The Power of a Blank Whiteboard

One of the first things I recommend to a new client entering the Phoenix Process is an old fashioned
brainstorming meeting.  With true out-of-the-box thinking.  No ideas are wrong, everything is accepted as a potential and the more ideas the better.

 
• Start with a blank whiteboard – and I do mean blank.  Nothing is a given, nothing is held as fact – everything is in play as part of the process of reinvention.
• Include everything in your evaluation: Markets, target profiles, value propositions, SWOTs, products, materials, messages, everything that matters to your customer effort.
• Challenge everything, ask questions,
  debate everything – there are no Sacred Cows in business.

• Make sure customers AND prospects are
  included as part of your process. Customer beliefs are the ultimate
  test.  In the end – when revenues and profits are the bottom line
  definition of success or failure, nothing else matters but what your
  customers think – and how they spend their dollars.

By the way, some of your ‘facts’ and beliefs will indeed be true .  But when you hold all of your beliefs in the fires of scrutiny – you’ll find that some aren’t.

Beginning the process, seeing your company and its ‘truths’ thrown into the fire, is a painful, difficult but very necessary step toward reinvention and rebirth. Objective truth is one of the keys to redefinition.

It is one of the biggest challenges my clients face as part of the redefinition process.  I like to call the brainstorm
meetings ‘love in’s.  Not because they are easy and light, but because of the emotions and passions that arise as part of the process.

Passion is great – but direct it to the future, and not to clinging to ‘‘the way we’ve always done it’. 

Taking a hard look at your business – and perhaps the very foundation of your
own passion – is tough.  But you must commit to finding the truth, focusing on your customers’ insights and not on your own beliefs. And you must release all ‘knowns’ to the fire. 

The assets that stand on the other side, the things you learn along the way and the new ideas that are born as part of the process will form the foundation of reinvention.

Before you know it, you’ll be flying.