The Weekly Minute - June 23, 2023
Hello! And Happy (officially) Summer!
I’m enjoying the time being outside, and being a Dad to my little babies.
In addition, I’m enjoying my productive days in the office and working to get better at my craft.
What I Read
Strategy & Competitors (via Roger Martin)
The Argument Against Paying Attention to Competitors
The way leaders achieve and maintain their leadership is through uniqueness. They do things differently than anybody else in their space, and that enables them to have a superior value equation.
The (perhaps apocryphal) Henry Ford quote demeans the idea with: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses,” and is reinforced by Steve Jobs’ “People don’t know what they want until you show them.”
The Argument For Paying Attention to Competitors
However, if you stop paying attention to your opponent, they may tack away from you, find better wind, and end up ahead of you at the finish line.
The key is to ask what competitors are seeing, not obsess about what they are doing. Focusing on what they are doing will lead to convergence which is bad for all. Focusing on what they are seeing will spur you to ask better questions and get to new and valuable insights faster.
The psychology of change management (via McKinsey)
Companies can transform the attitudes and behavior of their employees by applying psychological breakthroughs that explain why people think and act as they do.
Four conditions for changing mind-sets:
A purpose to believe in
Reinforcement systems
The skills required for change
Consistent role models
The Blind Men & the Elephant (via Sahil Bloom)
We find it easy to acquire new learnings, but challenging to overwrite old ones that have been established as "truths" in our minds.
Here’s a parable (borrowed form Sahil’s newsletter) about six blind men who are brought to examine an elephant that has come to their village.
The first man touches the trunk and says that the elephant is like a thick snake.
The second man touches the tusk and says that the elephant is like a spear.
The third man touches the ear and says that the elephant is like a fan.
The fourth man touches the leg and says that the elephant is like a tree.
The fifth man touches the side and says the elephant is like a wall.
The sixth man touches the tail and says the elephant is like a rope.
Each of the blind men is convinced that he is right, and that everyone else is wrong.
The moral of this story is that the information you have about the world represents a tiny fraction of the information available, yet you use it to form a view of how the world works.
One Framework
The ACEPS Framework (via Greg Isenberg)
Ok, I'll share the playbook you’ve never heard of that printed our HoldCo millions
— GREG ISENBERG (@gregisenberg) June 19, 2023
It's called “ACEPS Stack”
If you’re a solopreneur or entrepreneur who loves cash-flowing businesses, read this thread: pic.twitter.com/C2PUguudYE
Mining the White Space
Focus on the white space: If I drew a small black dot on a huge whiteboard… if I told you to write about this whiteboard right now, the first thing you would write about is the black dot rather than the 98% of white space around it.
Often we are reminded that we know just a touch of what there is to know, and that we often see a narrow view.
We get so focused on one idea, one point of view, a shiny object, that all we see is the black dot.
