Earlier this week, I was invited to visit a blog. It is not a business blog, not a food blog but a mommy blog.
It is the local blog geared towards new mothers and mothers for young kids. The blog is really nice and loaded with plenty of real world examples of how to raise young children, be a mom, be a lady, be a crafty individual. However, there are a few things that disturb me about the blog and its contributors:
• None of them report having a child over 12 years of age. No Mom on staff that is a Mother of a Teenager?
• None of them appears to be a day over 29. No mother the same age or older than their mothers?
• None of have a child who left home only to come back. What?
• None of them report being the parent of a special needs child? Do Special Needs children NOT exist in their world?
Do you see where I am going with this? I sure hope you do!
This blog and its contributors much like many organizations out there develop something worse than mediocrity. They develop, foster, and encourage "Groupthink".
If you are not familiar with the term here is what Groupthink means: "practice of thinking or making decisions as a group in a way that discourages creativity or individual responsibility."
In the case of the blog, there are no outside individuals that bring more to the cornucopia that is already in place. No Older Moms. Empty-nesters, Mothers of Teenagers, and so on.
Organizations get so caught up in their own hype that they fail to look beyond the break room. They fail to recruit outsiders. Quite simply, they fail.
Do not let your organization fail! Always think outside the box. Always look outside the break room for ideas and suggestions. Recruit the craziest and weirdest people you can find. Whatever you do, do not fail!
It may be too late for this blog. As it, looks like all the friends and family that are part of that blog are in it to stay. They might believe that they are on to something but with an audience that is constantly reducing in size, (kids tend to get older); their readers will no longer see the value in what the blog is providing and will leave for someone else. Someone that can fill the changing and growing needs.
Just like an organization, that has believed its own hype for too long that if it does not do something now it will be too late. Change must happen now, otherwise it is time to turn out the lights and lock the doors. Customers, much like readers, want to see a wider variety offered to them than just the same old, same old.
It is up to you to destroy Groupthink in its tracks! Every organization has a little bit of it if not too much of it. Only you can prevent Groupthink!
Thank you,
Dave Guerra
P.S. I do invite you to join the conversation and tell me what you are thinking.
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