[Note to our readers: From time to time our blog veers off our major highway of content (trends and the next gen) and goes “off road,” e.g. behind-the-scenes of how we run our business. For example, many of you loved our blog about our Nap Room. (Sadly, it was a casualty of the recession, when we had to downsize into smaller digs.) This blog is our latest installment in how our team is navigating the recession and its aftermath.]

“An entrepreneur slips and falls off a cliff. On his way down, he manages to grab onto the end of a vine. He’s hanging there, a thousand feet from the top and a thousand feet from the bottom. His situation seems hopeless, so he looks up to the clouds, and decides, for the first time, to pray. ‘Is anybody up there?’ he asks. After a long silence, a deep voice bellows from the clouds: ‘Do you believe?’ ‘Yes,’ replies the entrepreneur. ‘Then let go of the vine,’ says the voice. The entrepreneur pauses for a second, looks up again, and finally responds, ‘Is there anybody else up there?’” (From the book Traction  by Gino Wickman, p.14)

As you know, NGC has been in a transition. We’re doing this for two reasons: (1) We have to. As Spike said, “What made you hot isn’t hot anymore.”  and (2) We believe that America is entering an era of decline/crisis, and we must take risks appropriate to our times.

We had to let go of the vine. And believe.

Using the Traction process, we got a grip on the guts of our business. I’m slightly embarrassed to admit that I never really knew what projects cost, or which engagements made money. Now we do. (And Molly  and Banker Jim  are grinning from ear to ear.)

My favorite parts? Internally, I love our new Scorecard. We update it every three weeks. It shows 14 metrics that we feel are leading indicators of our financial and brand health. (I’ve listed the 14 things we measure at the bottom of this post.) My heart skips a beat, knowing I can look at a single excel screen and know if our business is doing well, or is on life support.

Externally, we broadened our purpose. Previously, we focused on how companies and cities could become more attractive for next gen knowledge workers.
 Our purpose was “To build better places to live and work.”

But this felt too boxed-in to me. I’ve become obsessed with the question, “Are we leaving our next generation something worthy of inheriting?”  So after a hearty discussion with my team, our new purpose is “To leave the world a better place for future generations.”

What does this mean for our fans and clients?

• We’ll continue to offer what I call our “Classic” services. Just like Classic Coke, we have a great recipe - for cities  and companies  that want to hang onto their young talent - that won’t go away.

• But we’re also looking at a wider swath of trends - some that the next gen is creating, and some that they’re inheriting from previous generations who (inadvertently?) made a mess of things.

 We want to become trusted partners for any tribe that wonders, “What’s coming next?” and “How do we handle it in a way that’s responsible to the next generation?”

First up…next week, I’m speaking at Madison College’s Convocation  with a new keynote, “Education: Is there an app for that?” I’ll talk about next gen learners, the competitive trends they’ll face, and how to mash-up the best bits of an education system to adapt accordingly.

The hardest part of this transition (for me) was burying the past…knowing that the habits and attitudes I’d used to great effect needed to change. But letting all that go has also been the most liberating. Like a cold blast of air on a January morning.

As Joseph  said in a team meeting recently when we talked about our new purpose, “This feels very freeing.”

Indeed.

Most humbly, we ask you to join us in a lively conversation about leaving the world a better place for future generations. You can do that here on our blog (no registration required) or talk with us on Twitter  of Facebook.

NGC’s Scorecard Metrics:

• Ending Bank Balance in 6 months

• YTD Net Income [In 2010, this number turned positive in October.]

• Red Month [The month when cash flow will not cover expenses and the amount by which we’re short.]

• Speaking Pipeline
 [Dollar value of total in the pipeline X probability of closing the business]
• Consulting Pipeline [Same as above]
• Audience Quality Metric [Percentage of our audiences who are economic decision makers]
  
• Net Promoter Score  for speaking engagements
  
• 
Net Promoter Score for consulting engagements 

• Number of website visits in past 30 days

• Number of paid members
 to our online library
• Email open rate for last newsletter send
• 
Number of fans on Twitter and Facebook
• Number of research calls

• Percentage of team capacity
 in use [Average of all team members’ self-reported capacity, as a percentage] 

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