Let’s make a bet.

You and me.

I wager you a free drink at Starbucks that at some point in your career you’ve heard this line (or something like it) from someone at your company:

“I have this great idea to boost revenue.” [Emphasis on “great idea.”]

Two weeks later you get the plan on your desk.

Three months later… nothing happens. They didn’t follow-through. And you think, “what happened?”

I’ve noticed there’s an art to getting things done.

And just like any other art — be it on canvas or in melodies and harmonies — in order to become an expert at it, you have to practice (some say it takes 10,000 hours of practice).

Now, there is a slight exception. You Type A, doer, focus-oriented, choleric, over-achievers out there don’t have this problem. You see a goal, and you achieve it — for better or worse.

For the rest of the world, getting things done takes practice. It’s something you have to work on. You’re not going to become Michelangelo over-night. But if you’re ever going to sculpt your David, you’re going to have to move forward.

One step at a time.

Getting. Things. Done.

What does that look like?

1. Spending less time planning and more time taking action.

Many times, those that don’t “do” are afraid of taking chances, so they hide behind excessive planning, researching and contingency-ing (my failed attempt at turning “contingency” into a transitive verb).

Fear — one word that dominates the motivation of individuals and societies around the world. Ignore its powers of paralysis for now. We’ll get to that in a minute.

The important thing is that action begets action. Turn down the planning knob. Turn up the doing knob.

…leading us right into the second point, which is…

2. Adopting the model of bounded rationality throughout your entire life.

The world we live in runs on limited resources. Time. Money. Energy. And don’t get me started on fossil fuels.

Every decision we make has opportunity costs. To use Herbert A. Simon’s language, our decision-making processes are “bound” by finite time, resources and rationality in the face of infinite information and possibilities.

The Internet only intensifies this effect. Raise your hand if you’ve ever been guilty of spending countless hours online “researching” a topic only to end up a ton of “research” and no time to actually do anything with it?

I’ll raise my hand to that one. Guilty.

So, what do we do with that?

We maximize our efforts by putting our resources where we yield the highest return. We make decisions and take action knowing full well that we don’t have all the available information in our grasp because we are limited by the world around us — we are limited by our own selves.

3. Ignoring your fear of failure, because if you’re ever going to succeed at anything…

You’re going to fail. And you’re going to fail big.

Every great leader has hit rock bottom a time or two in his day. I could go through a barrage of examples, metaphors, or soliloquies about the necessity of failure, but I won’t be nearly as eloquent or motivational as The Greats themselves. Here’s what they have to say about fear:

If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.

– Dale Carnegie 

I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.

– Nelson Mandela 

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.

– Steve Jobs

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.

– Mark Twain 

So the real trick is choosing to take action knowing that you won’t be able to complete every task, project or objective with perfection. In this case, completing the task is more important than failing to do it.

I’m going to ask you a favor:

Leave a comment below telling me a time when you or someone you know failed to take action on a project and the consequences. (Be kind and don’t you names.)

Also, I’m a man of my word. I will happily buy you a cup of coffee if I lost the bet. Email me here, and we’ll call it a date. Or a shindig. Whichever makes you more comfortable.

Related: The Secret Ingredient To Success

Related: The Things That Hold Us Back From Greatness

From whatmortgage.co.uk

Sales. Pricing discounts. One-time offers.

Oh, these are clever ways to increase your short-term sales. Businesses have been offering discounts since a man could trade two fish for the price of one when he really needed to seal the deal. However, these pricing practices can tend to hurt more than help in today’s currency-based economy. Discounts may increase your market share for a little while, but it eventually changes customers’ expectations of your brand and you’re stuck with the discounted premium forever…well, at least longer than desired.

Caveat: I realize that pricing strategy is more complicated than I’m letting on in the 500 words or so, and sometimes it’s necessary to use price pulses, etc. However, I’m addressing the common problem of using “sales” as a reactive, first response decision that many businesses make.

Problem: the doom loop

Just like a plane spiraling in an irreversible dive towards the ground, brands get sucked into what’s commonly called “the doom loop.” Here’s how it happens (and I’m sure you’ve seen this before):

1. Your sales slow down and your marketing results are lacking,
2. So you decide to lower your prices as an incentive (you’re following the classic ideas of the price elasticity of demand).
3. To maintain profits with the price reductions and tighter margins, you decrease your services and marketing expenses.
4. Good news! Your short-term sales improved.
5. But wait, your competition responds in-kind.
6. Customer price expectations shift (think fast-food chains when the “value menu” was introduced).
7. Your customer experience deteriorates (because you decreased your services and marketing expenses),
8. Which leads you back to soft results and dampened sales.

And just like that, you’re back where you started, only now you have less wiggle room.

My encouragement to you is not to succumb to price discounting. Don’t throw a sale. It’s easy. It’s common. And it’s death incarnate for your business.

So what is the right step to take?

Solution: zig, don’t zag

There’s another way out of the mess, and you can be the one that changes the game. Instead of moving with the competition when discounting ensues, add value. Easy to say, I know, and hard to do. I don’t mean to belittle anyone’s situation or downplay the difficulty of short-term and long-term cash-flow battles. But if you want to position yourself away from competition, provide benefits (even if the benefits are only based on perception) and customers will respond in-kind.

The Plan: add benefits

Let’s revisit our fisherman friend from before. Instead of offering a 50% discount, he could have added benefit to his trade by:

1. Filleting a fish for his customer
2. Cooking the fish
3. Flavoring the fish
4. Making jewelry from the fish bones
5. …You get the picture (the list goes on)

What does that look like in your business? It could take the shape of free samples. Or maybe it’s offering the best customer rewards program, referral program, and/or guarantee in the industry.

The trick is finding the benefits that customers in your industry are craving and offering that to them.

So I’ll leave you with this:

Pricing discounts are the easy way out. Pump-up those creative juices and put in some hard work. You’ll find a way to make your brand attractive while your competition is helplessly spiraling toward oblivion.

Please feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments section below. I’d love to hear from you!

You can also contact me directly via this page.

If you liked the article, show me some love and share it with your peers however you like to share content (common sharing buttons are provided below).

Week of May 13 – May 19

This week on the Matchbook:

• 7 Smart Marketing Links You Can Thank Me For Later…
• CEOs Need Hard Data on Customer Loyalty
• What To Do With Employee Survey Results
• What the Highest Converting Websites Do Differently
• Entrepreneurs Must Save America
• When the Product Is the Marketing, and Vice Versa
• Pricing Strategies for the Downturn

If you want to grab even more useful links every week, follow @MatchConsult on Twitter.

INSTRUCTIONS: Use the Matchbook to spark ideas; a small set of kindling that can provide the necessary heat to ignite your business endeavors. (All underlined material is actionable. Click to your heart’s content.)

Here’s this week’s Matchbook of 7 links you don’t want to miss:

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7 Smart Marketing Links You Can Thank Me For Later… – by Copyblogger.com

A weekly round-up that includes a weekly round-up? Yes, that’s right. But I do it because, like Robert Bruce says, you’ll thank me for it later. Be sure to check out the links to “The Bootstrapper’s Bible” and “The ‘5 A’ Framework for Content Marketing Success.”

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CEOs Need Hard Data on Customer Loyalty – by Fred Reichheld on HBR.org

“Three-quarters of the world’s CEOs say more emphasis should be placed on measuring the value of non-financial assets such as intellectual capital and customer relationships.” Takeaway from this article? Businesses should utilize their Net Promoter score to its utmost potential. Here’s one example of how Philips uses Net Promoter scores to understand customers.

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What To Do With Employee Survey Results – on Gallup Business Journal

We all do them (employee surveys, that is), but sometimes we don’t take it any further than knowing whether or not employees are satisfied or dissatisfied. Gallup argues that action planning (or impact planning) is the appropriate next step — discuss key issues with your workgroup and make plans to improve them.

//

What the Highest Converting Websites Do Differently – kissmetrics.com

Three main differences: simplicity, clear communication, and constant testing. Read in more detail on Kissmetrics.com.

//

Entrepreneurs Must Save America – on Gallup Business Journal

This article is a GMJ Q&A with Jim Clifton, CEO of Gallup and author of The Coming Jobs War. Basically, we need to keep-on keeping-on with starting businesses, because innovation is what cranks America’s economic engine.

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When the Product Is the Marketing, and Vice Versa – on Entrepreneur.com

Maximize your marketing efforts by baking-in your strategy into your product. Something I talk about consistently here on The Spark is aligning strategy to every operation in your business, and your product is definitely part of it.

//

Pricing Strategies for the Downturn – by Paul Nunes on HBR.org

Though this article focuses on what to do in a slow economy, these pricing strategies work during any part of the economic cycle. What pricing strategies do you use? Can you utilize any of the strategies Paul writes about?

//

What valuable content on marketing and strategy have you found this past week?

Please feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments section below. I’d love to hear from you!

You can also contact me directly via this page.

And if you liked the article, show me some love and share it with your peers in whatever way you like to share content (common sharing buttons are provided below).

Everyone needs some good advice every once in a while, or a nudge to get them going again. Perhaps some proverbial fire under a stagnant situation. Here’s my periodical nudge, called the “Weekly Matchbook“.

INSTRUCTIONS: Use the Matchbook to spark ideas; a small set of kindling that can provide the necessary heat to ignite your business endeavors. (All underlined material is actionable. Click to your heart’s content.)

Here’s this week’s Matchbook:

1. Pattern Break – by Chris Brogan

Have you ever developed a bad habit? (As I sheepishly nod my head to myself…)

Chris Brogan takes on this topic with the elegance and grace of a ballroom dancer. What do we do with our bad habits? How do we become “a better me?” How do we get more out of our day? Chris answers these questions in 600-words-or-less.

(Quasi-P.s. Reading “Pattern Break” sparked my writing of a similar article on the consequences of preconceptions. Click here to read it.)

2. Four Strategies for Staying Relevant – by David Aaker on HBR.org

Industry, consumer and economic environments change. Will your brand survive? 

David Aaker discussing four strategies that brands can use to remain relevant to when their external situations change.

3. How Starbucks Trains Employees to Behave [VIDEO] – on HBR.org

A powerful, revenue-changing practice — train your customers to act the way you want them to act. Watch the video and let me know what you think.

How does this practice apply to your business?

4. Why “Freemium” Fails for Startups: 3 Business Lessons from the Band New Order – by Brian Clark on Forbes.com

Freemium — it’s like the “hip-new-thing.” Brian Clark relays when it doesn’t work, why, and how to make it work for you.

5. Want a Team to be Creative? Make it Diverse – on HBR.org

“If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always had.” I heard that statement once a week while working for my previous mentor. The same applies to innovation and creativity. If you surround yourself with like-minded ideas and people, you’ll get the same ideas spit back at you. Insert diverse inputs. Extract creative outputs.

You can read more on innovation and creativity by clicking here.

What valuable content on marketing and strategy have you found this past week?

Please feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments section below. I’d love to hear from you!

You can also contact me directly via this page.

And if you liked the article, show me some love and share it with your peers in whatever way you like to share content (common sharing buttons are provided below).

The Allegory

I love eating spicy food.

In fact, I’ll add crushed red pepper, salsa or jalapenos to just about any meal. As a native south Texan and a descendant of New Mexicans, my tastes have always been a little on the hot side. It wasn’t until I met my better-half that I allowed my culinary preferences to broaden. And it was like I found a new world — I was Christopher Columbus landing at North America but thinking he was in India; I was an enlightened individual finding his way out of Plato’s Cave. I thought I was living the good life of perfect flavor, but I had no idea what I was missing until the veil was pulled back from my eyes. Oh, the possibilities.

And now I’m free to discover the wonderful combinations that I never would have dreamed of trying because of my preconceptions. There’s room for exploration and growth.

Finding Greatness

Maybe you have some business preferences of your own. You read the same type of material, use the same methods, and stick with your preferred systems and protocols. It works. Your “this is how we do things here” hasn’t changed much since you conceived it. We all have our habits. But sometimes, we need to taste something new; we need to set our feet somewhere unexpected; we need to breath fresh air — and in that, we’ll find a better way of doing things.

What “jalapenos” of life are standing in the way of your professional success or the growth of your business?

Related: The Secret Ingredient To Success

Related: Cufflinks Say I’m Worth It

Related: Strategy – The Real Money Maker 

Please feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments section below. I’d love to hear from you!

You can also contact me directly via this page.

If you liked the article, show me some love and share it with your peers however you like to share content (common sharing buttons are provided below).

Everyone needs some good advice every once in a while, or a nudge to get them going again. Perhaps some proverbial fire under a stagnant situation. Here’s my periodical nudge, called the “Weekly Matchbook“.

INSTRUCTIONS: Use the Matchbook to spark ideas; a small set of kindling that can provide the necessary heat to ignite your business endeavors. (All underlined material is actionable. Click to your heart’s content.)

Here’s this week’s Matchbook:

1. Alltop.com – the ultimate content aggregation tool

If content marketing is a significant part of your marketing strategy (which it should be, whether it’s for your business or personal branding), then this is one of the best tools I can recommend for finding and compiling excellent content — like your own personal magazine.

Here’s how it works: 1) create an account, 2) select topics you’re interested in 3) click the + sign next to web feeds that you like. That’s it! Then you can share your personal Alltop with others as a platform to position yourself as a topical expert. Or use it as your base of news, current events and business information.

To see my personal Alltop page and what I think is worth sharing, click here.

2. Avoiding False Metrics – by Seth Godin

“A useful metric is both accurate (in that it measures what it says it measures) and aligned with your goals.” Are your metrics truly measuring what you need them to measure? Are they valid and reliable? Many times the answer of those questions is “no.”

3. CONTROL: Apple’s Secret to Delivering a Consistently Good Retail Experience – by Dave Young on BrandingBlog.com

“If you want people to have a consistently good experience with your store, you must CONTROL everything.”

Dave has it right. We’re not saying that employees can’t have a personality of their own or that you need to micromanage everything. However, if you desire a consistently good experience for customers, then you need the proper systems and protocols in place so that in every situation you have the desired outcome.

4. Why Trust Matters and 3 Keys to Earn It – by Rosie Taylor on DuctTapeMarketingConsultant.com

Every relationship is built on trust, especially those that last. Here are 3 simple steps to communicate value to prospective customers and build a lasting relationship with them.

5. How to Generate More Opportunity from Existing Customers – by Michael Steizner on SocialMediaExaminer.com

A video on how to pick the lowest hanging fruit for your business. It’s simple, but it’s gold.

What valuable content on marketing and strategy have you found this past week?

Please feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments section below. I’d love to hear from you!

You can also contact me directly via this page.

And if you liked the article, show me some love and share it with your peers in whatever way you like to share content (common sharing buttons are provided below).

From Britopian.com

Within the past few months, you might have noticed a lot of hoopla in the business community on the idea that a strong corporate culture will outperform business strategy every time.

I agree…partly. Maybe 50%.

I’m partial to creating an infectious corporate culture. It’s not wrong to say that a strong organizational culture is important. In fact, I believe it’s vital to the success of your company. Organizations that understand how to create a strong alignment of their strategy and core competencies throughout all their activities, departments and initiatives will be more successful than those who only have superficial alignment, given the assumption that their strategy and core competencies are competitive. As the great contemporary strategist himself said:

Strategy is about combining activities…It is more useful to think in terms of themes that pervade many activities, such as low-cost, a particular notion of customer service, or a particular conception of the value delivered. These themes are embodied in nests of tightly linked activities.

– Michael Porter

What does that mean for the meme-like mantra: “Culture eats strategy for lunch”?

It’s patricide.

Culture is strategy…or at least part of it. They aren’t foes. They’re family.

Let’s compare this idea of culture versus strategy to healthy eating and a healthy lifestyle. A healthy lifestyle (strategy) includes physical activity, an appropriate amount of rest, healthy eating (culture), healthy relationships, etc. Healthy eating isn’t enough to obtain a healthy lifestyle,  but it’s a part of choosing a healthy lifestyle. In the same vein, a great company culture isn’t enough to obtain competitive advantage. The culture needs to be aligned with all the other activities in the organization.

A company that aligns its activities, competencies and core values with its business strategy (i.e. appropriately develops and implements its business strategy) will have a healthy corporate culture. The culture will synchronize to the overarching business strategy. Great culture is an intended symptom of great strategy.

IBM, Apple, Zappos, Starbucks — these are all the classic examples of great company culture. You can see it immediately when you walk in their stores, talk to their employees or listen to customers’ stories. It’s easy to point and say, “Look, there’s a company doing it right. What a great culture. That’s what we need.”

But what some people don’t see is that these companies are the perfect case of excellently executed business strategy. Their culture is aligned with their business strategies.

Great strategy starts with values and vision, develops into value offerings, and is seen throughout all of the organization’s activities and implementations. To quote Porter again, this is what we call “third-order fit.”

Does your organization have third-order fit? Is there any slight disconnect between your culture and the rest of your business activities?

Related: Culture: It’s a Heart Thing

Related: Strategy – The Real Money Maker

Please feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments section below. I’d love to hear from you!

You can also contact me directly via this page.

If you liked the article, show me some love and share it with your peers however you like to share content (common sharing buttons are provided below).

Everyone needs some good advice every once in a while, or a nudge to get them going again. Perhaps some proverbial fire under a stagnant situation. Here’s my periodical nudge, called the “Weekly Matchbook“.

INSTRUCTIONS: Use the Matchbook to spark ideas; a small set of kindling that can provide the necessary heat to ignite your business endeavors. (All underlined material is actionable. Click to your heart’s content.)

Here’s this week’s Matchbook:

1. Why Google Drive Will Beat Dropbox.com (And All Other Consumer Clouds) – by  Seth Mueller

Okay, so yes, I am promoting one of my posts on this week’s Matchbook, but I do it out of love. There is some good meat under the section “Operation: Competitive Advantage.” I’ll be talking some more about competitive advantage in the following weeks, but for now look at your own business to see what your competitive advantage is. Does it meet the 4 criteria?

2. Almost Timely Newsletter – by Christopher S. Penn

This is THE BEST business newsletter that I subscribe to. I share it, not only so that you would potentially become a subscriber (click here to read more about the newsletter and subscribe), but so that you could see an example of an excellently executed and formatted email newsletter. The topics in his newsletter focus on everything from general marketing and social media to SEO and online analytics. (HINT: check out the “premium content” section to see how he acquires more poignant contact information from subscribers by offering highly valuable content to premium subscribers.)

3. What Both MBAs and MFAs Get Wrong About Solving Business Problems – by Melissa Quinn on FastCoDesign.com

An interesting case study on what higher education designers and business professionals most likely lack, and what elements truly sway executive decision-makers to act in your favor.

4. Online Marketing News: Mobile Shows Muscle, Google Panda to Penguin, Google Drive(s) Storage – on TopRankBlog.com

Here’s some great curated content on the internet marketing industry today by Ashley Zeckman on TopRankBlog. (HINT: Please note the section “Selecting Social Networks for Business: Not An Easy Task,” and it’s corresponding article link to InformationWeek.com.)

5. Customers Are People, Too – by Patti Hart on FastCompany.com

Sometimes in big picture, 50,000-ft.-elevation type planning, we can lose focus on the fact that our customers are people. Just regular, ol’ people with the same wants and desires that everyone has; the same problems and concerns as you and I. When we’re able to mix our marketing research and consumer behavior intelligence with empathy, we can truly meet the wants, needs and demands of the market. When you view your customers as individuals, both you and your customers will be happy (and successful).

Please feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments section below. I’d love to hear from you!

You can also contact me directly via this page.

And if you liked the article, show me some love and share it with your peers in whatever way you like to share content (common sharing buttons are provided below).

The answer is two words: competitive advantage.

How so? I’ll get to that in a minute.

Before we jump into the “why,” I’m going to make a few assumptions to simplify my argument for Google Drive:

1. You know about the cloud storage industry. (If not, look here.)
2. You know the major players involved (Dropbox, Box, iCloud, Microsoft SkyDrive, etc.).
3. We’re not discussing pricing models and comparing who has the most “bang-for-your-buck.”
4. We’re focusing on strategic positioning.

Drawing the battle lines

I have been a huge fan of Dropbox for years. In fact, it’s saved my life on several occasions. But there’s one big thing that Google Drive is providing that Dropbox just doesn’t offer: simultaneous collaboration. Google Drive allows everyone who is sharing a document to edit it at the same time (like on Google Docs), while providing all the same services that Dropbox and other cloud storage services do (look here, here and here for articles comparing all the cloud storage services).

Simultaneous collaboration is a strong advantage that Google Drive has over some of the other consumer cloud storage services. Coupled with (1) Google’s brand equity, (2) saturation of brand presence, (3) Google apps integration, (4) easy collaboration with other products, (5) massive capitalization capabilities, (6) industry leading software engineering staff and (7) huge customer base, Google Drive is a force to be reckoned with.

But is it sustainable? Will it last? These are the questions that we should always be asking when analyzing a strategic move.

Operation: Competitive Advantage

Now, let’s return to those two words that make or break companies — competitive advantage. Oh, you can achieve short-term success without competitive advantage, but sooner or later someone will call your bluff. Sustainability is the key.

Sustainable competitive advantage is qualified by 4 criteria:

1. It’s rare. (You can hardly find it anywhere else.)
2. It’s valuable. (You would be at a loss without it.)
3. It’s costly to imitate. (The other guys would have to pay a fortune to get it.)
4. It’s non-substitutable. (Nothing — or almost nothing — can fill its shoes.)

It’s rare and valuable.

If the first two criteria are fulfilled, you have a core competency. A core competency is a bundling of resources (what companies have at their disposal) into strong capabilities (what companies can do with their resources) that aligns well with the wants, needs, and demands of the market. In other words, core competencies are what a company does best and what they cannot continue without. For example, a core competency of Wal-Mart is their ability to run their grocery operations on 0% profit margin when the industry runs at 1% – 3%, allowing them to drive customers into their stores with the lowest grocery prices for a one-stop shop. Brand image, like with Harley-Davidson, can also be a core competency.

Google Drive provides the same cloud product offerings as competitors, plus added-value offerings (like simultaneous collaboration) while promising continued development toward the perfect cloud storage service for its users. Can anyone say “core competency?”

It’s costly to imitate and non-substitutable.

If the last two criteria are fulfilled, then you have a competitive advantage — something that makes your company extremely competitive compared to other industry players. When you combine Google Drive’s product offering with the seven additional Google factors I outlined above, you have a consumer cloud storage service that is rare, valuable, costly to imitate and non-substitutable.

Though poised between consumer and light enterprise markets, Google Drive is set to gobble up a large chunk of the cloud storage marketplace.

Retreat & regroup

At present, companies like Dropbox and Box are re-evaluating their market position (see Box CEO Aaron Levie’s view on the situation).

What do you believe Dropbox (and other consumer clouds) will need to do in order to remain competitive?

Do you agree that Google will be victorious over Dropbox?

Related: Strategy — The Real Money-Maker

Related: Much Ado About No-Bling: Veteran Business Mistakes

Please feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments section below. I’d love to hear from you!

You can also contact me directly via this page.

If you liked the article, show me some love and share it with your peers however you like to share content (common sharing buttons are provided below).

Before you start dreaming of smores and campfires under a starry night, I’m not alluding to the dangers of wild animals. No, I’m talking about experts — notably business experts — and their exceptional affinity to heralding their knowledge and ideas.

Sometimes, these experts have such an affinity to one particular business idea or method that they “camp” on it. Everything they say, do and support revolves around that idea — or what I’m going to refer to henceforth as “truth.” (Let’s leave religion and politics out of this discussion. It’s bad table manners.)

You may be familiar with some of these campers personally. Perhaps he’s your business partner, fellow executive, or most-trusted direct report. Maybe she’s your supplier or buyer. Or, perchance, it’s you… or goodness forbid, it’s me.

What’s certain is that we all know these campers include internet “ninjas” and social media “gurus.” Before that it was the direct mail advocates. And before that it involved the golden Six-Sigma craze. There have been countless systems, implementations and ideas that contained truth — at least some form of truth.

The problem is not when experts camp on a truth. This is healthy. It’s fine-tuning a trade. It’s competitive advantage — and we know how important that is.

Related: Much Ado About No-Bling: Veteran Business Mistakes

The problem comes when the expert feels the need to embellish in order to retain his claim to “master tradesman.” And this problem is three-fold:

1. 95% Truth — in order to retain his place of respect, the expert over-promises the value or depth of the truth. “Social media will help increase your sales.” “Direct mailing is key to the success of your business.” “If you clean up your operations, you’ll increase your bottom-line revenue.” These are all true statements, to an extent (and not for all cases).
2. Forsaking Other Truths — to bolster his claims, the expert dismisses or avoids other truths in favor of his own. He defends his territory. This behavior leads to myopia in creative problem solving, decision-making and implementation that might otherwise require an integrated thought process in order to be successful.
3. Killing Innovation — the most devastating outcome of excessive camping. Hardcore campers don’t seek out innovation because they’re too busy elevating their platform and defending their claims. Good ideas come from the conglomeration of differing fields of study (also see Malcolm Gladwell’s What the Dog Saw for more great content on where innovation comes from). If the expert is locked in to one view, how can he be exposed to a broad array of other ideas? Innovation requires a 360-degree view; it follows new paths of discovery to soaring heights and churning seas. An expert who camps too long in one place lives with the same horizon branded in his mind, with no idea of what’s available elsewhere. Continuing education and exploration will lead an expert to true success and acclaim.

Related: The Secret Ingredient To Success

TAKEAWAY: We must strive to innovate as business evolves, not defend our territory and exaggerate beyond the truth. I’m not advocating that we try to be a “jack of all trades.” Become a master of an area, but keep your eyes and ears open to new ideas. Otherwise, we’ll get lost in the dust of successful innovators.

Please feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments section below. I’d love to hear from you!

You can also contact me directly via this page.

If you liked the article, show me some love and share it with your peers however you like to share content (common sharing buttons are provided below).