The shelf life of a fresh pair of eyes
Many Individuals and corporations alike look forward to Christmas as a chance to catch their collective breath after another busy year, reflect and resolve their approaches to the next 12 months.
With recharged batteries and renewed vigour, we optimistically bound into January to March each year like it's our first hundred days. Of course, it never is. Two weeks in and the holidays will be all but a distant memory, barring the extra few pounds that remind you overindulgence was only too recent. We slip all too easily into familiar patterns and behaviours.
2006 could be different: This holiday, I finished one book and read another. "Who Moved my Blackberry" (Lukes/Kellaway) and "Hello Laziness" (Maier) have both forced a fresh - if somewhat irreverant - perspective of the industry in which we work and, with a bit of luck, I might make it into February before life returns to normal.
Sitting in a client meeting yesterday, receiving a brief to develop a strategic, customer-driven growth framework for a fast-developing category of technologically enabled, rich, multi-media content (you can see where this is going) I was prompted to reflect on how valuable the first hundred days are for seeing the world in a way that you never will again.
As I marvelled in the meeting at the acronyms and the sheer inaccessibility of the language and concepts, I thought to myself how in a few weeks this will all feel familiar and how the perspective I can take on the problem today is fleeting.
We've learned from our research of the importance of using the F100D to stop, listen and learn. Your trusted, time-proven models of marketing may not work here. But how long does this precious state of ignorance last? How long before we are tainted by insider knowledge, before we assimilate the company's history, language and cultural norms?
What is the shelf life of a fresh pair of eyes?
Editor
Comments
It's a conundrum isn't it.
You must adapt to survive, but remain distant to be an effective catalyst.
Maybe a solution would be to maintain a personal diary through the first 100 days, to ensure that first impressions are not lost.
In blog-literate organisations like the BBC, or Sun Microsystems, or Microsoft, you could even run the diary as a semi-public blog behind the firewall.
A diary of marketing reflections, could, in its own right, become a vision and consensus-building tool...
Posted by: Tim | January 4, 2006 7:33 PM