Scope it out

Great New Years advice from Seth Godin.

We all work so hard at making resolutions that are for our own self improvement of course.  "Want to express myself more clearly" "Grow my business" "Get that show" "Make more money" etc etc etc, that we often forget that the advice below, while not as aggressive, is really the step that will start us on the path to advancement.

We have a wonderful new board member, Elaine, who is really taking her role as the chairperson of our "Real Estate" committee seriously.  Actually so many of our board members are movers and shakers.  But Elaine has set up tours of spaces so that we can ask questions and decide what we want in our own space more clearly.

She has suggested, and is taking action on, finding someone to help us scope out various demographics and areas so that we can understand the communities we are considering more closely and thoroughly as our "home base".  Between her and the other Real Estate committee members, Penny and Bill, both with extensive commercial real estate experience, we are moving in an exciting direction.

I did some of this work before we even founded the company by speaking to business folks in the Greenwich, Stamford and Norwalk, but it is very nice to have a hard working and dedicated board member now making this very official!

As we look for what we want I want to continue to understand what the community wants (and can support) as well. Therein lies our success.

The hard work of understanding-Seth Godin

Sometimes, we're so eager to have an opinion that we skip the step of working to understand. Why is it the way it is? Why do they believe what they believe?

We skip reading the whole thing, because it's easier to jump to what we assume the writer meant.

We skip engaging with customers and stakeholders because it's quicker to assert we know what they want.

We skip doing the math, examining the footnotes, recreating the experiment, because it might not turn out the way we need it to.

We better hurry, because the firstest, loudest, angriest opinion might sway the crowd.

And of course, it's so much easier now, because we all own our own media companies.