The Snowplow Problem

We just got back from spring break. Family ski trip (year four), and for the first time, all four of us could ski at roughly the same pace. Which means this year was the first year that actually felt like a vacation rather than an elaborate exercise in family conflict management.

Getting here took a while.

Our first trip was in 2021, when the kids were 6 and 10. We put them in all-day ski school at Keystone, giddy with the prospect of a full day on the mountain (adults only!).

At 11:34, we got a call to come pick up our little guy, who had a “stomachache” and was done for the day. Day two was spent negotiating with this very strong-willed, crying kindergartener on a bunny hill that was barely a hill. And my husband came home from the trip with COVID.

Year two, we fared poorly in ski school negotiations, conceding to a half-day instead of a full one. Thankfully, the now first grader stayed the whole time and could manage the bunny hill by the end.

Years three and four, we let the kids skip ski school because they protested loudly enough and we were tired. What followed was a lot of snowplowing — which works, technically. You can get down the mountain. But it's slow, it's effortful, and it has a ceiling. There's only so far you can go when the technique itself is the limitation.

My husband would offer a tip on paralleling — a perfectly good tip, delivered with genuine expertise — and it would land somewhere between "ignored" and "actively resented." There is something about the parent-child dynamic that makes instruction almost impossible to receive, no matter how good the instructor or how much they love you.

FINALLY, this year they were far enough along (and apparently motivated enough by the prospect of going faster) that they actually wanted to improve. When my husband offered the same tips he's been giving for four years, they listened. Slightly. But enough. By the end of the week they were trading “pizza” form for “french fries,” keeping up with us on real runs, and having what I can only describe as actual fun.

The difference wasn't a new technique appearing out of nowhere. It was that they'd finally built enough foundation and desire to be ready for the next layer.

But honestly, we could have gotten here sooner. Ski school in the early years gave them the fundamentals, and had we kept them in it instead of caving to the protests, we probably could have skipped two years of slow, painful snowplowing down runs that weren't particularly fun for anyone.

They got there eventually. They just spent an extra two years doing it the hard way — and so did we.

On our 9-hour drive home across the plains, I was thinking of this in the context of communication.

Most organizations are producing more than they were a year ago — more emails, more social posts, more events and updates. And when you look at any one of those pieces, it's usually fine. Sometimes it's really good.

But when you step back, it often doesn't add up to clearer understanding. Sometimes it adds up to entirely the wrong point.

People still struggle to explain what the organization actually does, or why it matters, or how the different pieces connect. The board keeps saying "no one knows who we are." And internally that's genuinely confusing, because people can see how much effort is going out the door.

The problem isn't that the snowplow isn't working. It's getting you down the hill. The problem is that it has a ceiling, and no amount of effort in that same technique is going to get you where you actually want to go. What's missing is a structure that builds. Where the same core ideas show up consistently across channels and over time, and each touchpoint makes the next one more meaningful rather than starting from scratch.

Without that, understanding never makes it up the hill and off the lift. And adding more content in the same pattern doesn't fix it.

If you watched our Awareness Gap webinar, you already have the diagnosis — the four reasons awareness stays low even when effort is high. The Awareness Engine program is where you build the fix. We structured it as a 90-day cohort because we've watched a lot of organizations leave a workshop with good intentions and solid notes, and then return to the exact same pattern two weeks later. Not because they didn't want to do things differently, but because there was no structure to hold the change.

Awareness Engine is that structure — built in sequence, with coaching, so that by the end you have a working system rather than a plan that lives in a binder.

Our next cohort kicks off April 1. Full details and a short application are here.

And if it takes four years to get there — well, the mountain isn't going anywhere.

Lori