Dear CMO:
Please welcome the new guy! He’s a bit different than the other members on the team. No MBA for this one. Your new team member has a skill set you’ve never managed before. He will give you a functional capability you’ve never had before on staff.
So what, as a manager and business leader, are you going to do with him? And importantly, how is it going to change your business?
Creativity exercises and brainstorming formats often work hard to take us out of our comfort zones and make us approach ideas in ways that break old habits. So ask yourself how your business would change over the next two quarters if you had a “new guy” on the team, attending every staff meeting, having one-on-one meetings with you, interacting with your team, nailing down objectives and getting his agenda instilled in the company. What does the “new guy” do? You tell me. Let’s build a list.
Tell me what you’d do with any one of the following in your current business (or, for the agency and consulting brethren and sisteren amongst us, in your current assignment or client base):

Ethnographer
Statistician
Cinematographer
Egyptologist
Band tour manager
Journalist
Private investigator

Make your own list. Be like Roger and make a deck of cards. Flip one out and say, what would my on-staff Museum Curator do to help me grow my business?
Regards.
Copyright (c) 2007 Stephen Denny