Don't screw it up

The Senior Market Advisor staff met yesterday for what we call Vision Day. We meet like this once a year to take stock of what we’re doing well, see where there’s room for improvement and plan for the year ahead. This year’s meeting included an additional subtext: We’re in the midst of a redesign of our publication that will hit the streets beginning with our September issue.

The meeting brought together people from all walks of life within our organization–editorial, publishing, sales, marketing, art direction, eMedia, technology and the like.

To us editorial and art folk, some of the best buzz words and phrases were not in our everyday vocabulary — blue ocean strategy, mapping taxonomy and emotional page rate, just to name a few. But it was good to see, for a day, how the other parts of our publication think and strategize.

I liken it to the philosophy that you learn best, have your most creative moments, by stepping outside your comfort zone and mixing it up with a diverse group of thinkers, people who come to an idea or a project from a variety of backgrounds.

It was around the seventh hour of our meeting (or maybe it was during the happy hour celebration following) that I had a vision…