The ever elusive “Why?” Now, something like a thousand books have been written on the subject of finding the “Why” of an organization, and whenever I’ve brought it up with people, I’ve gotten glassy-eyed agreement that, of course, starting with “why?” is what any organization should do, and of course, that’s what their organization does, and so on. I remember feeling exactly this way when a consultant came to a camp where I was serving as a member of the board of trustees. You see, we had been struggling for several years. Camper numbers were declining, revenues were slipping, and we just couldn’t seem to steer the camp back toward growth. Oh, we had plenty of reasons why our camp was shrinking, they had just happened to have nothing to do with us. Kids are so busy during the summer time. Parents don’t understand the value of camp. Kids play too many video games. Publicly subsidized camp options were so cheap. Kids were too coddled and didn’t enjoy being away from home. You get the idea. So when this consultant came in and told us to “start with why,” we politely tolerated his line of questioning, and then literally laughed when he left the room. We wanted tactics. Marketing...
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So why are you marketing it that way? Whenever I talk to a camp person, we wind up talking about what hooked us on summer camp. And it seems like we all have basically the same feelings on the subject. “Camp was the first place I could really be myself.” “The friends I made at summer camp just weren’t like anybody I had ever met.” “I had this one amazing counselor who…” “It was the place I became my best self.” You get the idea. I’ve literally never heard anyone reflect back and say something like, “They had this insane rock wall there,” or “You’ll never believe the jet skis they had at my camp!” Now, this isn’t totally fair, because I’m mostly talking to summer camp die-hards. These people found something so much bigger than jet skis, or rock walls, or color wars, and this is why they’ve dedicated their lives to summer camp. But I think we can all agree that those first set of quotes are the things about summer camp that we really care about. The things that we love to hear back from parents regarding their kids’ experience at our camp. The objectives we’re putting forth during staff training. I started thinking, as I...
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