Joe Greeley here, for Nimlok Minnesota.
Here’s what’s on my mind – Groundhog Day.
Now don’t worry, I don’t mean the fuzzy varmint. And I don’t mean more winter or more spring or anything like that. What I am here to talk about though is Groundhog Day, the movie. The one with Bill Murray. Most of us have seen it, probably all of us have seen it. It’s almost hard not to. I flipped through the channels the other day, and it was on four different channels, and actually the fifth in Spanish. So I ended up on an English channel, and ended up watching it.
Did you know that’s on almost as much as Patrick Swayze in Roadhouse and The Shawshank Redemption? Holy cow! Anyway…
One thing occurred to me while watching it is the anxiety of what Bill Murray is going through. Same thing day in, day out, no change, nothing different, over and over and over — that would drive anybody crazy, wouldn’t it? It obviously drove Bill Murray crazy.
Now don’t get me wrong, I love discipline, and I love consistency, but blind repetition is just nuts, right? So when you think about your exhibit program, do you ever think that maybe it’s a little bit closer to Groundhog Day, or maybe Bill Murray’s character? Does it ever remind you of that?
Very often we hear, “We’re going to do the same thing, same people, same exhibit, same engagement, same thing – we’ve been doing it for years.” Hey, you know what? If that works, great! However, what about some measurable improvement? If you’re not going to change anything, you’re gonna just get what you get – each and every time. How do we do something slightly different?
Even in the movie, Bill Murray improved himself throughout the movie. At one point he was taking piano lessons, he got better and better and better. I think he was even into ice sculpting, and if I’m not mistaken, he even spoke French because he got better and better.
What could you be doing better? How do we get more leads? How do we get more people to stop? How do we have more meaningful engagements? How do we even maybe save money, things like that?
Somebody once said, and I don’t know who said this, “The price of doing the same old thing is a lot higher than the price of change.” I agree with that – you’ve got to do something different.
Here’s an idea. Get your team together, but think of your team as this – get one person from the executive team, one from marketing, one from sales (you might fit one of those). But get together just once a month for fifteen, twenty minutes. Start talking about ideas, about what you could be doing different at each of your events. It’s not a huge investment in time, and we all know that you have your regular jobs, and this is probably lopped on to forty-eight other things you have to get done that week, right? But take fifteen, twenty minutes, and make sure you get different points of view from different people. Call it your R & D Events Team, right?
And…if you need somebody else to bounce things off of, give us a call here at Nimlok Minnesota. Myself or anybody here would absolutely love to talk to you.
That’s what was on my mind today. Let us know how we can help.
Thanks!
