The Weekly Spark #4: “People don’t want quarter-inch drills. They want quarter inch holes.” Theodore Levitt

In a world governed by data and stories, like in any fairytale ever created, our narrative needs an antagonist. The dragon that we need to fight in order to enter the castle and save the princess. Except, in the real world, it’s not that easy and straightforward. Most of the time there is no princess to save nor dragon to fight. So what does success look like?

Despite being an extremely complicated question, for which I’m sure extensive books and articles have been written, my short reply is: whatever you make it. Some people won’t like this answer, but this is exactly what happens in the world – every single person or company has its very own framework of success, measured against its own personal KPIs. At the end of the day, it’s why we see many companies identify themselves as leaders in something.?

Once again, the story

Focusing on companies, it’s clear to see that success is simply defined by an internal narrative based on KPIs that a Board of Directors ultimately decides are relevant. Most of the time the princess sounds like this: “to achieve growth in xxx KPIs”. And who is the dragon?

The dragon is most of the time another company that we identify as a threat or obstacle in reaching our princess. For example, Coke and Pepsi or Nike and Adidas.

These stories are necessary to develop a clear and simple mission for everyone within the company to rationalize and prioritize. ?

There is a mismatch

A company doesn’t operate in its own reality. It operates in an irrational world, and it often occurs that an internal narrative doesn’t fit with the reality. For example, Netflix wasn’t clearly the dragon of Blockbuster, until it brought them to failure. Nor Sony was the one of Kodak, until it stole the majority of share and brought them to bankruptcy.

It’s easy now to make these examples, but what is obvious now wasn’t so clear to most people at the time. Both above examples relate to a concept called “marketing myopia”: a focus on products and services rather than seeing the big picture of what consumers really want.

At the end of day, you can tell yourself all the stories you want, but if the consumer doesn’t buy your products and services, it is very likely (if not certain) that you will fail. Therefore the goal isn’t to sell things, it’s to satisfy customers, and accept the fact that many products and services will be replaced by more competitive alternatives that will better satisfy them - thus it is easier to innovate and meet consumers needs before any competitor.

To survive this lack of awareness that can take over your company, especially in ones that prioritize short-term vs long-term goals, it is important to always give the right framing to the following question: “what business are we really in?”. It may happen that you find out your princess and dragon are obsolete. ?