If you can change your positioning in people’s minds, you can dramatically increase your success.
For example if the hot college chicks in my gym positioned me in their minds as an ultra cool guy they’d like to date, that might have a significant effect. Perhaps an opportunity for “Field Study?”
And if the position you held in the mind of people at your company or in your industry changed from competent dude (or dudette) to Rock Star – incredibly awesome, your opportunities would change. Both opportunities for your success and (related) for getting great stuff done in your organization and perhaps industry as well.
Changing Positioning Takes:
- Consistency – Most overnight successes take years
- Time – Time is on your side, yes it is
- Patience – Patience, Grasshopper.
Changing what people think of you, or security, or anything else, may be possible in your organization, but it requires consistency and time and patience.
You need patience, but not too much patience.
Sometimes Changing Positioning is Impossible
It sometimes is impossible to change the position something or someone holds in people’s minds. Just like a baby duck may imprint on a dog and decide it is its mother, a position in one’s mind may be impossible or near impossible to change.
For example, I’m a consultant and I know if I go into a company working for human resources or training, I will never work directly with executives. It’s just not going to practically happen. If however I start working at the higher levels of an organization, my position in the executives minds is that I’m a smart guy on par with them. If I start as a “training guy” or with HR (everyone hates HR, especially executives in my experience), I stay there in their minds.
Sometimes it maybe time to move on to where you can form a new “first opinion” or perhaps where security is respected or maybe just hated less.
If Volvo started building amazing sports cars that blew away Porsches, Ferraris, and Lamborghinis, would they sell?
If Coco Cola started making kickass whiskey, would people buy it?