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The Need To Be Different
The secret of winning in life lies in seeing life differently – in its
different shades and outcomes. No one gets ahead by copying the status quo
or imitating competitors.
The concept of
being different
or unique is far
more important today than it was ten years ago. If you are going to
withstand relentless and constantly growing global competition, you need to
be different and radically change the way of doing business. Today, people
are overwhelmed by choice – choice of information, ideas, products, and
services. In this sea of choice, most customers have trouble making choices
about buying decisions. Choosing among multiple options is always based on
differences, implicit or explicit.
Ask Effective Questions
Move past outdated conventional wisdom that stops you from being a high
performer.
Creativity requires an inquisitive mind. "Fresh, creative thoughts don't
grow in the dry soil of mindless acceptance. Yet it is easy to go through
your day without calling anything important into question." Effective
learning questions can serve as a starting point for the assimilation of
learning. Ask
"why?" and "what if?" questions and develop "what-if"
scenarios to discover new opportunities around you.
Find the Difference that Makes the Difference
If two situations or processes seem very similar but have different
outcomes, it is important to look for any differences between them, and then
to find out which of those differences is the key to the different outcome.
Contrastive analysis is a tool that helps you to find out what differences
make the difference and, thus, tells you where you need to take action. In
contrastive analysis, you are contrasting similarities and differences
between one situation and another to find the difference that is
significant.
Lessons from Sam Walton, Founder of Wall-Mart
"Swim upstream. Go the other way. Ignore the conventional wisdom,” advised
Sam Walton. “If everybody else is doing it one way, there's a good chance
you can find your niche by going in exactly the opposite direction. But be
prepared for a lot of folks to wave you down and tell you you're headed the
wrong way. I guess in all my years, what I heard more often than anything
was: a town of less than 50,000 population cannot support a discount store
for very long.“
Inspirational Lessons from Steve Jobs
"Your time is
limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma
– which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the
noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important,
have the courage to
follow your heart and
intuition. They somehow
already know what you truly want to become.
Everything else is secondary," advised
Steve Jobs...
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