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No, this is not a Jacques Cousteau travel blog.
It is, however, the first in a series of articles that address an old concept in a new way: "Going where they ain't." When you first read this concept, it seems pretty simple; go into a market that is either under-served or undiscovered. However,
as you will see, there is a great deal more to the strategy.
Before we can convert a concept into a strategy, we need to change the way we think; first about the business we are in and second on how we operate within this business. To do that, we should talk about how and why we think the way we do.
The purpose of this article is to briefly acquaint you with three critical thinking processes that influence our daily personal and business lives; The Elephant Tether, Monkey Mind, and Gator Brain. Each practice has distinct values and drawbacks. And each will play a critical role in developing your new business strategy.
As you know, thinking is the way we interact with the environment around us. And a lot of the way we act is embedded, which is derived from patterns of behavior. This is because your mind naturally likes to follow well-worn path and beliefs rather than generate new thoughts or interpretations and new ways of doing the same task.
For example, when performing tasks such as flying a plane or driving a car you want to have a pattern of known behavior. You really don't want to get on a plane with a pilot who wants to try a new way of flying every time he takes off. Granted, there are some car drives that appear to try a way of driving every day.
Too often pattern thinking prevents us from really performing to our ultimate level. For example, Indian elephant handlers train elephants not to escape by chaining one of their legs to a stake when the elephant is a calf. Naturally, as a calf the elephant is not strong enough to break away from the chain or stake. When the elephant is older and stronger, the handlers still tether the elephant to a stake. However, now the elephant believes it cannot escape the stake because it wasn't able to earlier in its life and is convinced it can't now. This patterned thinking practice is referred to as the Elephant Tethered process.
Again, patterned thinking practices are excellent for some tasks. However, when developing a new strategy, we should try and move away from our tethered beliefs on what can and cannot be done in our industry.
The second thinking concept to discuss is Monkey Mind. You have seen this behavior and even have exhibited it yourself. Basically, Monkey Mind comes from a monkey's random and often abrupt and sudden changes in behavior. I'm sure some of you have heard the term ADD, Attention Deficient Disorder in describing someone who is easily distracted, somewhat disorganization, and moves from task to task without really finishing what they started. Basically, there are way too many synapses firing off in your brain like the climax of a 4th of July fireworks celebration. Some think they are 'multi-tasking' where in reality; they are just 'multi-attempting.'
Having an active brain is a good thing when generating new strategies. That is where most of the creativity will come from. However, you don't want to be managed by an uncontrolled random thinking process like Monkey Mind. You want to harness your imagination to help you manage ambiguity that comes from new things.
Finally, there is the Gator Brain. The Gator Brain process is all about survival; it is the primordial part of the brain that is designed to keep us from getting killed.
The gator's brain is focused on five simple events: eat, kill, freeze, run, mate. For the gator, these five simple functions represent the full extent of their thinking capability. When encountered by an unknown event, the gator quickly runs through its limited inventor of options and makes a selection of one or more behavioral acts.
For example, when the gator encounters an unknown event, he will generally freeze to see if he is threatened, or interested. If threatened he may run or attack. If he's interested, he could eat it or mate with it; a tough call for a gator.
Say what you want about the gator's thinking process, it has kept them alive for millions and millions of years will little need for evolution.
We have similar thinking skills which have enable us to survive. However, in developing a new strategy we want to do more than just stay alive, we want this new strategy to enable to evolve and thrive.
So in review, we talked about three thinking process that we use every day. The Tethered Elephant which uses patterned thinking behavior that helps with our everyday activities, but may not be what we want to use to create new business strategy. The Monkey Mind displays energy and creativity but often appears as unfinished thoughts strong together. Then there is the Gator Brain, which helps with our daily survival but doesn't enable us to do much more.
Over the next week, see if you can spot this type of thinking in yourself and in other around you. Those observations will be helpful in our next discussion.
Think Better
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