I listened to a podcast with Jack Trout of Positioning fame – indisputably one of the greats – a day or two ago. He has a new book, Repositioning: Marketing in an Era of Competition, Change and Crisis. The question set me to wondering whether ... http://www.bestwork.biz/blog/?p=197

It doesn’t always feel that way – being the little guy often doesn’t feel like the power position. But take another look.

The current recession has buyers re-thinking how they use their resources. Those of us who want to remain high-value trading partners are called upon to respond – sensitively – to new sets of concerns. Our prospects and customers are operating in new worlds. They are re-interpreting what’s most important, where they will focus, what they need, and with whom they will place their trust.

It reminds me of the moment, many millions of years ago, when the cooling of the earth offered our warm-blooded small mammal forebears advantage over the dinosaurs.

Large businesses cannot move quickly. It’s very difficult for them to notice a new nuance in Customers’ thinking, listen in a way that people experience as being heard, and respond in a way that generates new value for both parties. This most basic human interaction is not scalable. The big guys don’t have a chance competing with us in personal customer connection.

Like the dinosaurs requiring a certain amount of heat – reptiles cannot regulate their body temperatures - our large competitors thrive on scalability. That puts them at a huge disadvantage in a changing environment. They’re desperately trying to figure out how to appear responsive. But web 2.0 makes the job harder and harder.* Of course customers can tell when no one’s really listening - the human brain is very hard to fool on that score.

Little guy/gals, on the other hand, thrive on being close to our Customers. We can know every one of them personally, we can respond to each one uniquely, and naturally they can feel it.

The way to leverage this advantage is to focus on a simple question that will juice your brain and stoke the fire in your belly:
Who do you want to serve, and what do you want to make happen for them?

Use the question to focus and refocus. If you’re feeling worried about the recession (which is likely to reduce your intelligence by interfering with Pre Frontal Cortex function), the question will spark your ingenuity.

Take it one step farther, as we do in Worksheet 1, “Who would you LOVE to be working with?” That question will enable you to work with recession, not against it, by taking the little guy’s advantage: getting closer to the people you care about when they need it most.

The only reason a business exists is to help certain someone solve a certain problem they can’t easily solve for themselves. That’s why people are willing to pay their time and money, because they get help.

- Worksheet 1,">Heart of Business

* Prahalad’s brilliant book shows large businesses how to operate from n=1, but the discipline to do so is very demanding, and predictably rare.

We believe that the most powerful organized force for change (for good or bad) in the world that humans have built is the system of commerce through which we exchange value and find ways to feed our families. We intend to leverage that power to make the world a better place for all of us. We recognize that at times the most influential global powers have been religions and governments, but we think that time has passed in most of the world and is gradually passing in all of it. This change opens an incredible opportunity for humanity: commerce is a lever by which we can do some very positive things for the world.

In order to continue to survive in a competitive commercial environment, we must innovate.
In order to sustainably innovate, we must improve our maturity and wisdom as individuals
(see our last newsletter.)
As we do so, we become more able to tackle the larger problems that we face — even those outside of work.

We believe the desire/demand for innovation will help us learn how to be more productive with each other. This is what we need in order to create a better future for our children. Yes, it’s the competitive element that innovation has introduced to commerce that can take us to a better life, workplace, community and world. As evidence of this, we at New & Improved are as likely to get an e–mail from one of our program graduates that they have made / saved their company big bucks via what they’ve learned as we are to get an e–mail telling us how they finally had a productive conversation with their sullen teenager using the same methods.

Wouldn’t it be great if we were able to effectively pass something forward to the next generation other than our personal wealth or tax bill? Wouldn’t it be fantastic if we put front and center the idea that the most important inheritance we could leave would be generational increases in wisdom? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, from a young age, most of society was engaged in a conversation designed to answer the question

“What might be all of the ways we could improve our maturity as a species?”

And that we could be having this conversation in the place where we spend the largest chunk of our day to day lives — at work. In that context, you could reframe the question as,

“What might be all the ways we could work together better?”

We believe that the evolutionary pressures that exist in commerce might be just the pressure to energize that conversation.

The real bottom line

As you work to turn your organization’s attention to improvement of its innovation culture, as you work to build the systems, organizational structures and training processes that improve your company’s innovation quotient, you are also improving the world’s ability to effectively tackle the big issues that we have been too immature, narrow–minded and short–sighted to solve so far. We believe this is an innovation mission that ANY organization should be proud to throw themselves behind, even as they are working to strengthen their position in the market — their bottom line — via innovation. It is a great service to us all that you grow through innovation, because you create a competitive pressure for others that can only be resolved by increasing their innovation abilities...and hence their ability to think and work productively with others.

So get with it. Out–innovate others. Raise the bar for us all, and serve us all in the process of doing so.

You can reach Bob at http://www.newandimproved.com

This is a question that begs for a question as an answer: What do you want?

Desire is an important compass, and I think we use it less than we should. When we listen wisely, desire will tell us where we need to focus our time, money, and energy to get the results we want.

The problem is that we rarely listen wisely. We tend to distrust desire, suspecting it of conspiring to rob us of sense and dignity. When we do listen to desire, we may sometimes do so uncritically, as kids in a candy store.

The key is to listen to the direction in which desire calls us, while letting go of the destination. Listening like that will show you exactly what to learn next.

Here's how to listen to desire.

Start in a quiet place. Quiet has nothing to do with the level of external noise, but everything to do with the level of noise between your ears. Bring your attention inward and settle into your body. Let your breathing deepen.

Begin to notice your body sensations. Observe and acknowledge them without trying to change anything. Take your time so that every part of your experience can be noted. This is about coming home to yourself. It's the equivalent of pausing on a journey and finding a still place from which to check your compass.

Now invite into your awareness the things you most want for the year ahead. (The time period is up to you. If you are planning a vacation or retreat, use the length of time you plan to be gone.) Let these desires come into your awareness and simply observe them. You might jot them down if there are very many.

Having named what you desire, notice which desire has the greatest charge or energy. Then ask yourself, “What will that give me?” Pause and listen as the answer comes to you. It may arrive as a thought, a sensation, a shift in emotion, or an image. Just be present to whatever comes.

Keep asking “What will that give me?” until you feel you have reached the core of this desire.

By listening to your desire in this way, you’ve used it as a sort of compass that points to something really important and valuable to you, something deeper than the desire itself. Now that you know what that something is, you can ask, “What can I learn to move in that direction?”