Sluice

If you don’t have the right tools to excavate into relationships to find value, you are mining for gold without a sluice. A sluice regulates a flow into a receptacle and can be used to separate fluids from solids, in general controlling the overall flow. The word is common in the right circles but does a lot to represent two pieces of fundamental business knowledge.

1. You don’t know what you don’t know.

If your system for success doesn’t acknowledge an important aspect that would lead to success, or more often, precludes success then it is a broken system. If the acknowledgment is impossible because there has been no discovery of the missing pieces, then your probability for success is reduced without your knowledge. An evaluation of your system and team can often resolve a fair number of unknowns because while you are an expert at what you do, there are others who are experts at how you do what you do.

1. Jargon is a barrier, not a display of knowledge.

Increasingly businesses are getting more and more comfortable with using jargon and hyper-specific acronyms to display their expertise to clients and other businesses. These attempts to demonstrate expertise often prevent us from discovering how familiar those individuals are with what we do and what we can offer. Learning what someone else knows demonstrates your expertise much more than vomiting out your spiel and waiting for their response. A good sluice can dissect the potential in a relationship through a conversation, an unedited flow will leave everything muddy.

Looking for a good team that can offer that evaluation? Reach out and let’s have a conversation.