11 Lessons the 2010 Aussie Federal Election Taught Me
Image by Julia Manzerova
Just when you thought it was safe to go back on the interweb. Just when you thought the Big Aussie Paper Scissors Rock of 2010 was done and dusted, home and hosed and fresh out of things to say, here’s one more look back on the Election that was (and sort of wasn’t).
If nothing else, I have learned some life and business lessons from this car crash wrapped in a train crash sandwich:
- Sometimes continuous repetition of a strap-line can just piss people off. Let’s move forwards, shall we?
- If you want to bedazzle people with your strap-line, make it specific and don’t use generic phrases.
- Don’t treat your audience like idiots.
- Words are cheap if you don’t have any examples that support your claims of what you can do and how good you can do it.
- If you can offer real help, people respond favourably to pit-of-your-stomach passion and won’t mind your character flaws.
- Unless you’re vying for Playmate of the Year, revealing excess flesh will rarely stimulate greater confidence in your intelligence.
- People want to be inspired. Even if you achieve a lot, if you don’t capture their hearts and reinforce their hope, they will lose interest.
- One day you can be a rooster; the next day a feather boa. You have the potential to make either role great or grubby.
- Whether they had it coming or not, publicly knifing someone in the back will lose you a lot of advocacy.
- Long, drawn-out bureaucratic processes have the power to change fervour to apathy.
- If you want to get on TV, a recipe will always trump a policy.
