Enter the Chief Executive Social Gardener
Recently a friend asked me how we might get big brands to think more like entrepreneurs. I’ve been thinking about that. Maybe we should get the C-suite executives to start a gardening community.
Gardeners follow time-tested strategies and tactics. Gardeners
- have a goal — whether it’s a garden or community we’re building, we know what we’re setting as the mission.
- know their field — we need to understand the qualities of the playing ground, the terrain, and the creatures who live there.
- understand the systems and cycles, rhythms and patterns — we see our own habits, the natural paths of outside factors, the effects of climate, the weather, and unexpected events
- consider the units (plants or people) that match those circumstances, how they work and compete, and which of those we can manage most easily
- determine what we know, what we want to know, and watch out for what we need to learn
Gardeners talk to each other about what works and what doesn’t. What you know about anything is what applies to making plants happy and thriving. If you’re good at that, you’re gold.
Gardeners also:
- watch and listen. We are constantly testing the information we think we know. We talk. We listen. We read everything. Not a gardener with any experience thinks that he or she can outwit the variables that nature can bring together.
- remove weeds, trolls, and competitive threats, while finding opportunities. When gardens fail, great gardeners look for learning and new solutions, when they thrive we look for the same things.
- amend what’s failing and care for what works — so that threats can’t take hold. Gardeners know that little problems grow, in the same way as beautiful fields do.
- know that life cycles peak and know what works to extend them. We’ve been watching our gardens. We get to know when they need boosting and when they don’t.
- realize what we don’t control and we’re careful about when and how changes and new ideas are introduced.
Every enterprise should have a Chief Executive Gardener to be a true partner in getting the Chief Bean Counter more beans to count.
Could you be a Chief Executive Social Gardener?
What seeds are you planting now?
More about social media gardening tomorrow …
I make connections.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Grow your community with Liz!!
