I was working with a board
faced with a major problem...with no workable solution. These are
good people, who understand their business, have been at it for a
long time.
They completely understood
their situation, and for the last six months no optimal, hell, no
viable solution was available.
This particular problem
had colored all other actions, made what had formerly been a fun
operation a death march.
As their consultant, I
wanted to bring some light. I’m supposed to be the magic man.
We’d been through worse
before. But the business has changed. Their reason for being is now called into question.
I had an opportunity to
sit down with the owner. He’s a long time friend and supporter.
We agreed we weren’t
making progress and we weren’t liking the results.
I suggested that since the
old tools weren’t working, why not set up an internal blog, just
for the board, get a promise to have each board member
post their thoughts twice
a week for two months.
Nobody on the outside
would see our work, but maybe we would get to a different place. I
would go first.
Writing a blog post
requires a couple of things. One is writing, two is finding something
to write. That requires getting out of your rut, finding something
new.
The happy news is that a
number of erroneous preconceptions got defined and fixed. Not by the
readers, but by the writers.
And sure enough, it turned
out that all the trust we had been building with our customers had
created some requests for help. We’ve got some promising work to
provide.
Will it work? Who knows?
But we are getting the snap back, the confidence to create for an
appreciative audience.
The original problem? It’s
still there. But it’s a lot less important. If we keep doing
something else, it may well go away.
New problems require new
solutions.
