"HAKUNA MATATA" (NOT)
My wife (Chris) and I spent a delightful and whimsical afternoon this past Saturday attending a matinee performance at the Milwaukee Theater of the touring-company version of the Broadway musical, Disney's The Lion King.
Chris had been patiently waiting to see the show since she first learned the 1994 animated Disney movie would be translated into a Broadway musical.
We knew the plot. We knew most of the songs. We had seen video from the television special “The Making of the Broadway Musical, Disney’s The Lion King” and knew the show would include innovative puppetry, dance, and stagecraft. We knew the jokes (including the punch lines).
Theater is Transformational
Yet – as a leopard, herds of antelope, a rhinoceros, flocks of birds, giraffes (on stilts), packs of hyenas, and an elephant entered the theater from the back and side aisles of the auditorium and walked, flew, leaped, sauntered, and lumbered their way onto the stage – we found out we knew nothing.
Instead, we leaned forward, heads-on-swivels, as wide-eyed and open-mouthed as the hundreds of children in attendance at the matinee, and just as willing to believe the reality of the animal/actors parading past.
Gasp after delicious gasp, we became connected with the rest of the audience to the staging, the surprise, and the story … a truly transformational experience.
Business Can be Transformational, Too
I have shared often in this blog my apprehension for the ready-mix industry … my fear ready-mixed concrete in the 53172 delivery area is in danger of become a commodity.
Facing an explosion of new competitors, shrinking regional construction markets, skyrocketing insurance and energy costs, tight credit markets, an escalating and seemingly intractable federal debt, and ever more value-conscious customers, ready-mixed concrete in Southeastern Wisconsin and across the state is in danger of becoming commoditized.
This commoditization is not cast in concrete. Industry stakeholders – individually and in association – can work to increase top-line market share for ready-mixed concrete. Emerging market opportunities await, with market drivers favoring advances in market share for concrete parking lots, insulated concrete homes (ICFs), site-cast tilt-up construction, and pervious concrete pavements.
But traveling the same old path will not help industry stakeholders to attain these emerging opportunities.
A new path of partnership between ready-mix producers, their vendors and suppliers, and concrete contractors is required. But this path will be revealed only if industry stakeholders are willing to forget what they think they know about the ready-mix business and instead risk imaging – perhaps through the wide-eyed wonder of a child – what homeowners, architects, engineers, and municipal and facility managers would love … adore … delight in… and die for.
Marketing and sales savvy and service and delivery expertise able to make specifiers, and consumers lean forward, whimsy-wide-eyed and open-mouthed, contain transformational power … if concrete industry stakeholders and their contractor customers are willing to embrace and wield them.
I will challenge stakeholders from Wisconsin and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to do so in March at the Wisconsin Ready Mixed Concrete Association Annual Convention in Madison.
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