I didn’t mind the work all that much. The weather was nice
and my cats helped out by chasing the rake and errant leaves that I’d stirred
up. But every once in a while, a breeze would come along, sending a fresh
shower of leaves down on my head. The futility of the task made me think of
that old “New Yorker” cartoon by John
Jonik of the guy
shoveling snow inside a snow globe. There’s
nothing to do but take a deep breath and keep going. To
everything there is a season, right?
Upon reflection later that day, I realized the work was not
all that different from my marketing job—not in the sense that it’s a futile
and seemingly endless task (though my inbox would support this notion), but
that planning and implementation isn’t linear. It’s cyclical and ongoing, just
like my yard maintenance.
“Strategy is more
circular than most people view it. In fact, the upward spiral might actually be
the best metaphor,” says John
Jantsch , author of Duct
Tape Marketing. Once you plan, execute, and evaluate, he explains, you
build on the past to move forward into the future—and start the process all
over again.
For example, “if
the media wasn't interested in your news, look for a different angle or
different publication. If lack of understanding was a problem, refine your
messages. If the wrong people read your news, re-examine your distribution
methods,” says Ted
Skinner, vice president of PR Products at PR Newswire. Figure out
what didn’t work, then adjust and refine it for the next iteration.
A simple Google
search for “marketing cycle” will show you countless
variations on this concept. At their essence, though, most are a circle
that starts with planning, moves to execution, flows to analysis, and shifts
back to planning. Around and around.
This same circular
concept can be applied to our education at The
Mayborn. Many scholarly
articles point to an idea called Kolb’s Experiential Learning
Cycle, which is an academic theory that boils down to this: we do
something, we reflect on the experience and make some generalizations about it,
then we look for opportunities to try out what we’ve learned. Execute, analyze,
plan…then execute again. Sound familiar?
It’s something to
think about as we wrap up this semester. We can consider the class a linear
journey, with a beginning in early September, a passage through points on a
syllabus, and a final project submitted in the last week. A pile of leaves,
neatly raked and bagged. Or we can consider this a building phase in our
evolutionary spiral upwards. What did we gain from the experiences and how can
that knowledge be applied elsewhere? Can the leaves be mulched to insulate my
plants against the coming cold? Or should I compost them into an organic humus
that will enrich spring planting?
Though we might call
it the end, it’s really a demarcation: the transition to the next phase. Time
to evaluate, reflect, and extract the value—applying it to whatever comes next.
