In the April 2010 Business Examiner newspaper (Vancouver Island edition), there is a feature on the Courtenay/Comox/Cumberland success in attracting visitors and building a legacy to outlast the Olympics. In a nutshell, Comox Valley put themselves out there as a training destination for National Olympic Committees, and the NOCs responded. Comox Valley invested in infrastructure (such as a biathlon range) and had their local schools act as welcoming committees for various national teams. The efforts paid off, with 14 Nations, 33 teams and over 350 athletes and coaches. Seven National Olympic Broadcasters visited the slopes of Mt. Washington and the Comox Valley community and covered the story of the little community that DID.
I can’t help but contrast this to what I’ve seen from Victoria’s tourism community. Tourism Victoria offered a series of media story suggestions on their website, but the only major broadcaster who I heard visited was NBC’s Today Show: they flew over, had tea at the Empress, fish at Red Fish Blue Fish, then flew out again. Didn’t get beyond 500m of the harbour. I heard from tourism operators that the Olympics pretty much killed their business: the President’s Day weekend is usually a busy one, but the streets were empty. Business was down from last year.
Victoria played host to the Chinese curling team, but instead of having an exhibition match against another Olympic team, they played against local Victoria teams… an interesting game for local curling fans to be sure, but not quite the fireworks of the China-Sweden exhibition hockey match in Comox. Our pubs and schools and gathering places showed TV broadcasts of the big events while they were on, but there wasn’t any kind of lead-up or welcoming of the world here.
Shame on us. I think what happened is we rested on our laurels, and squished them in the process. So what if we’ve got the Empress? Who cares if we have quaint, quiet city streets with old-world charm? That’s not what Olympic visitors or National Olympic Committees were after. We completely failed at understanding our target customers’ needs and responding with something relevant to THEM. We have just as many (if not more) arenas for skaters to practice in, yet the big hockey teams were up in Comox, because we didn’t sell something relevant to the market.
Victoria assumed that because we’re cute and charming and oh-so-close-to-Vancouver, we’d get plenty of visitors, and we got complacent. We fell victim to the old “if you build it, they will come” philosophy and boy did we lose out as a result. Let this be a lesson to small businesses: it’s not about how great you are, but how well you anticipate and respond to your customers’ needs. That is what Comox Valley did, and they are winners through and through!
What do you think Victoria should have done to make sure we capitalized on the Olympic Games?
This week I’ve finally had the time to read the newspaper for the first time in several months. Gosh, I almost wish I hadn’t. I live in a world without television and radio, because I’m raising my child without TV and we talk instead of listening to the radio in the car. So my news primarily comes through the Internet, which has the feature of not showing me anything I don’t feel like clicking on. Well my bubble has been burst, and now I am pretty darn fired up.
I acknowledge that the BC government has its fiscal responsibilities, and the reality is that we have a whopping big health care system to fund, with an aging population, etc. etc. But I cannot overlook or justify the downright cruel cuts to funding that have been delivered to the non-profit sector this month. Cutting funds to organizations that provide arts programs to adults, in favour of supporting youth programs, is one thing. The next day we hear that gaming grants have also been cut (and I’m convinced there’s something fishy and not entirely legit about the government doing that). Yesterday I read that the government, in all its finite wisdom, have stopped covering birth control and glucose monitors for people on income assistance and disability benefits. If that’s not just the most short-sighted health care “savings” tactic you’ve ever heard of, I’m not sure what could be.
By Wednesday afternoon I was pretty damn depressed about the state of the world. Then I decided that instead of moaning and groaning about how unfair and silly it is, I’m going to GET BUSY. Don’t get down, GET EVEN. I asked myself, how can I make the world a better place right now? How can I leverage my skills and help all those organizations and people who’ve been damaged by the government’s heartless decisions? (Because yes, I believe the government SHOULD have a heart – they are the instrument of the people, or should be, and people have hearts). What I’ve got to offer is skills – mAd sk1llz in hacker parlance – in strategic planning. And if there’s one thing that non-profit organizations need to do right now, it’s a round of strategic planning to figure out how they’re still going to meet the needs of their clients (the taxpayers) with less support from the taxpayers, courtesy of Gordo & Clan. So I give you:
DIY Strategic Planning Workshop
On April 22 from 11:45am-1pm, I’m offering a Lunch n Learn workshop for any interested parties. I’ll be sharing my top seven best suggestions for how to do strategic planning on a shoestring. It’s aimed at non-profit groups and small businesses – two groups that have much in common these days. Tickets are $32 which includes your lunch and the presentation. It’s a smokin-hot deal and I’ve already heard some buzz about groups wanting to bring multiple people, so get booked soon. If we fill up the room, I’ll arrange another date.
The venue is the Victoria Executive Centre, this town’s most comfortable meeting space. More event details and registration can be found on DIY Strategic Planning Registration.
Tags: Events, non-profits, seminars
Well, the grand Olympic Adventure has come to my province (British Columbia). We’re in the eye of the storm right now, between the Olympics and Paralympics. I went over to Vancouver to take in some events and soak up the atmosphere. There was lots of opportunity to people-watch and, with a major transit journey to Whistler and back, ponder over what lessons the Olympics could bring in the field of strategic planning.
1. Sometimes it takes an outside set of eyes to see what you need to do. The press descended upon Vancouver like a pack of hungry wolves and while some of the reports were unfavorable (the Brits seemed particularly full of vitriol), much of the commentary allowed Vancouver to see itself through strangers’ eyes. Yes of course, they have the skyline to die for but there are also the social concerns in the Downtown East Side which bear careful consideration. On a day-to-day basis the average Vancouverite probably glosses over both good and bad, focusing on the daily minutiae of life, so the Olympics were a good shakeup. Organizations need to invite strangers to visit occasionally to get outside perspective on what they’re doing well and poorly.
2. Don’t let your competitors design your costume. This snarky little tidbit came from David Sale as he was commentating during the Pairs Figure Skating. One unfortunate couple sported bright blue one-piece suits that seriously begged the question: what were they THINKING? As it turns out, one of the other competing pairs had designed their outfits. Sometimes businesses and other organizations will let their competitors’ actions dictate theirs, from what products they develop to how they communicate with their customers. Stand firm: don’t just be a copycat. If your competitors are using social media, maybe it’s a good idea (all good ideas have to start somewhere) but you should evaluate a decision on its merits for your own business. How do you relate to customers and stakeholders? Can you pull off a head-to-toe neon-blue jumpsuit (or a daily-updated blog) or should you stick to your own knitting? (Ohhh the mixed metaphors!)
3. Consistency is king. In the bobsleigh competitions, it was the teams who were able to lay down consistently proficient runs who took home the hardware. If you’re doing something well, keep working on it – don’t relax, don’t get complacent. When you make your strategic plans, don’t get drawn to change for change’s sake. If you’re successful (especially when times are hard) it could be that what you need to do next year is more of the same. But if you’re in a rut, you’d better make like a vending machine, and change!
I hope these tips have been helpful. I’ll leave you with just one more thought from the Olympics: when all else fails, USE MORE COWBELL.
Tags: Olympics, Strategic Planning
This morning I took on the task of sorting the 300 people I follow into user lists. Along the way I unfollowed about 25 of them, mostly because I couldn’t think of why I’d followed them in the first place and because I didn’t have a good list to put them on. It took me just a little under two hours.
It shocked me that nobody has invented a tool that allows you to batch-edit your followers and following lists to assign them to lists etc. Wouldn’t you consider this a fairly basic utility?
Now that I can view my Twitter lists in Seesmic Desktop (my Twitter application of choice), I have this vague expectation that Twitter will become more useful to me. The jury is out on that. Maybe I’m missing something but there doesn’t seem to me much going on out there that’s very important to me.
On another social media note… has anyone figured out what to do with LinkedIn yet? Aside from getting connected with everyone you know (and apparently a bunch of people you don’t know, if the trickle of invitations from total strangers is any indication). I joined a few discussion groups and have plenty of connections but I’m still waiting for the A-HA! moment and the value to be realized. Please, if you’ve got some secret to making LinkedIn more than just a business-oriented, slightly less-annoying Facebook, please comment!
Tags: social media, technology
Last week’s graphic recording engagement in Vancouver is complete; the charts have been photographed, edited and sent to the client. I’m going to steal a few moments from my next project to reflect on my process.
The TrainerMarkers were very fun to use, especially the light grey. It’s fantastic for adding shading and dimension to things. The yellow and orange were also nice for highlighting word clusters. I found that it took a little extra concentration to make a good strong line with the full nib width: I’m going to need to do some more practice work in the studio to get the hang of these tools. The royal blue one is actually a little on the purple side for my tastes, but the other colours are pretty true.
Having the icon library on hand was great. Especially important was having “iconized” versions of my client organizations’ logos so I could reproduce them around the edges of the chart for the introductory session. I was missing one logo out of the four – must remember next time to have ALL logos on hand for titles, etc. I’m glad I didn’t have the Bikablo with me, as it would have been a distraction. Having put advance thought into various icon concepts meant that when I went to the wall, I had a good visual vocabulary to draw from even without my cheat-sheets.
During the session there were three discussion segments. For the first one, I knew that the facilitator wanted to draw a particular model. He had given me a text document describing the type of model in advance so I had a plan for how to lay out my page. For the second and third discussion segments I had less of an idea about what the questions and desired outcomes were, so I think the graphics were less effective as a tool to “draw things together” for the group. Next time I work with this facilitator, we’ll both know more about what to discuss ahead of time so that the graphics can be more supportive of his outcomes.
All in all, the session was very enjoyable and the participants were lovely people. It reminded me how much I love this work! Woohoo!
Tags: Graphic Recording, growth, reflections
I just received my first shipment from Neuland North America – I must be a “real” graphic facilitator now, because I’ve got Neuland products! These are my business’ Christmas present to itself. Here’s what Santa got Directis:
Bikablo is a pocket-sized coil-bound book containing hundreds of icons for use on flip charts / murals, depicting soft concepts like “global connections” as well as symbolic icons like a turtle, horse, sheep, buildings etc. The purpose of the book is to give you ideas about ways to depict concepts and objects with quickly-drawn illustrations. There are three to five icons in each page with a variety of words that could be associated with the icons. There’s also an index in which you can look up concepts and find icons in the book. The trick is to study the book and then practice drawing the icons with your own hand, using their shading suggestions.
TrainerMarkers (basic and colourful sets)
These are monster-big refillable water-based markers for large titles or shading. I splurged and got myself 12 – the four basic colours for titles and outlines, as well as the assorted colours set because I just can’t be restrained to red, black, blue and green. These things are BIG! The nib is 12mm wide and 6mm thick so you can do a variety of thicknesses of lines. The barrel of the marker itself is also big and thick so they’re not good for small writing, but excellent for broad brush strokes.
I have a graphic recording engagement next week in Vancouver and I am SO looking forward to whipping out the BIG pens. *glee!*
Prepping for an Engagement
Right now, I have a long list of words that I’m preparing ideas for, based on the project. Here are some of the concepts I’m brainstorming: planning, mobilize, community, assessment, evaluate, gaps, model, barriers, relationships, collaboration, innovation, respect, capacity-building, access for all, strength-building, representation, impact, social network, sustainability, joy, funds, mentors, conversations, meetings, stewardship, inventory, goals, action plan, partners, implementing, needs, consensus, demographics.
I’ve taken a few pieces of letter-sized paper and folded it so there are 8 sections on each page. Right now I’m using pencil to put a different icon into each section. I’m not really labelling the sections, just collecting the icons. Then when I’m at the engagement I’ll have these pages tucked into my kit and if I hit a wall (recorder’s block?) I can whip out the pages and peruse for an image I like. The reason I’ve created my own pages is because I know that I can draw each one of these icons quickly. If I simply took my Bikablo or computerized graphics with me, I would be stalled while my brain communicated with my hand on how to reproduce the image.
When I’m done with these pages, I’ll scan and upload them in case you want to borrow!
Quick addition: One of the things I do when I’m trying to find an icon for something specific is I google the word, then go to “Google Images” and choose Clip Art only from the search options. This gives me a bunch of thumbnails of online images relating to the word. I find one or two simple ideas and then draw them out freehand in pencil a few times to get the “flow” of the lines. This is a great way to generate your own icons because you’re not actually copying anything, just re-interpreting!
Tags: preparation, resources, tools
There are lots of VERY GOOD reasons why business people are jumping on the social-media bandwagon. I’m not going to rabbit on about those, but rather touch on something subtle I’ve noticed throughout the last year about social media and how it changes the nature of business relationships. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: people, social media
Well, even though I didn’t complete my 30 Days of Marketing Effort, putting my intentions out there for business development seems to have had a positive effect. I find myself right now with as much work as I can feasibly handle for the next month at least, and probably through until February if I count a few things that are in the pipeline.
The sales pipeline of an independent consultant isn’t like a typical B2B sales pipeline in some ways. Of course I have leads, prospects, proposals, closing, etc. One thing that differs is that I am very picky about what I consider to be a real sales prospect, and I typically do not invest in proposals or planning unless the client is very well qualified. Unlike bigger consulting firms, I don’t typically respond to Requests for Proposals unless I have been specifically invited to do so through a past client or close colleague. There have been the odd occasions when I knew I was being compared against other consultants for an engagement, but those instances do not generally require me to make a big investment until there is a clear match.
This is an excuse I sometimes use for not following a disciplined marketing program. Is it an excuse or a reason, though? Or maybe my rendition of a “disciplined marketing program” is just a lot more anal-retentive than it needs to be. Hmmm… no. I’m lucky right now that there is client work to be had and it seems to have drifted past my inbox at a time when I was paying attention, but I need to be more organized in the future if I’m going to expand my repertoire.
It’s written and said in lots of places that you need to fire your clients occasionally to prevent your consulting business from getting stale. I did that in a BIG way when I moved to Victoria from Vancouver. It takes a while to build things up again, but it’s worth reviewing clients once a year or so to make sure you’re both still growing and learning from the relationship. Am I still providing value to this client or that one? Am I challenging myself to learn and grow and provide better value all the time? Am I working too much to satisfy the whims of one or another big client who pays a lot? These questions are part of an annual client review. Sometimes this review tells me that I need to go outside my comfort zone in marketing so that I can attract clients who are unlike the ones currently in my calendar. It means more work, but the alternative is (as I see it) stagnation and DOOM. Okay maybe not DOOM but you get the idea. Oh and by the way, that kind of client review is really cool as the basis for a visual planning exercise!
Have a good weekend!
Ok I’ll confess: I’m thoroughly failing with respect to the 30 Days of Marketing Effort. I have done some of the tasks (mostly things I was already doing, like blogging and going to training/networking events) but there’s a lot of work outlined in that list which are simply not getting done. My excuse is that I have two client projects keeping me extremely busy this month, and since last month I was in Australia for three weeks, I really need to put in as many billable hours as I possibly can.
This is one of the drawbacks of being an independent: when you get so busy you can barely take a breath, you let the marketing slide. Yet when the projects end (as they inevitably do) you don’t have any new projects or clients in the pipeline. I’m lucky in that I tend to be naturally social and drawn towards networking events (less so now that I have a toddler at home), and social media like Twitter help me get connected with people even if I’m glued to my desk. If I weren’t making connections “online” with people like this, I would be treading in very dangerous waters right now.
Am I going to pull it out and stroke off some more of the tasks on that list before the end of the month? Quite possibly, yes. I’m not going to throw my hands up in the air and give up on the good ideas that lay behind that list… I’m just going to be more choosy, and do things that will build long-term results instead of focusing on activities that drive short-term business development. Perhaps I should have been more mindful of that in making the list the first time.
Working in large format (e.g., on a large white board or piece of paper) is a very different feeling from working in a notebook or even on flipchart paper. I find that it elicits more creativity, more expansive thinking, and frees the “thinkers” (either the artist or the client group, in a graphic facilitation session) from the limits of needing to think in a linear pattern. However it wasn’t until I stood in front of my whiteboard today at the start of a new piece of work that it really hit me about why working big works so well.
When our writing/drawing surface is bigger than our arms reach, we’re presented with a huge amount of potential. Yes it can be quite daunting to feel like you have to fill up that piece of paper or board, but at the same time that bit of discomfort can push us outside our comfort zone. Going outside the comfort zone is where you can discover all kinds of new ideas and fresh, fertile imaginative power. By moving the limits of your working surface outside of your arms’ reach, that loosening of the boundaries also works on your mind.
If you’ve been reading this blog and wondering if you could try some of the stuff I do, I urge you to give it a shot. Get yourself some pieces of flipchart paper and tape them together, or head on down to Island Blueprint (if you’re in Victoria) and request a roll of 42″-wide 20lb bond paper. 50 yards will cost you $20. Use masking tape to put it up on whatever available flat surface you have, get some non-bleeding markers (Mr. Sketch are easy, fun and cheap) and just start DOODLING BIG. Start with big circles and broad lines. It doesn’t have to mean anything. You can turn the paper over and use the other side if you feel guilty about killing trees. Just start pushing your own perceptions of your limits and see what comes out.
Tags: Exploration, Graphic Facilitation, growth, visual thinking
