Posts Tagged ‘noticing’

Have you noticed how you live life and then suddenly one day you notice “something”, seemingly for the first time? Then after noticing that “something”, it seems to be hounding you – they just suddenly appear everywhere?

One of the best examples is the emergency exit sign at the movies. Amazing how an illuminated red/green sign in a dark room just goes unnoticed. Think back to the last film you watched and see if you recall  where the emergency exit was? Yes it was there, law requires it be there and clearly visible too!! You probably even left through the emergency door afterwards.

So what does this have to do with business? It occurred to me that many entrepreneurs start something that they identify as missing, flawed or incomplete. The fact that they are able to vision this means that they have a concern for this need and that is why they can notice it. This is good from the point of visioning, but it will also prove very difficult to get investors, partners and consumers interested until they too can see the need.

For big organizations they put their new products in front of us through marketing and advertising and telling us the story of the possibilities the new product will create for us. This gets it quickly adopted and widely noticed. For the entrepreneur it is a far longer and slower process. In the same way a salesman looks at his prospects and tries to convert as many to sales, the entrepreneur must maximize every interaction to ensure that the listener leaves with a clear vision of this product’s need, and the space of possibilities it will create once  in the world.

Once your listener can notice, they too will suddenly feel like they are being hounded by the opportunities for your product – and they too will then unconsciously become your speaker. This is important from a promotional point of view but more important in drawing in interested parties to build your products network.

Make sure you produce the vision every time in your listener, because that is where you will get the most powerful interaction, these listeners will see the exit signs like the fire alarm was ringing. If the listener leaves with a blurred vision, they will not notice that exit sign but take the exit!

This article was contributed by Guy Ralfe, co-founder of Active Garage and co-author of the upcoming book "ProjectManagementTweets". You can follow Guy on Twitter at gralfe.

Tagged as: active garage, business, business opportunity, Business Strategy, entrepreneur, Entrepreneurship, Guy Ralfe, http://activegarage.com, investment, noticing, opportunity, possibilities, Sales and Marketing

Ever take a moment to notice how you notice? The intention of this post is to just do that – enable you to notice how you notice. In the fast paced world that we live in nowadays, with our daily schedules full of appointments and what-not, it is hard to take a moment to reflect upon how all action really starts in us. Humans are hard wired – yes, biologically, we are hard wired to be a certain way whereby certain things exist as mechanistic behaviors  (if you disagree, take notice of the next time you burp or have a bout of hiccups) and its hard to do anything about any of it, until we step aside and notice it, objectively. It all begins with noticing things – our surroundings, our behaviors… everything!

The next question that begs some attention then is: So, how do we notice? OR even better… how do we get better at noticing? The answer is in one simple word: Distinctions. The dictionary meaning of Distinction is “Something that Distinguishes”. With distinctions, humans learn to take notice and when we take notice, the things that seem to be happening in our background (i.e. where we don’t have much control on our actions) start happening in our foreground (i.e. we notice them). This applies to any field. Take, for example, playing soccer. Until one distinguishes (or learns the distinction) what is meant by “Off-Side” one does not know one way from the other and cannot take effective action in this domain.

The same holds for the field of Business. Until one distinguishes what “Business” means, one cannot effectively act in the domain of business. That is why people invest huge sums of money to get their MBA degrees, Project Management Certifications or Accounting diplomas and degrees… so that they can learn the distinctions that help them take effective action.

In whatever aspect of business you specialize in, commit to learning the relevant distinctions and you’ll start noticing the power of noticing.

—

This article was contributed by Himanshu Jhamb, co-founder of Active Garage and co-author of the upcoming book "ProjectManagementTweets". You can follow Himanshu on Twitter at himjhamb.

Tagged as: Action, active garage, behavior, biological, burp, business, degree, diploma, distinctions, distinguish, effective, himanshu jhamb, human, MBA, mechanistic, noticing, Project Management, sneeze, soccer