Get Inspiration From Outside, But Plan For Success Back Home

From time to time, everyone gets that recurring feeling that to get answers about the challenges we face in our workplace, we have to look outside.  We ask “somebody else” — folks who have been successful in THEIR workplace — big-name corporate leaders, politicians, academicians who have “studied thousands of successful leaders,” psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, physicians, military officers, mountain-climbers, writers, chefs, actors, singers, dancers, video game developers or just someone with a lot of followers.

Sometimes we just want some outsider who’s been successful to show us…well, how to be more successful.

That often entails getting out of the office — going “somewhere else.”  To visit another business in another industry.  Or on a retreat at a conference center.  Anything to get us away from our own workplace.  All so we can find new ways to do the things we’ll have to do…when we get back to the office.

These road trips provide a change of scenery and can give us a fresh perspective.  But at some point we have to come back to work and look at the challenges in front of us.

To get the most from these experiences, it’s helpful to do some prep work beforehand and follow-up afterwards:

What do we really want to get from the experience?  Try to describe what you would see and hear back home that would let you know you got something valuable you can put to use?

What’s keeping your team up nights?  What are your folks trying to do, but getting stuck? What solutions have they tried?

What’s keeping customers up nights?  Talk with them before the event.  People already using your products can tell you what they like and don’t like. But whatever their objections, they’re already your customers.  How about talking with some people using your competitors’ products?  They can tell you what it would take for them to switch.  But that kind of information leads to a “features war” that doesn’t make the total user population any bigger.  So you’ve got to also talk with people who aren’t using anyone’s product.  That’s where the real growth potential lies.

Brief the outsider on your situation.  Make sure you share your hopes and expectations with him or her going-in.  Don’t assume that because that person is successful, he or she knows about your problems or your customers’  problems, or what you want to learn from your time together.

When you get home, set up a follow-up plan.  Make sure to include see-and-hear action items, persons responsible and due dates.  Do it right away before the insights and ideas fade.

We can always draw inspiration from people in other fields, and get a new point of view from an off-site adventure.  If those outsiders are successful, they probably got that way from understanding their own customers’ problems and finding ways to build solutions.

To get the most from engaging with them, make sure to get a fresh picture of what’s on the minds of your folks and on the minds of the customers whose problems you’re trying to solve.