What Shape Is Your Business?

I heard this week that the earth isn’t a sphere, who would have known! Well, I can tell you who would have known, the only people on earth with the skills, equipment and training to critically observe and test an age-old assumption and that’s NASA.

This raises two interesting observations. The first being, what sort of inquisitive mind thought this might be an interesting question to examine and second, now that we know this, what are the implications for us earthlings in aspects such as navigation?

If we turn our heads to business for a moment, we often assume something is true just because we were told it is. I can remember challenging a market share assumption which had been assumed knowledge for decades, sounds simple, but the truth was we had measured share excluding inter-material competition. In other words, we were only seeing half the story and we were, therefore, blind to the obvious opportunity to go after the other half. I’m sure there must be hundreds of stories you can think of where an employee or a consultant has looked at what you do through a different lense and found Gold.

We’re all surrounded by people with the most amazing skills and technology that can take us to another level. We do, however, have to be brave enough or humble enough to ask for a third opinion. Don’t be afraid to rock the boat.

Now we know that earth is in fact a ‘lumpy mess’ what might be your equivalent mess? Operational efficiency, product features, supply chain inefficiencies or simply AI Marketing? The answer isn’t always obvious, try getting people or organisations with unique skill sets in the room and see what sort of questions they come up with that challenge your assumptions.

Stoke Consulting

Image credit: NASA