This is a slightly edited version of a message I sent to my team:
Today a prospect told us his vision of digital transformation and asked what ours was. I don’t think that’s ever happened before and it threw us off.
Luckily we’d talked about ideas on the train and I’ve spent a lot of time in edtech .
I talked about this moment we’ve found ourselves in when funding is shrinking but the needs were growing in the communities educators serve.
That the mission to share information is more important today then ever. That we could create a experience that made it easier for educators to do more with less. To connect with teachers and students. That we could help them serve their communities in new ways. I didn’t talk about agile rituals, design sprints or the tech stack.
We often talk about how we’ll work with clients but not about what outcomes we’ll create. I challenge you to not answer with process but with vision. To talk about experiences and then how they are created. To show you understand where the client wants to go.
It’s easy to ask a prospect what they want, it’s hard to take a risk on telling them what they should do and how it will create the outcomes they’re looking for.
You don’t need to know all the answers, you just need to show that the climb is worth the struggle and that we can show them the way by learning as we go.
Image: From my first visit to Jackson Hole, one of my favorite places to ski, you can rarely see when you’ve reached the top but the ride down is still fun.