What’s your Phase 2?

Season 2, Episode 17 of the animated TV Series South Park introduces us to the Underpants Gnomes. At night, they sneak into children's bedrooms and steal their underpants. Eventually, they are confronted by the kids, who want to know what the gnomes do with all those underpants.

Their explanation has become pop culture history:

Phase 1 - Collect underpants

Phase 2 - ???

Phase 3 - Profit

Those silly gnomes. But it serves us well to remember that the temptation to gloss over the details, that pesky Phase 2, is all too strong. We assume that a certain input activity should eventually lead to profit (or other good things).

Replace phase 1 with any of the following, and it's all too common that our mind leaps straight to phase 3.

• Build a shiny mobile app.

• Hire the "best" people.

• Publish a thought leadership article.

• Invest in the latest AI tools.

• Launch a social media campaign.

• Raise venture capital.

• Connect your documents and data to an AI chatbot so you can talk to your data.

What's your Phase 2

To be fair, the examples above make more sense than collecting underpants. There is probably a way to profit with a great team, a great product, lots of resources, etc. It's just that you still have to do the strategic work to connect those inputs to the desired outcome.

Ask yourself: What's my phase 2?