Just do
something
Over my
thirty some years in the marketing communications industry, I’ve seen marketers
make some amazingly brilliant moves. Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos and a few others
come to mind. Likewise, I’ve seen people make real boneheaded mistakes.
Remember New Coke? Something that has always puzzled me is when leaders fall
flat simply because they did nothing. They failed to launch.
Now, I
understand that there are sometimes reasons making it impossible to act. A
complete lack of financial resources, for example, although this is often an
excuse for an inability to properly prioritizes. A new car is not more
important than a powerful and effective web site.
The
recent passing of Neil Armstrong, the first man to set foot on the moon, caused
me to remember our astronauts and the courage to crawl into a tin can attached
to millions of pounds of rocket fuel. That’s courage. These people took huge, I
mean HUGE, risks. They did things that no one had ever done and went places no
one had ever gone. Sadly, several died in the process, but that didn’t stop the
program.
I once
had the honor of spending a few hours with Apollo XIII astronaut Jim Lovell.
Admittedly, I was star struck. Here I was, in a car for a few hours with an
American here. For those of you who might not know Lovell’s story, he was the
Commander of the 1970 moon mission that was aborted when an oxygen tank
exploded, crippling the craft in the darkness of space. Despite the lack of
electricity, heat, water and breathable air, the crew returned sagely four days
later.
In one
of my lucid moments, I asked him how scary it was to be trapped, the three of
them, more than 200,000 miles from home, knowing that they may never see their
families again. His response was quick and clear. “We had no time to be afraid,
and we weren’t alone. We knew that our team at home was working day and night
to find a solution to our predicament. We had work to do and decisions to
make.”
What’s
the point to all of this? The point is that sometimes we just have to make
decisions and do something. You may not have an answer to every question or a
solution to every concern, but you have to act.
As a
marketer in the economic development and AEC (architecture, engineering, and construction) industries, I bring my clients ideas and suggestions based on
experience, research, and industry intelligence, but it’s up to them to make
the go or no go decision. This is where leaders excel and losers choke. Some
people just can’t move forward without a 100% guarantee of success.
Unfortunately, in business, no such guarantee exists.
Real
leaders gather intelligence, seek opinions, and then make decisions, accepting
the possibility that they could be wrong. They also know that their decision
could be hugely successful. That’s leadership!
Winston
Churchill once said, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the
courage to continue that counts.”
At
Brand Acceleration, we’ve seen companies and communities, led by strong leaders;
have us develop great web sites, brochures, and effective outbound communications programs that generate outstanding results. We’ve also seen
ineffective “leaders” who ponder, consider, waffle, and reconsider every
possibility while competitors kick their butts. Like a deer in the headlights,
they freeze, ending up as road kill.
Which
best describes you? Are you a procrastinator, accomplishing little or nothing
or are you a leader with the vision, foresight and courage to launch,
regardless of outcome? Think of Neil Armstrong and the fact that his footprints
will forever be on the surface of the moon.
I’d
love to hear from you, too. Feel free to share your thoughts and personal experiences
below.
Have a
great week,
Jim Walton
CEO
Brand Acceleration, Inc.
Branding // Marketing Communications // Public
Relations
Indianapolis: 317.536.6255
Charlotte: 704:230:0394
Atlanta: 404.474.7980
Fax: 317.222.1425
Cell: 317.523.7380
Brand
Acceleration is a full-service marketing communications, brand management and
public relations firm with a focus on economic development, architecture,
engineering and construction.
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