Good Intentions.

Today's Marketing Cookie is about good intentions.

Intentions are a promise, but they are only proven by their outcomes. This is a real problem for imperfect beings like you and me. My intentions may be pure and honest, but unless my behavior, deeds, and track record consistently align with my intentions, they become nothing more than a broken promise. Unfortunately, breaking promises is inevitable, no matter how good your intentions. We break them because life is not mono-focused.

If you're like me, you have multiple interests, relationships, and responsibilities, all existing in some type of acceptable hierarchy we've built. All would be fine, except at some point, we will give something more time and attention than whatever else we were "supposed to be doing," knocking everything off balance. To accommodate any imbalances we create, we either defer responsibility and hope it goes away, or we scramble around trying to "make it up." The fuller your life, the more often your good intentions will collide and break.

For example: Besides being a good husband, son, brother, team member, neighbor, artist, guitar player, Red Sox fan, and American (and probably more than a dozen other "good" things), my intention is to also be a loving and supportive father. Of course it is! Why then, with this good intention, have there been moments when I was too over-subscribed or busy to focus on my children when they needed my attention? Why then, with this good intention, have there been moments where I've been short-tempered, impatient, or overly critical of my kids? As humbling as it is to admit, the reason why my good intention of being a good father was not met in those moments is that I elevated the priority of something else. The outcome sometimes requires an apology and a realignment of intentions. In reassessing intentions, it may be time to eliminate distractions, which are no longer a priority, ironically breaking yet another promise.

The other side of the coin is perhaps more troubling. There is an old saying, "No good deed goes unpunished." There have been many times when my intentions were good, but the outcome was a total bummer. It could be as simple as stopping to let someone merge onto a busy street and then having to endure angry horns blaring behind you. Or it could be the time when you tried to give a friend some good advice, which turned out to go horribly wrong for them. Or it might be the new product release, which attempted to make the software better, but only made customers angry. Don't fret! Good deeds don't always go wrong. The good news for you is, a track record of good intentions will yield a better return than the alternative.

Whatever your intention, the proof is in the outcome and everything else becomes secondary. If your first intention is to have insanely delighted customers, you will develop a process for delivering happiness. Even though some customers can never be made happy, I encourage you to keep at it! The proof of your intention will come.

If your intention is to build the most admired products in the world, you will do whatever it takes to exceed the highest standards of quality. Even with an occasional bug to fix, I encourage you to keep at it! Proving your good intention might mean selecting more expensive materials, a slower speed to market, and triple-checking your work. When customers who value the highest quality discover your product, the extra efforts will be worth it.

Even if your good intentions don't always work out or are sometimes misunderstood, you should take pride in your priorities. Even if you fall short sometimes, don't degrade what is most important to you. Even when there's not enough time to focus on everything at once, I encourage you to let your intentions create your methods and not the other way around, as today's fortune says.