insights

Creating Your Own Market

If a personal injury lawyer’s firm places numerous billboards along the most dangerous sections of the highway, are they creating a market? Do the billboards add distractions during the most demanding portion of a driver’s journey, potentially contributing to more accidents? Are they developing a market by advertising to that market?

We can create markets by being present in locations where people have known and unknown needs. A resort where we vacationed had an extensive lagoon pool. The pool rental shack gave the first two sea kayaks of the day out for a free half-hour every morning. Experience revealed to the owner that guests seeing the kayaks or paddle boards in the lagoon would drive more rentals than waiting for somebody to commit to the day’s first transaction.

Simon Sinek has an insightful story about the rule of two in shoe sales. Reducing choices to two pairs of shoes versus three or more created a more profitable market. Adding limits can actually increase our impact.

How might we create our market by aligning our values and actions?

Questions That Change Outcomes

An innocuous question can solve a major airline crash investigation.

What questions do we need to ask ourselves and our team that might appear rudimentary but reveal significant barriers or opportunities? One of the best places to start is when providing orientation to new staff or board members. Their inquiry might open a new chapter for your enterprise.

Ridgelines

When we navigate mountain ridgelines, we get a different perspective. When the views are optimal, we can see multiple sides of the peak we are ascending. When the weather closes in, we are closer to the terminal velocity point, where weather sweeps across the edges, and we adjust to atmospheric pressure differences. It is often a dynamic place.

How might we situate ourselves at our organization’s ridgeline to better understand what terrain we have ascended and what remains above? When I worked at an elementary school, the student drop-off and pick-up points provided a ridgeline vantage point into parent-student interactions. The faculty lounge was a ridgeline to staff morale and mindset. The recess area was the ridgeline for student-to-student interactions outside of the classroom setting. What are your organizational ridgelines?

How Does the Group Benefit When You Arrive?

When you show up, does the room get smarter, more insightful, diverse, empathetic, energized, or committed? What trait or characteristic do you lend that adds value? It is a question to ponder when being asked to serve. Do we have something remarkable and or unique to offer? We might be the only ones without an advanced degree, but we have experiences that elude academics. We might be the only ones who have trekked this route previously, even if it was at night and we failed to reach the destination. For all the board and team matrices that attempt to map our attributes on spreadsheets, it is often the unquantifiable that is our greatest asset.

I have traveled far to attend board meetings where my presence contributed little until a key inflection point. I offered a three-sentence reflection that I believe helped us make a better decision. For 99% of the meeting, I was not essential, there were other voices to cover the same perspective I was thinking. However, when the moment came for a critical insight that I was uniquely positioned to articulate, I was willing to contribute. The room was better for the presence of each attendee.