our own comfort as marketing professionals in the process.
At the risk of getting it wrong, I’m breaking out of comfortable inaction to see if we can get more movement out of marketing to benefit the greater good. The risk and cost of action is worth it.
