One of the most common themes I’ve encountered or have heard from peers working with their companies or with their clients is inertia. The larger the ship, the more energy, time and planning it takes to change course. Even when given the luxury of time, resources can fall short, focus can shift. Change, even when deemed valuable or necessary, seems impossible.

What if … you could start from scratch? Square one. A blank canvas.

Seems impossible, right? The power in this exercise is probably not in the complete reboot of how a company does marketing, let alone other connected business functions. But the power could be in revealing what portions of the idea might be possible to begin working against that inertia.

We say and hear, ‘Crawl. Walk. Run’ all the time. It’s like saying ‘low hanging fruit’ - it might trigger a gag reaction for some. But the practical application of this could be in thinking about what we might do given the chance to start fresh, starting with core business tenets and requirements and exploring how many different ways you could put together marketing, IT, sales, finance, human resources, operations.

So the questions du jour is this: If you could start from the very beginning,

• What would be your strategy?

• How would you staff your team?

• What would be your first marketing technology purchase?

• Of the things in play today, what would you do without?

• Of the things missing today, what would you add?

Post a comment below or drop us a line letting us know that you’d like to respond in longer form.