Page 31 - Selling the Invisible: A Field Guide to Modern Marketing - PDFDrive.com

What Color Is Your Company’s Parachute?

Never mind what business you are in—what are you good at?
Richard Boles, author of What Color Is Yo u r Parachute?, recommends that

anyone contemplating a new career ask that question.
Every business planning its future should answer that, too: What are you

good at?
Few businesses answer that question, because few think to ask it. Instead,

virtually every person in every service business is trapped in a box. The box is a
mental model, and part of that mental model is the standard operating procedure
of the business’s industry. So the question “What are we good at?” invariably is
answered, “We are good at being [architects, industrial psychologists, coffee
shop operators, whatever].”

“We are an architectural firm,” the architect says, and she builds everything
around that model—from the hierarchy of titles to the office decor.

That box—“We are an architectural firm”—is a trap. It traps you into doing
what others do, saying what others say, and offering what others offer. It traps
you into being the same instead of finding ways to be different.

But what are you good at?
Federal Express asked itself that in the 1980s when it realized it should
diversify its portfolio. But what is Federal Express good at? The Federal Express
industry mental model would lead you to answer, “They’re good at overnight
delivery” or “fast package delivery.” The model would lead you to answer the
question with a mere description of the business.
But Federal Express realized that what it is astonishingly good at—as good,
perhaps, as history’s great armies—is logistics. Federal Express is brilliant at
procuring, distributing, and replacing materials. Recognizing this, the company
established a consultancy that advises companies on logistical management.
For years, accounting firms decided they were good at accounting. But
Arthur Andersen realized that in becoming skilled at modern accounting, it had
become very adept at understanding the information systems that push the
numbers through companies. So the firm established what has become a well-
regarded information management consulting practice.
For years, most advertising agencies decided they were good at advertising.
Since many agencies have recognized that what they are good at is interesting
and persuasive communicating, more have expanded their services to include
public relations, sales promotion, and even presentation and speech consulting.