Building the bridge

We need to build a bridge from one side of a ravine to the other. On one side of the ravine is your business. On the other, the people you would like to reach.
We pretty much apply the rigour engineers would, faced with a similar challenge. So we put on our engineering hard hats – we start understanding the challenges that face us. Leaping to conclusions is a dangerous thing to do when a ravine involved.
Firstly, we need to understand your business as fully possible. What you do, why you do it, how that compares with your competition, etc. If we are to build a bridge, in other words, we need to find out about the conditions that will support the bridge on your side of the ravine.
Then we need to understand the people you would like to reach. Who are they? What are their values in life? How could your product fit into the lives? In other words, what conditions on the far side of the ravine will help make a bridge viable and sustainable?
As we’re getting the information in place, we’ll be wondering what bridge we can build. What sort of structure will work best? How will we build it? Where will we build it? In particular, we’ll wonder what intrinsic properties of your business will link with the extrinsic values of the audience you’d like to reach. What will be original, valuable, meaningful and – therefore – enduring?
Nothing will happen. The answer won’t appear. Drops of blood will appear on our foreheads, but the answer still won’t appear. Then we’ll walk away from the problem. And, in the mysterious way the mind works, there’ll be a flash of lightning. The ravine will be illuminated. The idea for the bridge will appear.
Then the hard work of constructing the bridge begins.