Discovering Power

 Looking at things from a different or fresh perspective can reveal new realms of advantage and opportunity as well as weakness and threat.

The second natural advantage of many good strategies comes from insight into new sources of strength and weakness.  Looking at things from a different or fresh perspective can reveal new realms of advantage and opportunity as well as weakness and threat.

The story of David and Goliath pitted a small, young, inexperienced but very brave shepherd against a massive, experienced and very strong warrior.   Moving toward Goliath, David took a stone and launched it with a sling.  Struck in the forehead Goliath fell dead on the spot.  It is said that strategy brings relative strength against relative weakness.  In this story the mismatch between David and Goliath was vast.   It is only after the stone is slung that the listeners viewpoint shifts and one realizes that the boy's experience with a shepherds sling is a strength as his is youthful quickness.

It is the victory of apparent weakness over apparent strength that gives this tale its bite.  More than the deft wielding of power, the listener experiences the actual discovery of power in a situation--the creation or revelation of a decisive asymmetry.     How someone can see what others have not, or what they have ignored, and thereby discover a pivotal objective and create an advantage, lies at the very edge of our understanding, something glimpsed only out of the corner of our minds.  Not every good strategy draws on this kind of insight, but those that do generate the extra kick that separates "ordinary excellence" from the extraordinary.

ACTION POINT: Look for ways to change your perspective.