The Final Product

The final day of the project is here!  After working so late last night, we all agreed to get up and get started an hour earlier today.  Our group anticipated the need for the extra time, and it was a good thing too as we certainly needed it.  All our laser focus is on delivering a valuable presentation for our company and we want it to be the best possible presentation.  As we made our big push to deliver our presentation we discovered some new things at the last minute that required some adjustment in our recommendations.  After all this research we had done, we had to come to some tough conclusions and decide what kinds of recommendations we would make.  What we finally came up with was not easy news to deliver.  Our client had certain ideas and expectations that did not fit with our market analysis.  This market analysis was pretty in depth into the different sports market arena where there are some big players with hundreds of millions of dollars invested into the broadcasting rights.  Presenting these findings in much further detail helped us as we made the tough recommendations on how to proceed.  Our news was not all bad or gloom mind you, but it was still hard to shoot down some of the original premise for what our clients wishes were in terms of their product.  We were able to recommend and come up with some other good ways to move forward for them.  I watched the faces of our clients intently as we presented as well as observed the body language.  Right away I could see the discomfort grow as our presentation proceeded.  But at the end of the presentation there was I believe relief from both us as presenters and for our clients.  They now know what they are up against and have some solid information, and we have completed our tasks.  Not without some battle scars though.  Our clients offered feedback on our project and how we performed.  We delivered what they wanted and needed, but there were some speed bumps we could have avoided.  At the start of our project, we needed a team leader.  I don't believe this is always going to be the case in a small group of 3, but it would have helped us tremendously based on our team dynamics.  The other thing we could have done better was to have clear objectives for what we would have completed by the end of each day.  This would have helped us avoid some of the rabbit trails we fixated on sometimes during the project.  In perspective, we learned so much from this marketing analysis and consulting that our final takeaways will carry each team member forward to better things in my humble opinion.

After finishing the presentation we all changed and went out to dinner with our clients.  They took us to a very nice restaurant and enjoyed each others company while being able to leave the work behind for the evening.  We also were able to gain perspectives on leadership throughout the dinner as we needed this piece for when we will get back to Denver to present on leadership soon.  All said and done, a good day and good food!  At the end of dinner, Andrew and I both ordered a shot of espresso that was fantastic.  The manager of the restaurant was able to tell me all about the roaster they get their coffee from which was very interesting to me.  It is a local micro roaster in Dublin that does only small batch roasting and sees the art in coffee.  They are called Cloud Picker and I have looked them up to find out more about them.  Very interesting stuff!