Taking a dose of our own medicine

Barbers with bad haircuts... graphic designers with hideous business cards... circus clowns who cry themselves to sleep. Business consultants who haven’t written a blog post in nine months and whose Twitter account looks a few birds short. 

Over the past year we’ve worked with our outstanding partners at kglobal to help defense companies diversify into the commercial sector. A key component of our value proposition is that of offering external, objective expertise and facilitation to help clients who find themselves amidst the swirling stress of change. The precise nature of each engagement depends upon each company’s specific needs, but tends to involve issues related to strategic planning, business processes, and sales & marketing activities. Inevitably, the latter category touches upon the importance of messaging and branding, to include social media activity. 

When companies appear to have initiated social media accounts or blogs without levying an adequate level of upkeep, one (or more) of several usual suspects tends to apply: the company lacks a clear purpose or strategy for its social media activity; the company’s social media “champion" has left the organization; or social media activity as a task loses a daily competition with other business priorities.

We’ll plead guilty to door number three. And throw in a side order of “analysis paralysis,” in which the desire to get something juuuuuust right can prevent you from getting something accomplished at all. So what would we tell one of our clients who made such an admission?

1. It’s OK. Unless you expect your social media activity to serve as a direct source of business leads, you likely haven’t caused any damage that can’t be undone. At worst, this aspect of your business might appear a bit rudderless to external audiences, and/or you’re telegraphing that you have some bandwidth challenges.
2. Fix it. Pick your metaphor: Jump in the pool; get back on the horse; start posting again. (OK, that last one was literal.)
3. Stick to your strategy. In our case, this means worrying less about the particulars of any one post. We didn’t intend to reserve this space solely for mind-blowing, critical insights about international affairs, intelligence community challenges, or analytic methodologies. We simply want to share what we’re thinking. What we’re doing. What we read or heard and found interesting. So we’re going to analyze our thoughts a bit less, and shoot from the hip a bit more.

In addition to providing expertise and guidance, our diversification assistance serves as a forcing function for our clients. Everyone is a little more motivated to get something accomplished when they know someone is watching — hence this post. This is our internal client self telling our external consultant self that we get it and we’re ready to fix it.

But the barbers and the clowns are on their own.