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Susan Carroll

Fit for purpose or past its sell by date?

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In certain industries, shelf life is really important. Any retailer selling perishable items has to focus on the quality of what they are selling or offering.  It’s the length of time the item is given before it’s considered unsuitable for sale, use or consumption. There’s often a sell by date or a best before date on the product and this relates to food safety and indicates the date after which the perishable item is no longer regarded as safe. The combination of shelf life and best before date is really critical in some businesses.

 

A Sales director told me that he didn’t think that his communication strategy and plans for people in the business were working any more. He questioned to himself whether in fact they ever had been truly effective.  We reflected on some of the success he’d had with his communication plans over the previous years. He now felt that those same plans were a bit past it and were no longer really hitting their mark.

 

When we applied the concept of shelf life to his plans, he could see that in fact they had served a purpose, been successful and had been really fresh and inspiring at the time. Times had changed. What was once exciting and fresh was now a bit old and stale. His communication strategy had simply reached its sell-by date.

 

What he needed to consider now was how to inject something new and more vital for the coming year, to generate something that was more right for now.  He needed something with a new shelf life. In turn, it may well meet its sell by date too.

 

Do you have a product or service that is starting to move towards the end of its shelf life? Is it a bit tired, dated and not moved with the times?  Perhaps it’s the packaging or maybe it’s the content? Perhaps it’s just not relevant any more? What steps can you take to inject new life, to reinvigorate it and make it more relevant?How can it become more useful and valuable?

 

We don’t need to criticise what served a purpose and has simply reached its sell by date. We just need to know how to either extend its shelf life or create something fresh and more appealing.

Behind the scenes

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“When we had these floorboards cleaned a few years ago, we had to lift them and we found all sorts of things underneath. The room was used as a dorm for evacuees during the war and we found little letters written by children, tin soldiers, anything that could be pushed between the floorboards. They’re now in our archives and you can see them in our museum”

As the guide to my recent ‘behind the scenes’ tour of Glyndebourne indicated the magnificent 2 foot wide floorboards and shared this anecdote in the old Green Room, the gap between 1944 and 2013 narrowed and the scene of young children, separated from their families, sheltering from the bombs, appeared very real to me.  Little did the children know that, decades later, others would appreciate their endeavors and find meaning in the connection. This was an extra layer of richness in the tour of Glyndeboune, an opera house deep in the English countryside and a short drive from where I live.

When we lifted the floorboards in our own home to do repairs some years ago, we discovered that, at one point, a builder had left a pile of rubbish underneath – pieces of cement, rubbish bags, bits of brick. There was so much of it, I even wondered if the builder had left them there as insulation. It took several trips to the municipal waste centre to get rid of it all and I realised it was less about insulation and more about sloppy finishing off. Little did he anticipate the cursing that would meet his hidden shortcuts, years later.

I discovered recently that an architectural practice, BBM in Sussex, has been using old toothbrushes and videos, things we typically dispose of into landfill, as insulation in a prototype house as part of developing new methods of sustainable construction and new ways of using materials. This is intentional re-use of waste and BBM’s practice freely allows a look behind the scenes, indeed encourages it to promote its mantra of the 3 Rs: “Reduce before you Reuse before you Recycle”. BBM invited the cameras in, involved schools and the community and Duncan Baker-Brown, one of the practice partners, gives talks about what’s ‘behind the scenes’ in their approach.

In any organisation, there’s a ‘behind the scenes’ going on. People and processes making things happen. I’m a devotee of ‘behind the scenes’ perspectives. I marvel at the preparation, the planning and the passion that go into designing or making something, whether it’s a product, a service, a performance or an experience. ‘Behind the scenes’ tells a story and invites you in to discover a perspective that you may not realise when you first discover something. It tells you much about a company or organisation. It reveals its culture, passions, beliefs and values and the extent of meaning and innovation.

If someone were to go behind the scenes of your team, your organisation, your product or service and even go so far as to lift the floorboards, what would they find?

Are you intentional and open about what you do? And how you do it? Would you feel pride at what’s to be discovered? What’s behind the scenes in your team, in your organisation?