Business leaders: are you tired of hearing the expression “low-hanging fruit”?
What is this fruit? Why is it hanging low? Why do you care?
As much as we try to avoid consultant-speak at CSR, this is a phrase that tends to crawl into our vocabulary. It happens because we care about our clients.
Care? What does fruit and its position as it relates to the earth’s gravitational field (to paraphrase Doc Brown) have to do with caring?
Because you deserve this low-hanging fruit.
You work hard and try to get through everything you are supposed to do just to keep your business running. All the time you might be thinking “Ach—if only I had the time to run with this great idea. It’s sitting right there but I never get the chance to do it.” You know what we’re talking about—finally switching over to an updated operating system so that you stop getting those constant alerts, completing HR paperwork, choosing the new carpet for the waiting room, getting new business from old clients…
As business management nerds, we love to unlock that “if only I could get to it” thought and give it life.
Now the interesting thing about hanging fruit is that the real thing often goes unharvested. Food waste is a huge problem in the USA. Because fruits ripen and fall at different speeds, farms aren’t able to collect a large percentage of their bounty. They need to focus on getting the bulk of the crop, so the fruit that hangs low and ripens the fastest gets wasted. This fruit is literally low-hanging fruit because there are so many people starving in our country while crops rot due to bad timing (on a separate note, check out our friends over at Concrete Jungle for ways you can volunteer to combat food waste).
Don’t let those simple but powerful achievements slip through your fingers because you’re focused on growing and harvesting your whole orchard (I guess you’d be missing the orchard for the trees…I’ll see myself out). The only obstacle is execution.
What low-hanging fruit would you harvest if you had the time?
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