Words Matter: Cannabis’ Tower of Babel
The Tower of Babel myth describes a place where people speaking different languages are unable to understand and interact with each other. You have probably witnessed similar challenges in cannabis organizations. Whether you are in a meeting, listening to a speaker or reading a document, there are quite often disconnects between what people intend to communicate and what their audience understands.
These gaps create strategic and operational ambiguity which can lead to misaligned expectations and poor decision making. Moreover, it’s hard to persuade someone to mobilize around a winning strategy if you can’t clearly and simply communicate your objective in words and images.
Communication problems often trace to a clumsy use of nebulous concepts, poor leadership and excessive use of jargon (and, sometimes, the recipient’s poor listening skills). Strategic clarity and alignment start with a shared understanding of your key terms and concepts.
Consider 4 common expressions that frequently trip up managers:
1. Quality
Quality is in the eyes, nose and ears of the beholder. In other words, it is very subjective and not by itself a helpful term or goal for a consumer-focused business. What quality is really about – in a market sense - is repeatedly delivering the right (e.g., differentiated) product features and value better than competitors at a price your target segment is willing to pay.
2. Consumer-centricity
A fancy-sounding bromide that is often not defined in a tactical sense. Yes, cannabis is about delighting the consumer. But what many miss is the retailer's vital role in defining consumer choice (i.e. merchandising), leveraging POS consumer data (i.e. which brands may not have) and influencing the sale (via recommendation). No channel appeal? No consumer-centricity.
3. Brands
A catch-all notion which means something different to everyone and often rarely linked to measurable business outcomes. A brand is way more than a logo, promotion or product feature. To consumers and channel partners, a brand is a promise of value delivered through a pre, usage and post sales experience. Brands are built over the long term and sustained with a holistic and systematic approach.
4. Asset-lite
This problematic idea is often used in investment decks and business plans to describe a desire to not invest in equipment or infrastructure. All good, but isn’t your IP and critical capabilities also assets and worthy of investment? What about your employees? These ‘ultimate’ assets do require invested capital as well as time, and are what eventually drives shareholder value.
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