The Fireflies and the Floodlights

We moved to the mountains a couple of years ago, and we’re still new enough that we chase things the locals stopped chasing decades ago. So when we heard that the synchronous fireflies in the Smoky Mountains put on a show for a week or two each year — in only a handful of places in the whole country — we went looking.

If you don’t know it, Roaring Fork is a fast mountain stream just outside Gatlinburg, and the road that follows it — the Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail — is a narrow one-way loop through Great Smoky Mountains National Park, lined with  forest and a few preserved homestead cabins. We drove it after dark on one of the few nights the timing might be right. And for a long while, just a few ordinary fireflies here and there — the blink-on-their-own-schedule kind we’d seen our whole lives — but nothing like the synchronous show the locals had described. We stayed anyway, past the point everyone else gave up and drove home. On our way out we pulled over near one of the old cabins, because we could hear the water — synchronous fireflies like to be near it — and we shut the engine off, killed our headlights and got out and stood still in the darkness. Still nothing. We waited for what felt like an eternity. And then…when we had almost given up hope, the whole sky lit up in beautiful unison. Thousands of them, all blinking together, like a show nobody bothered to put on until the only two people left were us. No video would have done it justice. I haven’t stopped thinking about it.

And what I keep landing on is that we almost missed it. These special fireflies were there the entire time. We just couldn’t see them until we did two things: turned off our own lights, got comfortable in the darkness, and outlasted the people who left early.

The longer I sat with that, the more it sounded like how companies handle their own message.

Let me say the part that won’t be popular. All those fireflies flashing on the exact same beat is gorgeous in a forest. In a market it’s a death sentence. And it’s what most companies are doing with their point of view — same rhythm as everyone else, same safe opinions, same posts that now mostly come out of the same AI tools anyway. We call it thought leadership. Most of the time it’s camouflage. You blink in sync so nobody picks you out of the crowd, and then you sit around wondering why nobody picks you out of the crowd.

The harder part is the floodlights, because that one’s on us. The thing that actually sets your company apart is already there — already flashing. You can’t see it because you never turn the lights off. There’s always another dashboard, another campaign, another round of activity that feels like progress. And even when you do go looking, you quit too soon. The quarter closes, an easy answer shows up, or it just gets uncomfortable to admit you’re not sure what makes you different — so you flip the lights back on and call it a day.

Now, I know the objection. Bold is risky. A sharp point of view might be the wrong one or tick someone off. That fear is exactly what herds everyone back into the swarm.

But I think that’s backwards. The reason companies all flash on the same beat, is that they have no idea whether a braver message would actually work, so they hide in the crowd and call it caution. That’s not caution. That’s guessing with the lights on. The fix for a risky point of view was never a blander point of view — it’s proof. Test the thing against real customers and lost deals. Watch whether it moves anything that shows up on your P&L. A point of view you can back with numbers isn’t a gamble. It’s the cheapest growth you’ll ever buy, because the day you’re the only light in the dark — the only ones left in the park — the cost of winning a customer falls through the floor.

I’ve spent thirty years arguing that bold and measurable were never opposites. The gutsiest thing a company can do is hold a point of view sharp enough to be wrong — and then go prove it instead of guessing. Turn the floodlights off long enough to find the real signal. Stay out there long enough to see it. Then back it with enough evidence that you can say it without flinching.

So, two questions, and I actually want your answers.

When did your leadership team last shut all of it off — the noise, the busywork, the urge to look productive — long enough to find the one thing worth saying?

And the harder one: when was the last time your point of view cost you something? A prospect who walked because they weren’t your fit. A competitor who got annoyed. A room that went quiet. Because if saying it has never cost you a thing, it isn’t a point of view. It’s wallpaper.

Tell me your company’s real point of view in the comments.

Collective 54 is the leading peer advisory network for boutique professional services firms.

• Apply for membership in Collective 54: https://www.collective54.com/learn-more/
• Subscribe to Collective 54 Insights: https://www.collective54.com/collective-54-insights/
• Connect with the author on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/redrover/