Strategy Not Included

Team: Ashley & Kerry

Curley & Pynn deems itself “The Strategic Firm”, in fact – we’ve trademarked it. However, when it comes to charitable giving and doing good, sometimes we throw caution to the wind and dismiss our fundamentals that drive our daily work.

A good example of that is the “Give Yourself” shopping trip that fellow C&Per Kerry Gregovich and I went on this week. Kerry and I did a lot of research to identify a worthy cause for our giving and chose the House of Hope of Orlando, a home for troubled teenagers 13-17 years old. We utilized a few informal research methods that we’ve previously identified for strategic client work to ask the organization exactly what their holiday Wish List would include. After finding that the teens love food, DVDs and anything fun, we knew the shopping trip would be a great time.

Kerry and I hit the ground running with our red shopping cart at Target. We didn’t bring a written list – just our brains and a mindset of giving. We loaded up the cart with candy, fruit roll-ups, sporting equipment, board games, lip glosses and various G-rated DVDs. We never stopped to look at price, nor did we even consider keeping a tally of how much we were spending so as not to go over our limit at check-out. The spirit moved us and we filled the entire cart in less than an hour with wonderful stuff. No strategy – very little planning – completely opposite of our usual methods.

We alerted the cashier it was possible we’d need to put some things back if we spent too much. But, we didn’t. Some how, some way … we were right on Target. Just a bit shy of the allotted limit.

We didn’t need to monitor every aspect of the project and plan ahead for any outcome. We just shopped. Giving is fun.