Any gardener will tell you that gardening takes strategy and tactics.
- long-term and short-term planning,
- resources,
- and daily maintenance.
Enter the Chief Executive Gardener
Here’s what Chief Executive Gardeners do. They
- check the location, the values of the soil, the sunlight, the weather, the intangibles.
- find the right plants to match those circumstances.
- plant the seeds and seedlings in the soil — different plants across the landscape — to match variations in conditions.
- keep watch on a regular basis.
- remove weeds and other competitive threats.
- amend the soil and keep plants cared for — pruned, fed, and strong — so that threats can’t harm them.
- know that some plants will only live so long; some will die in storms; some will be weak from the start but that those should be rare, if the gardener is good.
- watch the garden to see soil changes, to know what plants will continue to flourish and to know what new plants to introduce.
Every enterprise should have a Chief Executive Gardener. Without a Chief Executive Gardener, the Chief Executive Bean Counter has only luck to grow the beans to count.
To quote Joseph Jaffe
If you’re not busy growing, you’re busy dying.
He could have been talking about a garden. He wasn’t.
Great gardens grow to fit the world. They don’t try to make the world fit them.
That’s the garden analogy. Apply it where you think it works.
What will grow your business garden today? Would you start with an acre of social media listening and conversation?
Liz Strauss
Want a strategy to be irresistible to your core audience? See the Work with Liz.
