There is a big world out there and many entrepreneurs that I meet start their thinking of nothing but their local market. In Canada, it can be a stretch to get business people to look at the US. For American entrepreneurs, it can be a struggle for them to consider Europe or Asia.
I am often surprised at how strongly I react to the physical form factor of things that I buy and use. My wife does the toothpaste buying in our house and she recently bought Crest toothpaste that came in new packaging. At first it seems like a good idea — toothpaste that will stand up on the bathroom counter.
Changes in technology, people, demographics, and markets provide challenges and opportunities. For example, a friend reminded me of what it was like to go skiing when ski hills had incredibly slow two person chair lifts. Then along came four person detachable high speed chair lifts. Ski hills that embraced the new technology could not only take many more people up the hill every hour, they had a strong competitive market advantage over those that stuck with the old chair lift technology.
We often need to look at familiar things in new ways in order to create a paradigm shift in our thinking. In the photo above, the two people fishing are in water up to their knees. The photo was taken from a sailboat that draws six feet (two meters). The shift is knowing that there is a channel dredged out of the shallows that made it safe for our sailboat to pass.
In Write for the Customer I wrote about making sure that you have your audience in mind when writing and communicating. Today, I want to write about a different audience — the employees in your business.
To employees, senior management appears as if they are on top of a mountain. Isolated. Separated from the rest of the company. Making occasional pronouncements from on high.