I was travelling home from God's country* by train yesterday and during a certain stretch of the journey whilst daydreaming out of the carriage window I saw a large solar panel field and wind turbines in quick succession. The thought struck me "Why haven't I seen more of these?" We all know that it's the right thing to do - generate clean energy from natural resources (in this case sunlight & wind). Forget the politics it's just a no brainer.
That then got me thinking - every business I've ever worked for does certain things even though there's an equivalent, better long term alternative sat just outside their frame of reference. These are things that you know you simply should be doing but the effort required to make the switch feels too big and the politics or decision making structures seem unable to allow it to happen. In other words there's a perception of real constraints.
What is not happening in your business that simply should be? What are the things that you feel in your gut you should be doing more of/less of? What's stopping you?
What would happen if you could play with the constraints? Imagine what could happen if you had unlimited budget? What could happen if you had zero budget? What if you were the CEO? What if you had unlimited time? What if you had no time at all?
It is only by playing with these constraints and using your imagination that you can create a sense of possibility.
Organisations don't change because people buy into the bureaucracy and the worldview and fundamentally believe they can't change it. It's time to challenge that and play with possibility.
- What would you change?
- Who could you enrol?
- What can you do TODAY that requires no sign off?
- How can you plant a steady stream of seeds that demonstrate the value of change?
WHAT I'M DOING ABOUT THIS OBSERVATION....
The thing that I need to change is to stop focusing on receiving and begin to transmit more. This is why I'm writing this and why the 6 subscribers to my newsletter who haven't received even one newsletter from me in 6 months are now going to get something in their inbox!
The perceived constraints have been: no one will read it, no one cares, I don't have anything interesting to say that hasn't been said before, I can't write and so on. The other constraint has been time - I have a belief that I don't have enough of it and lastly, technology - I don't know how to create an rss feed, link mailchimp, etc.
The change has been to insist on writing things in 30 minutes or less, commit to one a week and to accept that my writing will get better the more I write and that if no one reads it it's ok but if someone does read it then who knows what might happen..... Oh, and I've set up the required tech this afternoon! It took less than an hour.....
So, my personal solar field will be a steady stream of sharing my observations and thoughts on a mission to engage with those who are wrestling with the modern world of marketing. This is a remedy to my 'fossil fuel' mentality where I believed that writing was futile and that only face to face, palm to palm networking counts.
* Manchester, UK