Monday Circle
Every Monday at 10 o’clock sharp, our crew of 20 drops whatever they’re doing and circles up to share their thoughts on the topic of the week. It’s a time to be candid, it’s a time to connect and strengthen our bonds. This is a transcript.
* * *
We keep our minds open and receptive to new ideas and directions so that we can pivot on a dime. It’s easier to remain open to positive feedback. Criticism, even when it’s constructive, is much harder to hear and stay open to. Hearing and being open to all types of feedback is critical. With that in mind, we asked everyone...
"What Would You Say Is the Biggest Vulnerability of Our Company?"
KEN TOMITA: "Outreach and customer acquisition. We have great products and a great story… the weaknesses are the vehicles for how we get those to more people without losing our soul."
MISBAH AFSHARI: "Inventory. Running out of supplies for production stops everything."
VICTOR NGUYEN: "Knowing what other people do. Awareness of the bigger picture. That’s starting to get solved now with All Hands All the Time."
CHRISTOPHER DONN: "Everything runs through our website. If our website goes down, we go down."
KEVIN DO: "Products are not available in person to touch and feel. Quote: 'A picture is worth a thousand words, a sculpture is worth a thousand pictures.'"
DIXIE GRIFFIN: "Interdepartmental feedback. Easy to gloss over successes because they are hard to see."
DASHIA FONTLEROY: "Safety."
ALEX BOEPPLE: "Our local presence is weak."
SYLVIA CHOI: "Consistency. We have visions that a few people are excited about but they don’t always last in execution long-term."
JUSTIN ABUAN: "Market outreach to customers. We rely too much on PR and have no other channels."
BEN WOOD: "Location, space, rent. We are dependent on something we cannot control."
TOMMY GUSTOVICH: "We need another Ben."
GINGER WEIDENHOF: "Interpersonal communication among individuals. Listen without bias, listen without having a strong agenda. People deserve to feel respected and trusted."
SEAN KELLY: "Our culture is so important. One bad thing can ruin it, so we need to protect it at all costs."
MAX BROWN: "Assumptions about who our audience is. We need to keep an open mind about who we're talking to, and remember that the concept of masculine vs feminine, what it means to be a 'man' or 'woman', is evolving all the time."
ASHLEY RUNION: "Putting out fires but not figuring out a way to prevent them."
GALEN LEE: "I don't know our backend. There are no backups for our internal drive. What if it crashes? Without files we cannot work."
BRODIE GORDON: "Knowledge of new markets as we enter them is weak."
JIM HASSERT: "New customer acquisition. We are pretty good in “tech” but how do we get more sales outside of it?"
