Quote:
Originally Posted by DavidDavidDavid  Bruce: I was responding to your and Steve's posts in this thread. I do understand what you guys are getting at; I just think it's a bit besides the thrust of my question.
It's like if I'm asking you how can I hit the ball farther, and you guys answer, don't worry about it, just eat, rest, practice, and you'll do just fine.
I'm not saying your answers have been wrong or unhelpful: I'm just saying that I'm asking a different sort of question.
I think there's a Yiddish saying to the effect that all the Talmud really says is, love God, love Man, the rest is commentary....
Now if a Jew goes to his rabbi about some problem, he needs an answer to the specifics of the problem. Ultimately, the answer will be in keeping with the "love God, love Man" goal, but for the rabbi to simply respond with love God, love Man would be kind of besides the point.
It's important to be reminded, of course, that yes, creativity, serving a need, and playing to one's unique strengths in the creation of value is the best hedge against competition, such that there can be no competition.
Yes, yes, Sun Tzu observed that to win without fighting is a sign of the true fighter, okay...but the question remains, how do I use this sword to parry??
In business, one way (besides innovating -- I mean, look at Microsoft versus anyone else besides Google/Yahoo!) to fight the competition is through advertising.
I was just wondering what other way there was besides advertising. |
I'll take a quick shot at answering this...
So you're looking for specific advice rather then general advice?
If so, thinking that you need to "parry" is approaching things from the wrong mindset. I'd advise against that.
Play to your strengths
My particular way to beat the competition literally is what I mentioned -- playing to my strengths.
A strength isn't what you're good at; a strength is an activity that strengthns you -- something that makes use of your innate talents; your most commonly reccuring thoughts and behaviour, which are driven by the strongest, most well-connected neuron connections in your brain.
Find what you're good at
So find what you're good at -- what strengths you. For me, one of the things I'm good at is seeing the big picture and creating solutions that hold up from a variety of different perspectives. I recently applied this strength to create an Icebreaker for toastmasters which was refered to as "the best icebreaker [speech] I've ever heard" by a member of my club. I also won the award that night for best speech.
So, what did I do?
Well, I knew I had to create an icebreaker speech -- something that would get me speaking and teach the audience something about me. I knew that most people write icebreakers about events, things they've done, what they do, their physical attributes such as their titles, names, etc. For me, that wasn't a good fit. Anybody can do that, and unless you had strengths in story telling, or something, it probably wouldn't be a good speech.
So instead, I looked at the big picture. I was looking for a speech idea that was universally applicable, universally relate-able, and so familiar to me that I'd be able to speak about it easily without excessive preparation. I was pretty stumped, so I went out into nature, sat down at a bench, and brought some sheets of paper with my along with my Toasmasters manual and a copy of a poem I recently read.
At first, I had the idea to use the poem to give structure to my speech, but then, while glancing at it, I noticed that it said "and you learn...". That's when the idea struck me -- I'd be writing about something I've learned in life. But not only that, I'd choose the most impactful insights I know of, and would talk about those. I came up with 3 insights. They were universally applicable. They were easy to relate to by everyone, especially after I tailored my examples I gave in my speech to the audience. They were easy for me to talk about because, somewhere in my brain, all this information was stored.
The end result was that I gave what I consider to be an excellent speech, and what others considered to be the best speech of the night. This was not my first speech (I competed in a tall tales competition prior to doing my ice breaker), but it was the first speech I had a decent amount of time to prepare for.
Applying what you're good at universally
So, delving into my method even more, what I did was use the knowledge I have of my strength(s) to come up with a criteria -- the "universal" criteria I mentioned before. That fit me well, and I knew any speech ideas I came up with that didn't meet that criteria weren't a good fit for me. Then, I actively waited for inspiration. I went out into conditions I knew were conductive to inspiration (nature) and brought along something to stimulate my mind and give me ideas (the poem). I'm hopeless at coming up ideas with myself, but when I look at the things in front of me, I start building highly abstract, very generalised mental associations and ideas start flowing.
There may be other strengths you aren't yet aware of
That said, it was still hard work to write the speech. Why? Because the writing approach I was using wasn't a strength of mine. I could do it, but I sucked at it, and it wasn't easy. It was using what I didn't have, instead of using what I did have (my talents). Eventually I had the idea that perhaps my approach was wrong, and when I tried out that idea, it worked, and it led me to give an approx. 13 minute speech on-the-fly with no use of notes. I certainly prepared the ideas I had by making sure I could remember them by practicing presenting the speech, but I didn't -- even once -- rely on notes. I learned that I have a strength in being able to verbalise or write about complex concepts without needing to reference anything else but my ideas. This insight will prove invaluable to me.
So that's an example. As you can see, I very literally applied what I've been talking about. Often people say that what Steve talks about isn't practical, and from their perspective, it's probably true. I think Steve and I are so familiar with using our "strengths" that we forget that other people don't necessarily have the same ability to take very high level concepts and break them down such that they're applicable on a "practical" level. How we do this would be different, but the basic strength is the same.
What to do from here
David, find what you're good at -- what strengthens you -- and then do more of that with your work.
I also highly recommend the book,
Now, Discover Your Strengths and
Go, Put Your Strengths to Work. I've only read the former book, but I've got a good idea of the ideas presented in G,PYSTW, and I plan to purchase it and can say that there's a good chance that book will be very, very well worth it for others as well.
The ideas the author of the book presents are revolutionary and will change your approach to life. I've long known the predominant approach to life was largely not that good, but I didn't know the alternative, so I read books and articles looking for it, discarding "isn't it". Eventually I found something (the ideas from the books I recommend above) that was not "isn't it" (I wrote that sentence like that intentionally).
In other words, I didn't yet know if it "was it" -- all I knew was that it lacked the qualities that books that fell into the "isn't it" category. After I learned the concepts, I applied them to my life experience and found that, yes, they worked. They were the exact opposite of the "isn't it" concepts I was frustrated with, and gave me the results I intuitively knew where possible. They weren't "truth", but nothing ever is. Relative to me, they were ideas that I could effectively use and use to help others, so I now advocate the hell out of them, heh.
(Only because they're good. Believe me, the ideas were subject to a very rigorous criteria. When it comes to concepts, I'm a quality Nazi.)
Postscript
David, I want to thank you for being so confused and curious about this matter.
Seriously. Responding to your posts has been very, very,
very beneficial to me. I even used a post I typed out for you to help me structure one section of my speech! Funny how contribution tends to by synergistic, instead of exhaustive, as it deceptively appears to be.
Postscript #2
If you have the eye for it (ie. the talents), you can look at other people's success, figure out how they are playing to their strengths, and in turn, spot the general pattern behind all of it and then use that pattern for yourself. This won't work for everyone, though, since not everyone can clearly see underlying patterns.