Find beauty in broken things

Happy June! A bit of a ramble this month...

Recently, I've become fascinated with the concept of kintsugi - the Japanese art of repairing broken objects. While I've never practised it (I'm not sure my hand is steady enough), I love the idea of it.

In the craft, a honey-textured lacquer called urushi sticks pieces of broken pot or glass together.

When dry, it's sanded down finely and gold can be dusted over the lacquer.

The result is a new object of beauty. A beauty which shows its scars proudly. It's a beauty which follows the Japanese thought of wabi-sabi - which accepts and embraces imperfectio and delights in the inconsistency of human endeavour.

I believe these principles are valuable in my chosen discipline of marketing, but also in our general lives in business and, indeed, beyond.

Marketing and growth are about recognising and understanding flaws and failures. Just as you can't have a perfect round of golf until you shoot 18, you can't have a perfect marketing campaign until every person buys.

Instead, we seek to understand what worked in every campaign, every execution, and what didn't. Covering-up the cracks, not recognising your mistakes, is deadly as a marketer.

It's important to put processes in place which enable growth and marketing teams to recognise, highlight and report on campaign and growth experiment activity. That requires understanding what you're testing in the first place, before you even begin the campaign.

Sometimes, junior marketers struggle with this. But sometimes, senior marketers in large teams can also struggle. However, if everyone embraces the concept of kintsugi, you'll build resilience and growth quickly.

The ability to find beauty in broken things helps us personally too. There is much we can learn from identifying, understanding and appreciating our own flaws.

We are the product of what has come before in our lives - we can use that to shape our future selves.

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Please feel free to get in touch if you want to chat about marketing, management or mentoring. You'll find my calendly link here.

[Currently discounted] mentorship programmes are available via my MentorCruise page.

Find out more about me, marketing and the SOPE Framework here.

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Have a great month,

Richard

Image Credit: https://unsplash.com/@motoki