Author: William Kerr

…during a few weeks away.

When travelling, one will often find the top fast-food restaurants within a short distance. Sometimes on the corners of the same intersection.

On the surface, this would seem to be an ill-advised business logic of not being the only restaurant in the area for people to frequent, but it’s seen in town after town.

And it’s not just restaurants; bars, coffee shops, and theatre districts all have a similar penchant for locating close to each other.

I heard or read somewhere, “if you’re the only wedding photographer in town, you’ll most likely get all the gigs but probably not grow or get much better at your craft.”

Competition is great for customers as it shows whether a company is a smart choice compared with others. A secondary advantage, not considered as often, is that one gets to benchmark oneself in relation to the best and find ways to get better at what one does.

So, trying to be the one-and-only in the marketplace seems to have its own demise built-in, and a different strategy would be to look for and position yourself with the competition.

Written while listening to Django Reinhardt

Best thing I read online over the last week.

• Your proposal was not what we were looking for.
• We’ve chosen someone else for the position.
• Your price is too high.

And makes us think that:

• I’m not smart enough to create a good proposal.
• I haven’t got what it takes to get a better position.
• I’m not as good as I think I am.

When in fact it actually might have meant:

• I was too busy so I didn’t have time to fully read your proposal.
• We decided to save some money and divide the work up between other managers.
• I didn’t really understand what you just told me.

Or, maybe it just meant that the pitch didn’t work.

Written while listening to Ziggo Dome Eric Clapton concert. (2022)

Thanks to Seth Godin for the insight.

…though necessary for a stage play, tv show, or movie may be just as important internally for the organizations that are creating them.

And, might even be useful for companies looking to rethink or redesign their operations to keep up with the pace of change.

A well-told story, as defined here, is not so much a narrative from above, or the marketing brand of a company, but the conversations and stories happening throughout an organization.

Processes, work, and outcomes are usually related in some fashion to how people within an organization view the company; and that view comes from the conversations and stories people have about, for example, what is possible and what is not, what can change and what can’t, or who’s in and who’s out, etc.

Since a company is comprised of people, at least for the moment, it’s a platform, or a web so to speak, of conversations and stories. Good stories well told within an organization could therefore be where change can happen and spread.

So, a good story well told can be about an organization’s people and a company’s work as well as about what’s on the stage whether that stage is in a theatre, on a screen, or in the marketplace.

Paying attention to both might be a different way forward not usually considered.

And maybe, ‘good stories well told’ are useful for just about everything we do in life.

Written while listening to Emerson, Lake, and Palmer.

(Thanks to Raymond Chandler of Middle Kingdom Entertainment for the phrase, “Good stories well told.”