Bigger than we thought

As I was sitting down in my couch reflecting about the week, my mind fled to the 26th of March, when our IA group met up with Gastón Acurio to talk about our artisanal fisherman project. Such a small lapse of time has passed since that day, yet it feels as if we've had months to really think the project through.

 I recall leaving the meeting with Gastón feeling exited, overwhelmed in a good way. We felt as if we already had the project finished even before we started it; something that we now realize is not true at all. Of course, as one can imagine, this feeling didn't last for long. The week after the following, our group met with the supervisor of La Mar, whom Gastón had sent in our direction. He explained to us all the logistics of the actual project, and the work they had to complete during fifteen years in order to begin taking action.

What Pepe from La Mar explained to us that Thursday afternoon, was that for years he and his team had to go research and investigate different fishing communities. They tried with a few and had several prototypes ready to be tested. Once they found a group of fishermen that fit the profile they were looking for, they exposed them to weeks of workshop training that would prepare them in order to yield high quality produce. All of this happened over the spam of several years, nonetheless they still failed numerous times and had to rethink the purpose and main idea of their project. Now, they have concluded that the best idea is to have a few fishermen from different locations send them fish, this works because it eliminates the threat of competition between fishermen and does not make the restaurant completely dependent of these men who from time to time have proved not to be completely reliable.

Learning this new information certainly came as a shocker, we had been so confident that our project would be an easy success that we had not stop to think about the steps we would have to take in order to get there. To me, this all relates directly to  one very important takeaway I from the book Good to Great: Facing the brutal facts. I believe that the excitement of the project from the week of March may have clouded our judgement, when in reality we had to be more realistic. But in the end, I can say assured that the bigger the  pursuit, the bigger the reward; and I am certain that if we embrace this challenge and go all in, we can make the project a raging success.