Power. [check]
Altitude. [check]
Attitude. [a-okay]
As part of the flight routine, aircraft pilots constantly scan and adjust. They scan across their cockpit gauges, assess their attitude, and make any necessary adjustments.
This technique is especially important when in clouds, at night, and when the ground isn’t visible. It is easy for a pilot to lose track of the horizon. Our human sense of balance isn’t adequate to keep an airplane flying right-side-up.
Scan and adjust can also be a helpful technique for your business.
Economically, we’re in a period where we can’t see the ground… and things are awfully cloudy. Our sense of business balance may not be adequate enough to keep a company-right-side up during foul economic conditions.
Now, more than ever, we should be monitoring the full range of gauges and instruments available. It’s not enough to simply track sales, volume, margin and profit. Key gauges also include: customer satisfaction, service scores, how customers *actually* use your products, employee satisfaction, positive versus negative media coverage, customer comments online, etc…
- Are you using more than your gut or sense of balance to pilot your company?
- Are you relying too much on a single measure and may be missing important information report by other feedback?
- Do you have the right gauges in place?
| It’s About Attitude When a pilot speaks of attitude, they’re referring to the whether the nose of the plane is pointing up or down. Also, if their flying straight or if the wings are crooked. What’s the attitude at your business? Is your nose stuck up? Are you flying crooked? |
What are the gauges you use at your organization to measure your flight path? The success of your products, marketing promotions, or customer satisfaction?
Hi Paul, I enjoyed this post on scanning and adjusting.
I believe it’s important for marketing leaders to look at as many data sources as possible, both internal and external, and have some method of integrating them – and then of course prioritizing so that action can be taken. There’s no magic number or formula that can tell a company “exactly” what to do, but I firmly believe that listening to internal sources (both strategic and operational), as well integrating external data sources into the analysis can provide a better picture and clear up some of the cloudiness.
The real trick however, is to have the processes and technologies to do scanning and adjusting (monthly, weekly, hourly or even down to the minute). Sadly, most companies don’t have standard processes nor the technology in place and must rely on a manual approach. Here’s where true competitive advantage lies; in the ability to read and interpret the tea leaves (correctly) before competitors can.