Work Can Be Better

No Tiering Zone 🚨

In Today’s Must-Reads:

😱 Zoom’s Expansion - Yep more Zooming 🆘 WFH Burnout Help: Pace - Place - Space 👏 Office Politics Are Optional 🏋️‍♀️Gyms dodgy membership tactics 🍫 Why the 🇬🇧’s are up in arms ➕ This week’s deeper dives into Amazon AR & “OnZoom”

The Must-Read Stories Of The Week

  1. If you are a team leader, here’s a challenge, write your team a handwritten letter 🖊 - LinkYes, it has to be handwritten and it is key to improve team / departmental morale and performance.

  2. Pace, Place, Space: here are 3 steps to prevent (WFH) remote burnout 😑 - Video Link“Being on camera is a performance” love this quote from Morra Aarons-Mele — Are you still struggling with your WFH video call set up, here’s a great long guide to improving your set up & video calls - Link

  3. Office politics are optional 💯 - LinkHaving one of those weeks or getting down about how something in the company panned out here is a post for you

  4. How to become more of a self-aware leader 💪 - Link

  5. Why best-selling books sell….because they are on best sellers list 📚 - Link

  6. The sad greening of Antarctica 🇦🇶 - Link

  7. Survival or ridiculous? Gyms making it impossible to cancel or freeze memberships 🏋️‍♂️- Link Gyms have been highlighted for shady cancellations and long term contracts but this is taking the biscuit. Home workouts will be huge business for the next 24 months, Apple and Peloton will be doubling down in this space. Watch out for Amazon too.  

  8. Sarah Tavel Frameworks: Here are some great frameworks from companies who have disrupted industries 🧳 - Link Whenever Sarah writes I instantly know it’s a must-read for business operators and business leaders

  9. Why knowing about your phone pictures metadata will help you to delete pictures you won’t want to leak ❌- Link

  10. Wendy’s & Uber Eats leverage the power of virality and the RT with a coupon that gets more valuable the more times it’s shared 💡- Link This is quite an old school way to leverage virality but it’s smart and something I am surprised isn’t leveraged more regularly with food delivery

  11. Struggling with phone addiction? Friend of Must Reads Anish has written a good guide to take back more control ☮️ - Link 

  12. What really could go wrong? MSCHF wants influencers to take down brands 👀 - Link

  13. Why the pre-order is working in high-end fashion 💴 - Link

  14. Meet the Excel ninja who the world turns to when excel breaks 🦸‍♀️- Link Includes the government and government contractors

  15. One for the Brits 🇬🇧 : Fans are taking to social media to complain about the missing flavours in this year’s Quality Street 🍫 - Link

Most Popular Must Read Last Week: What Company Culture Is

Deeper Dive ➕Tech ➕

Amazon AR codes turn your Amazon boxes into a toy until you recycle ♻️ - Link Amazon has seemed to confuse many industry journalists and thought leaders for the reasoning behind this innovation. The way to consider this test is to bring back nostalgia and match with the new tech and then test many different use cases. AR will take 2021 by storm.

Remember as a kid having fun with a box over the latest toy you received? This tech ties in nicely with a lot of holidays coming up (hint Christmas) and offers many avenues to inspire more connection with Amazon and then their marketplace full of sellers.

It is likely a test to see if AR will be used, imagine the first use case is the simple DIY scan and point and then the next step is to include a game or gamification. The follow up could be a way to inspire you with a related product or a call to action to follow the author or seller. Plenty of use cases this feature could have, especially engaging the buyer with Amazon in a deeper more fun and immersive way.

Zoom’s Expansion Plan: OnZoom 📸 - Link Did you see Zoom’s new marketplace? OnZoom, Zoom’s new approach is to leverage its hypergrowth from tech’s video calls for everything takeover and beat other competitors (hint’s at Google workplace vs Facebook workplace vs slack, etc) with including automation with zapps integration - my personal favourite is with Cameo integration). Why not have Snoop on the work Zoom call. Zoom’s OnZoom platform is designed to help to create a marketplace (basically buying and selling units of time) to their huge base of users and enable the marketplace around fitness classes, live events. Next time you think about a work zoom meeting, you’ll likely want to rethink it with the huge amount of extra classes and integrations on the horizon. BTW end to end encryption is coming…finally.

Daily Fix? I am also tweeting stories that don’t make Must Reads newsletter from @dannydenhard on twitter and #mustreadoftheday 

Quote Of The Week:

2021 will be the year of on-demand content battles

“Our creative teams will concentrate on what they do best - making world-class, franchise-based content. While our newly centralized global distribution team will focus on delivering and monetizing that content in the most optimal way across all platforms,”

- Disney CEO, Bob Chapek

Must Read Endorsement Of The Week

I love art, there is something particularly calming about an art show or large gallery and this week I went to the Summer Exhibition at The Royal Academy of Arts. Here are Bambi’s latest releases which is instantly awarded the Must Reads Endorsement of the week.

Thanks for reading, enjoy your weekend and I’ll see you next week.

Danny Denhard

If you don’t know me, I am on a mission to fix the broken world of work with Focus (my culture, strategy consultancy). I have spend two decades in Marketing and Growth leadership, from before Google dominated search and Facebook controlled ‘Social’ & I was on the leadership team at JustGiving & currently an interim CMO and advisor.