post

Why Preaching the “Art of …” is Easier than Doing It

(Updated)
I enjoy reading Guy Kawasaki’s blog, the “Art of..” series as well as other posts.  I find myself agreeing with him most of the time, including his most recent post, The Art of Driving Your Competition Crazy.  That said, let’s look at some of his examples:

  • Apple coolness factor vs. CIO safe bet
  • Turning enemies into allies:  The Knight and the dragon are “mashingly unsuccessful at doing battle and eventually decide to go into business together. Using the dragon’s firebreathing ability and the knight’s salesmanship, they create the K & D Bar-B-Q.
  • Mindgames, or “size matters”: “During the Korean War, the U. S. Army Office of Strategic Services left a supply of condoms for the Communist Chinese to find. The condoms were specially manufactured in an extra-large size. The label on the boxes, however, said, “Made in the USA Size Medium.”
  • Mindgames, a’la Hannibal: make the enemy believe the hords of cattle are all soldiers… etc…etc.

Update: some more examples from Guy’s post, see our comment exchange below:

  • Small hardware store offering refill service of the gas tanks that new behemoth Home Depot sells
  • The even wiser hardware store owner who displays “Main Entrance” on his portal, right next to Home Depot
  • Pizza company incentivising customers to tear out competitor ads..etc.

These illustrations make it a fascinating piece to read…and that’s exactly my issue with so many management books: the author has the freedom to quote the most interesting stories from the entire world to make their point. 

Business reality is not that fascinating, if you are an Executive or business owner, you live within the confines of your own everyday business, you can’t perform the condom– or cattle-trick.  You have a more limited set of options, no matter how creative you are.  The stories belong in books, or – if yo can afford – motivational, skill-development training sessions, but most of them are hard to map to your business reality.  I guess that’s also the difference between celebrity story tellers and management consultants, who have to recharge and boost real businesses every day.

P.S.  Guy, I still love reading your blog.

 

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Comments

  1. Anonymous says

    Zoli,

    You didn’t mention examples where the entrepreneur can take action. For example, offering 2 for 1 with th yellow pages ad of the competition or putting up a sign saying “Main Entrance.”

    What about those cases?

    Guy

  2. Anonymous says

    You’re right, I started to list the exotic examples (hm.. Apple and the CIO is not), and realized I shouldn’t replicate your entire post, so I stopped. But this way the selection exluded some of the more realistic scenarios, so I just fixed the post.

    I did not mean to selectively quote, all I wanted to point out that “preachers” like you (and I mean it in a positive sense) have the intellectual freedom of roaming around the world / history / literature to find fascinating examples, but sometimes you feel those disconnected from reality… other than for the abstract message of “be creative, think out-of-the-box”.

  3. Anonymous says

    Zoli,

    Richard Bach once wrote: “Argue for your limitations, and sure enough – they’re yours.” Can a small business implement such tricks? SURE! The real point of Guy’s blog, however, is to serve the customer before serving up lunch for your competition (maybe that’s why its #8). The best way to unnerve anyone, though, is to simply ignore them. Perhaps the most effective treatment is to act as if our competition isn’t worthy of our attention at all! We should still “know thine enemy”, but imho our energies are far better spent knowing the wonderful people who pay our bills. Keeping this as our ‘business reality’ actually IS fascinating, as we watch what our customers do for us – just because they know we care.

    Craig

  4. Anonymous says

    Craig, I agree, I just picked another aspect to discuss…

    Just wait till you see this” – how long? 🙂

  5. Anonymous says

    For many, like me, the creative part is fun and easy — it’s the day-to-day boring stuff that’s hard. I coined a mantra for myself after working at my dad’s successful printing business: embrace the boring.

  6. Anonymous says

    … by “boring” I mean “mundane.” Embrace the Mundane wasn’t as catchy. 😉

  7. I continued thinking about this, yesterday, and realized what I probably should have said the first time.

    I believe my father’s “secret” to success isn’t his creative product development or marketing, but his careful development and maintenance of the organization. It all counts, but his organization impresses me the most.

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