Barely five weeks into the new year and I am already regrouping on the new habits I intended to develop in 2016. For too long, I have neglected the Sequitur Marketing blog. I vowed to do better. January 3 post….hurray! Next post was planned for January 17…great “plan,” not so great on the “act” and “change” (see the January 3 post).
Is this is what the agile folks mean by “fail fast?”
So I am in awe of Frank Deford. For many years, I have listened to Mr. Deford’s weekly essays on NPR. I don’t recall when I first heard him but he’s held this post since 1980 and most of those years NPR has been my morning radio habit. I realize Mr. Deford is also known for contributing to Sports Illustrated and other publications, penning books and screenplays, and serving as a TV sports correspondent. But I know and admire him as the intelligent, provocative, poetic good friend of the Sports Curmudgeon on public radio.
He speaks and sometimes pontificates about sports. But it’s not just sports scores and stats and opinions on specific games. He shows me sports in the context of the real world, my world. It doesn’t matter that I don’t care about football or that I know nothing about professional golf tournaments. Mr. Deford’s radio essays are about people and their lives and why the rest of us should give it a thought.
Back to my blog lapse. If one person (Frank Deford) can create a compelling radio essay every week for 36 years plus produce the wealth of other quality material noted above , why can’t I write a couple of amateur blog posts each month?
The simple (simplistic) answer is that I am not Frank Deford. He is uniquely talented.
But I do reflect on the world around me and I am able to string thoughts together and to compose some intelligible content. I am capable of sharing something about business, marketing, strategy, and planning twice a month. Just do it.
It has been said that failure is a chance to revise your strategy. To again paraphrase an agile concept: try something, get feedback, and adapt. I can do that. In fact, I have so much experience in course corrections and strategy revisions that I make it my business to help others through the process. I will do the same for Sequitur Marketing.
Mr. Deford recently announced that he would not continue sharing his thoughts on NPR each Wednesday, but would be change his NPR broadcast commitment to once a month. Given his many other professional activities, I’d say that is an acceptable plan. And I bet he acts accordingly. I’ll take Frank Deford as a good example and a source of inspiration.
Frank Deford photo: By Bridgeport Public Library from Bridgeport, Connecticut (Flickr) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
