The Ruler Rule

The jobs I’ve had in the past have always been connected to People, I’ve been in HR for 21 years and before that, I worked throughout High School and University as a waiter in cafes and restaurants.

About a year and a half ago I was invited to be part of the Marketing the Department in the company I already worked for. You can say that emotion wise this “fitted like a glove”. Marketing is something I was always passionate about.

My first goal in this new area was “to impress/not to disappoint” and so a million of things raced through my head. I knew I had a lot in me, but I also knew that I was missing so much. To combat this insecurity and to reduce the risk of failure, I had to prove to my peers that the decisions I was making were the right ones, so I believed to do so that there would be no better way then measuring.

It came quit soon and obvious, that due to the size of my organisation, when I was measuring, I was doing just that….?measuring. Let me give you an example so you can see what I mean:

If we take a ruler in our hand and start measuring a piece of paper our vision and focus goes upon a small area. This small area is highlighted and exposed in such a way that we see things that we normally don’t see, there is only ONE BIG PROBLEM, we LOSE Focus on everything else.

I’m not so worried nowadays about measuring to much, what I believe is that we should Relate First and then Relate Second. Yes of course we should measure but more importantly we should focus on the fact we have to build to be able to measure (we’re not Engineers that measure to build).

Just like planting a seed, our obsession shouldn’t be on how much milimetres it grows everyday but if we’re providing the right substrate, fertiliser, sun, water, etc.

There are so many variables that will influence measurement that we should have them all covered before we start to measure so when it comes the time to do so we will having something to show.

I strongly believe that a solid Relationship Marketing Policy will bare it’s fruits almost on its own.

The Ruler Rule: Measure without losing focus