Friday, December 12, 2014

Inbreeding the business way

A few years back, I was working on my PhD. One of my professors told me that the University didn't hire their PhD candidates because they wanted to prevent inbreeding.

Now, I'm sure I don't have to explain the concept because you, my faithful readers, are an intelligent group....except for that one in the back....you're dumb as shit.

What a brilliant concept this was, to me.

In order to keep fresh ideas coming in, in order to question the current thought.....they would only hire other PhDs.

Ever since he said that to me, I thought about how applicable it is to business.

Do you know those businesses that only post their own stuff? They only post articles their employees have written.

AS IF they are the ONE TRUE EXPERT.

Let me give you a couple of examples, I have a business. We write blog articles. Every business does. We post those articles for our customers to read.

However, we are not experts in the field. So, one of my jobs is to go out THERE in the interwebs and find articles from experts in the field. Then, we "re-tweet" or "share" the article with our customers. I don't have a clue what the latest trends are from Italy, but there are people that do that as their full time job.

One of the things my Coach does is post links to the latest and greatest research, training techniques and/or nutrition advice. These articles are not written by her. They are written by the very people who did the research.

That's where I got the swim video that I posted on FB today. (I posted it on my profile and on the IM Boulder group page). My Coach is a Level 3 swim coach (the highest level). Yet another coach created an excellent video. She shared the video with all of us....her athletes.

If you are a business owner or even if you work for a large corporation, keep this in mind. Providing this information is not going to cause you to lose business. You're not sending your customers to one of your competitors.

Just the opposite happens. Your customers appreciate the fact that you are staying on top of research and doing what you can to help them be better or help them make better decisions.

Stop the inbreeding. Bring in fresh new ideas.