I find that as we learn more and more about something – a task, a subject, a person – we tend to gloss over and eventually ignore The Basics. We think we know everything about whatever or whomever, and jump right over the foundational things that got us to where we are now. We start to run, without bothering to walk.
Starting to learn karate at age 36 was a real eye-opener. I watched other people in the dojo, some who’d started before me, and others who’d come after. I noticed that most people, regardless of their age, wanted to just plow ahead and learn the next technique, the next form (kata). I felt like I didn’t fit in, because I felt I was being pushed along too quickly. I knew there were deeper meanings about what I’d already been taught that I wasn’t being given the time to learn.
I’d never been on a learning spiral before, and it amazed me to see that the simple building blocks fit together and made up the more advanced techniques I was learning. (I was one of those people whose natural learning process was self-directed, and made a steep – almost vertical – climb, until I hit something I didn’t intuitively understand. Then I dropped that subject and went on to the next.) Coming back around to something I’d already studied, this time from a higher level of experience, brought me a lot of knowledge and insight I could not have gotten the first time around.
It was when I started to teach karate that I began to appreciate The Basics. Not just the basics of karate, but of anything. Everything. That’s when I decided I would offer internships at Agile’. I began to see that anything which wasn’t built on a solid foundation was often useless. Worse, it could be damaging to the person doing them.
Too often I see long-time marketers rushing in to deep, convoluted campaigns without making sure The Basics are in place. And their clients, not knowing any better, simply pay the bills and think, “This is costing me an arm and a leg – it must be worth it!” When the campaigns fall flat, when the new customers fail to arrive carrying armloads of cash, it’s the economy’s fault, or the media’s fault, or Joe in the mailroom. It’s never the marketer, and never the customer.
When I’m hired by a client, I’m expected to be able to perform my job. That’s why I’ve been hired; the client is an expert at what they do, and I’m an expert at marketing. They don’t want to know what I know, they want me to reach into my black box of tricks and perform a miracle or three.
I do that better and more often than others, because I know and can apply The Basics.