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What is your viewpoint - take a risk!

This tip is based on the tip published in the February 2004 AWARE Marketing Tips newsletter.

Mao Zedung (Mao Tse Tung) - the first leader of the People's Republic of China - is said to have written:

We think too small, like the frog at the bottom of the well. He thinks the sky is only as big as the top of the well. If he surfaced, he would have an entirely different view.

When you look at your business landscape what do you see?

Are you like the frog, seeing only a limited picture, or do you see the wider view?

Many companies miss out on opportunities because they only see their immediate industry or geographic location, when there could be new opportunities slightly further away or in related industries. Part of successful strategic planning is to take this wider perspective and aim to identify opportunities that you can build on, using your existing competencies and strengths. Failure to do this means that you limit what you can achieve. If a competitor then comes along, and gets in first, you may find that you lose the chance forever - or even worse, if the world changes as a result, lose your market.

André Gide, the French Literature Nobel Prize winner, expressed this idea of looking further for opportunities in a different way.

One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.

Alexander Graham Bell, the inventer of the telephone, said something similar, when he talked about how people have a tendency to look backwards, to what they know, to what is safe, to what is certain - and avoid looking forward to new possibilities, and openings.

When one door closes, another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.

Sometimes you need to take a risk - and go into unknown territories. The risks are high, but so are the potential rewards.

So, which do you choose?

• To remain like the frog, at the bottom of the well. He is safe. He is in a secure environment. And he can remain happy. At least until the developer comes along and decides to fill in the well, because the town now has a water supply delivered by pipes so the well is no longer needed.
• Or to surface, and see the world as it is. The world at the top of the well is much more dangerous - from predators, from drying out by going too far from the water needed to survive or just from getting squashed by some big animal (or human being) that steps on you because they didn't see you there. However it also gives you the opportunity to survive when the world changes, as when that developer fills in the well. You may also meet another frog and mate, and so have the chance to grow and spread across the world.

Seth Godin, the marketing guru and author of Permission Marketing, Unleashing the Ideavirus (UK Version / US Version) and other books explains the concept even more starkly:

The safest thing you can do is be risky.

Conversely, the riskiest strategy is to play it safe. We live in a world of fashion. Fashion is about getting people to talk about what you've done. To spread the word. If you're boring, you're invisible.

Given that all that matters is your ability to spread the word, then the single worst way to grow your company is to do something safe, something tried and true, something that's sure to work. Because it won't work. It'll fail. It'll fail because it's not worth talking about. It'll fail because you did something beyond reproach, something not worth buzzing about.

Before every business and every organization lie two simple paths. The first is the bureaucratic one, the one that can't possibly fail. That's the dangerous route. The other path, the path less taken, is the one filled with innovation and risk. But the risk isn't risky anymore.

The Marketer (Chartered Institute of Marketing's membership magazine), Issue 1, April 2004.

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