AMiable Solution #216: How Does Your Garden Grow?

Last month, Steve Cody, co-founder and CEO of Peppercomm, a strategic communications firm, examined some critical marketing lessons for Inc.com in his article, “The Top 12 Marketing Wins and Losses of 2016.”  He looked at the good and destructive choices that other organizations made in order to help us learn what to do and what not to do.

Although there’s definitely value in learning from others’ experience (and from Cody’s analysis, available here, http://www.inc.com/steve-cody/the-top-12-marketing-wins-and-losses-of-2016.html, we know that even more can be gained from a bit of self-analysis.  But, instead of just swimming in numbers or getting overwhelmed in a sea of reports and analyses (which are useful but often demoralizing), we suggest supplementing your evaluations with a more graphic approach: a garden drawing.

We know it might sound silly, but try it.  Using images to examine your year-long marketing efforts can help you make sense of the numbers and reports, organizing your data and providing insight in ways that numbers and text alone can’t.

So go ahead: take a blank sheet of paper, turn it sideways, and draw a line through the middle, from left to right. 

Now, without referencing any reports or spreadsheets, think about your organization’s marketing experiences this past year.  For every success or highlight, draw a flower above the line.  For every disappointment or failure, draw a root below the line.  Think about new or revamped campaigns, key customers, new markets you pursued, new talent you hired or new spokespeople you teamed up with, seasoned professionals who celebrated milestones or received recognition, changes you made in your processes or vendors, investments you made in technology, experiences you had with clients or donors, publicity you received, etc.  Think, too, about things that happened within your organization or your department, including events that increased or dampened morale, productivity, growth or reductions in staff, etc.

Now look at your marketing “garden.”  How does it look?  Did you have a better year, overall, than you initially remembered?  Did you struggle more than you’d like to admit?  If you planted your flowers and roots in chronological order, do you notice any patterns?  Did your roots generate periods of inactivity, or did they get turned into something better?

Although you can’t take your garden to your CEO or CFO in place of a traditional report, you can take it to heart: recognize the good that occurred this year.  Celebrate the successes, and examine the setbacks.  Even failures can be nurtured into growth.