RESOURCES

After an unbelievable five months of quarantine, I’m searching hard for silver linings. One is not having access to everything we normally have. That might sound odd; after all, don’t we always want more options? Funnily enough, fewer options, whether regarding what to eat for lunch or how much to invest in a new marketing campaign, forces a simplicity that can be empowering.

When you can’t do everything, you have to figure out what really matters – to you, your team, and your clients. There are countless things we normally do that we believe are helpful or adding something extra to our professional pursuits. When resources are limited, however, you can no longer throw pasta at the wall to see what sticks. You need to reallocate time and energy to the one thing that does.

How do you identify that one thing – that differentiates your business or service, that motivates your clients to come back again and again, or that keeps your team engaged? Ask. When our team conducts client or stakeholder feedback surveys and asks what people value most or why they choose to work with one company over another, the answer is almost always really simple. That clarity makes it easy for you to focus any incremental resources on going deeper to build on a proven strength.

As your teams and companies contemplate adjusting offerings due to current execution or fiscal challenges, I encourage you to ground those decisions in real data on what differentiates you and matters most to your clients. Those simple insights can supercharge your efforts to do more with less.

Warmly,

Precious Williams Owodunni | President & Founder of Mountaintop Consulting

This letter was originally published in Mountaintop Consulting’s monthly newsletter. You can read the full newsletter here.