The Frustrated Woodpecker: A Metaphor for B.C. Business

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Tony spies a woodpecker in a park, and has a revelation about business in B.C.

Walking through an urban park on a sunny first day of Spring, I heard a rapid tapping above me. Looking up, I saw a woodpecker trying to drill into the metal top of a big light standard. I’m no ornithologist, but I believe woodpeckers peck at trees so they can eat the bugs that live in the wood. And I’m pretty sure that bugs don’t live in metal lights. But the woodpecker didn’t seem to understand that. It just kept banging on the light fixture. I guess he (she?) figured this was a pretty good surface to stand on, allowing it to really get on with its pecking. After all that’s what it did. It was born to peck. Its beak had evolved so it could peck better. The fact that its pecking wasn’t yielding any results didn’t seem to enter into what passed for its mind. Who knows: Maybe all the good peckable trees were taken. And I’m thinking: What a metaphor for some businesses and some business operators I have encountered (including me sometimes). They’re so wrapped up in organizational tasks, production of their products and services, or doing what they do, they forget the original purpose for all that effort. To sell the results of their labour and make money. They’re in love with their skill, expertise, or knowledge — the doing — and ignore the market. They don’t clearly identify who might want what they’re offering. They don’t talk to customers to find out what’s really needed. They bullheadedly insist that what they do should be in demand. If there’s a problem with results, then simply sell harder. This probably worked to some degree until recently. But in a recession, a new dynamic forms. Customers get tougher. They resist heavy sales pressure and start demanding that what they’re buying provides some real value to them. And in this climate, any business that insists on operating the same old way will likely discover – like the woodpecker that kept drilling at the metal light — that they’ll probably come up empty.