Have you had the experience of believing the lyrics of a favorite old song go one way, but then finding out years (or decades) later that they go another? Most of us probably have. When this happens to me, I get a little flush of embarrassment and practically look around waiting for the lyrics police.
One of my favorite songs is “White Rabbit” by Jefferson Airplane. I was recently grieved to find that the lines
Remember what the dormouse said
Feed your head
Feed your head…
Are in reality
KEEP your head
KEEP your head
For any Lewis Carroll fans, this of course makes total sense in the context of the Alice in Wonderland tale, with the Red Queen after everyone’s head.
This revelation was a double-ding for me, because not only did I have it wrong but I thought that “Feed your Head” was brilliant. I interpreted it as what Steven Covey calls “Sharpening the Saw” – feed your head with new ideas, new skills, new training.
I’ve always espoused this as a business philosophy, and for many years have really encouraged those I work with to keep the saw sharp and not let skills erode and knowledge grow stale. We in the technology industries, of course, have more than ample opportunities to feed our heads – in fact; it’s very difficult to keep up.
…but it’s important to keep up, and for software developers, it’s critical. With our product, Quosal, there will never come a time when our application or platform is old, stale, discontinued – and part of the reason for this is that our core team is constantly sharpening the saw, applying new thinking, techniques, technology, and innovation to what we do.
This certainly applies to the tools and techniques that our customers use to run their businesses as well. How often do I hear from a ConnectWise or Salesforce user that they know they’re “only using 10%” of the system they’ve been using for years? The same can certainly be said of Quosal users. Even a modest investment of time to sharpen that saw yields big results when you’re working with the rich applications supporting your business processes today. We get comfortable, and don’t realize how much time savings, productivity, and what I call “Return on Information” is available to us if we’re just willing to spend a little time.
With all respect to the Dormouse, while it’s certainly important to KEEP your head, let me challenge you today….to FEED your head!
Kent McNall
President and CEO
Quosal LLC
