LESSON 1: Learn to redefine your business (CONTD.)
The essence – your real business (contd.)
Your real business is the content carried by your vehicle. And this content is NOT the goods you produce and/or supply. You are probably wondering “what then is the content I am delivering if it is not the goods I supply or the services I deliver?
What your business has to give is intangible. Your real business is delivering meaning to people. This is your true product whether you make soap, help people procure airline tickets, build houses or you make offices clean. All these products are really the means to deliver something that is much less tangible than we like to imagine.
Human beings are creatures of meaning – the map of our lives is drawn in our minds and what matters to us is not what takes up the most space around us but what takes up the most space in our mental real estate. The real experience centre of a person – where wants and needs are catalogued and accounted for in real-time is the mind. Even the most basic biological needs are maintained and modulated in the mind.
Your real business is about the meaning you are able to register in the mind of your target. And all your goods, services, business structures and processes are simply the ways and means to serve this end. Your aim of course, is to register positive meaning and not negative meaning in the mind of your target. In other words, the object of your business is to bring true delight (meaning) to a predefined set of people (your target).
True delight is defined by the beneficial aspects of what you are doing for your target and the joy they receive as a result of it. We can consider something beneficial when it provides a functional advantage. It is a true benefit if you would want it for yourself and objectively recommend it to family and friends (many times, you can only truly answer this question by trying it yourself). The joy effect can only be determined by the one who is receiving it.
The simple matrix below helps outline the basic parameters with which to judge true delight. You will need to consider it closely in order to accurately apply it to your own unique business situation [see questions at the end of the article].
It is important to note that the scale of benefit and joy does not just range from low to high but can also be negative! In other words, your business can have a negative joy effect on customers on one hand or provide a functional disadvantage (even be harmful) on the other. There are quite a few businesses, especially in this part of the world, that provide positive benefit but negative joy. Sometimes because the customer has limited choice or is locked in for some other reason – this is bad business. Even if it is making profit today, this business is failing [by our definition] and will prove it sooner or later.
It is important to note that the meaning your business communicates to its customers finds its origin in you, not your business vehicle. If your business is bringing people joy, it means you are bringing people joy. If your business is causing people to curse under their breath, it means you are doing it, albeit unwittingly. It is true that the organisation intermediates whatever you may be doing and so vendors, colleagues, processes and the environment can contribute to turn a good intention into a sour outcome. The point still remains that the essence of your business – meaning – originates in your mind and has its effect in the mind of the customer. The vehicle is simply the apparatus to help you deliver it from source to destination.
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER
- In what quadrant does your business fall in the matrix above? Why?
- If you do not know, what do you need to do to find out?
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The diagrams in this article may not be reproduced, copied or used in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of the author.
Dr. Osinowo
Dr. Osinowo is a thinker and teacher: coaching high-potential leaders, advising organizations and originating breakthrough ideas. He is the founder of CANTAB Associates and the pioneer of SAPIENCE which is both a philosophy and methodology of thinking. He previously worked in the London office of the leading global strategy consulting firm Bain & Company. He studied Medicine at the University of Cambridge where he was a Cambridge Commonwealth Scholar. He can be reached for your questions and comments.
e-mail: info@cantab-associates.com
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/toluwanimi-osinowo
