Let’s say you’re playing with Legos with your child and inevitably, they push too hard on the little piece with the two nubs and…SMASH. About the last twenty minutes worth of work is now lost. It’s only happened a million times in my house.
Of course, it’s my role (as the non-overreacting father that I am) to say “No big deal, we’ll build it again even better!” Sometimes that doesn’t cut it, but most of the time we’re only derailed for a few minutes and we get back into building something totally different – and cooler.
But, it turns out to be a much bigger deal for everyone involved when we’re working on something concrete. When we’re working on a special, boxed set of Star Wars Legos with instructions, Lego Rebel Alliance pilots and a specific desired outcome…THEN we smash it. Ugh.
It’s not about the tears though (my kids’ or mine), we have a job to finish and we experienced a set back. It still doesn’t change our desired outcome. We have a goal, we have instructions and just because we broke the wing off this X-Wing fighter doesn’t mean we’re going to use the pieces to build a boat. That would be unheard of.
The fact that we have:
- a goal (finish this X-Wing)
- a plan (90 page instruction booklet)
- resources (somewhere around 7 million Legos and a lot of time)
…helps us be:
- dedicated
- bought in
- focused.
Is AEC marketing so different? Without a plan, is your firm building a new Lego creation after every lost proposal? Without clear goals, does everyone want to build their own boat instead of working on the X-Wing?