This company’s all about grokking. Grokking. Listening with all pores. Whether it’s the market we’re listening to, or the associates, or the entire organization, or the customers: it’s all about grokking. In other words, our objective is to make sure we fully understand what’s happening around us at any particular time. It’s the environmental context within which we operate. By grokking, we assimilate as rapidly as we possibly can everything around us. Managers are responsible for understanding what that environmental context is saying. Anyone else may not be responsible for it, but they certainly identify their future with a company by identifying their ability to be able to grokk with the best of us.
Original writing date: May 9, 2005