ANCIENT& not so ancient WISDOM
offering a weekly positive perspective

May 5, 2005

Market Leadership, Conviction #1: "Awareness of truth is seeing the world within the world through hearing the threads within the message." 

- Jeffrey K Hansler (1957 - )

I wish to share some recently discovered insights that may provide you greater awareness in your communication with clients, associates, executives, etc. and provide you a way to attain a jump on the competition. (This is my first attempt at putting them in writing so if it’s not entirely clear consider it a work in progress and send me your thoughts and suggestions to clarify.) 

The theory behind this comes from recent research regarding capitalizing on knowledge and trends. In summary, the theory goes like this: People as a whole are intuitive and it is through focused listening to individuals involved in an area that an individual can identify patterns emerging and even the solutions that will be important in dealing with those patterns. Knowledge of the necessity of change and solutions, it seems, is available at an intuitive level in advance of being conscious thought. An intent listener can hear the connecting threads and intuitive knowledge by listening with full attention to individuals involved in the situation. The connecting threads identify patterns and possible solutions to issues that could be changed or improved. In listening and processing, the listener is able to move intuitive concepts to concrete ideas and solutions that can be acted upon. 

In the wild, a stallion heading up a herd that can predict the attack pattern of a wolf pack in response to the initial attack can lead the herd to safety. The initial attack is representative of current believe while the positioning of the pack to corral the herd is representative of intuitive knowledge of what is to come. In the same manner, what is said in a conversation, though apparent, conveys only part of the critical information to guide decisions for the future. It is the less apparent threads within the message that convey the intuitive knowledge necessary for predicting future needs. 

I was in a meeting yesterday and listening to a marvelous person that is entering the speaking business. He had been recognized in the film industry for his accomplishments with an Academy Award and has now set his targets on the speaking industry. 

As he was talking with me about the advice he had been given on becoming a speaker, I could picture the threads the information had traveled to get to him. As he was talking, I saw a picture of how that information had mingled with his own experiences and perceptions. To his credit, he took action on the information he was given. To his frustration, the information wasn’t getting him the results he wanted. While there are many contributing factors to why it wasn’t working, the one that relates to this document is the information he received, which is still being passed around verbally as gospel by the association of speakers, is an old model and will not work in today’s business environment. Not only is the model out of date, it is a very expensive model, while the new model that will work for him is relatively inexpensive. The advice was not given to him with malice or bad intent; it is just that the conscious messages that are being passed along no longer work. Yet the correct model is available. By conversing and listening to the threads within the message, the parts of the old model that will not work can be separated from the parts that will work and the changes that need to be made.

As I’m sharing these thoughts with you, I have three magazines in front of me: Marketing Y Medios, TransWorld SURF, and BusinessWeek. 

In Marketing Y Medios there is a letter from Paco (his chosen nick name for Olavarrieta, which he was tired of having mispronounced in the United States), the creative partner for OLE, an independent Hispanic advertising shop based in New York. In his letter, Paco describes his frustration with a client. He shares in the letter the question he asks himself which is ‘What the hell am I doing here?’ in response to one of his clients asking during a meeting “If you don’t play Latin music on the spot, how will Hispanics know it’s for them?” 

The thread of thought and experience that lead to the question asked by the client tells a story about the client and his current perspective. While Paco does answer the clients question in the letter, what is most important is his answer to his own question. Paco’s answer to his internal question ‘What the hell am I doing here?’ is to return the favor granted to him by those that sponsored him coming to the United States by sponsoring someone else to come here. He further states this is critical because creativity has grown so much in Latin America that it important to bring the opportunity to the U.S. 

WOW! To link the client’s question to the coming awareness leap that will occur and opportunities it will open up for their firm is phenomenal. Rather than making limiting decisions based on the current lack of savvy of clients, he is making a decision based on moving from the intuitive thread to the concrete decision to expand. In my opinion, this example marks an advanced intuitive trend that will become industry knowledge very soon. You will see big changes in Hispanic and Latino Marketing in the US in the near future with much cross over advertising and huge leaps in tapping into markets in new and innovative ways. 

My favorite part of TransWorld SURF was the two-page spread on the “Guilty Pleasures of Surfing”, which included snaking someone (taking a wave from another surfer that had priority as defined by the “laws of surfing”) and being able to go into the surf shop saying you needed a new board cause you ‘Broke your board in a sick tube yesterday!’ There are some other irreverent guilty pleasures outlined that I won’t include because the SPAM filters will pick them up, and there are other articles in the publication that are truly enjoyable to read. Why then are 99% of the advertisements either surf wear or surf related? Why hasn’t Ford or Jiffy Lube or Pottery Barn or Max Factor placed ads targeted to the demographics of the publication? The surf community is completely different from what it was even 5 years ago – they have money to spend! There was an ad by Pioneer though – hmmm. In my opinion, this an intuitive early stage situation and changes will come during the next few years as companies wakeup to cross-marketing in specialty publications. A small company with a limited ad budget could grab a dominant share of this market by getting involved now. They could leverage early involvement in this market to establish a foothold virtually untouchable by competitors. 

In the “Economics Technology Section” of BusinessWeek, one of the articles reports that despite all the claims about the importance of the “information revolution” InfoTech’s share of the economy is barely higher than it was in 1997, with the vast majority of money being poured into housing and healthcare. In my opinion, the threads within the messages in this market identify it as a very early stage notice with low-level intuitive messages being expressed at this time. While at some point in the future, money may pour into the “information revolution” at a phenomenal rate, it will be slow for the near future. 

It is not critical to come up with a completely new idea or even to guess at where the market is going. It is possible through careful listening to the intuitive subtext of communication to choose the best choice of action leading to the best results with the least risk. The key to success is the differentiation of being slightly ahead of a market trend with a solution that addresses the hunger of the market. 

As for my speaker friend, the time is ripe for immediately doing things differently by associating with those that are doing things slightly different than in the past. These new decisions will address the channels of distribution that have shifted, the relationships and agreements within those channels that are begging for change, and take advantage of the advances in technology that allow a different presentation. 

Hey, as a matter of fact, I’d better start making some changes myself! 

Wishing you meaningful conversations and great intuition,

Sincerely,