Nothing Changes, Ever
by Jonathan McGaha | May 5, 2011 12:00 am
This is an ongoing story of encounters between the King, everyone’s favorite owner; his architect, Slide Rule; and his contractor, Igor. Characters are inspired in part by Gary Larson’s Far Side.
The King strode in front of the make-shift classroom. He was eager to get started but Igor, of Moat Designs, the prime contractor for the Castle, had not arrived.
“Your Majesty,” said Slide Rule, the King’s No. 1 architect and owner of Building Blocks Inc., “perhaps we need to postpone your seminar. There’s no one here but me.”
“Nonsense. It is I who schedules the seminar, and it is I who will give it.”
Just then Igor came running in completely out of breath. “Your Majesty, I am so sorry I’m late. I ran into some scheduling problems with the new foundations and I had to make sure it was done correctly.”
“Nothing changes, does it?” asked the King, who appeared to be a bit agitated about Igor’s late arrival.
“I don’t think that’s true at all,” said Igor. He took a seat and looked around realizing that he and Slide were the only two in the classroom. “Your Majesty, where is everyone else?”
“You’re always late,” commented the King looking at Igor.
“But for good reason.”
“Yes, yes, I’ve heard it all before. Now, the reason that you two are here, is that you’re the leading construction vendors for the castle and I wanted to impart some wisdom so that you can even do a better job and make more money.”
“Excellent,” said Slide. He looked at Igor. “We’re ready.”
“Good. First, take note of this statement: ‘Everything is the same and everything is different.’ What does that mean to you?”
“You must have made a mistake for the sentence contradicts itself,” said Igor.
“Nonsense. Let me give you an example. The first thing everyone does in the morning is get their coffee and then check their wall to see if anyone wrote on it.”
“I’m lost, your Majesty.”
“It’s partly a future thing you’ll understand someday. Now, hundreds of years ago, the first thing that people did when they got up in the morning was to check their wall to see if anyone wrote on it. Right?”
“You’re speaking of cave walls, your Majesty?”
“Yes. So, in reality, nothing has changed and everything is different.”
Igor and Slide exchanged looks hoping there wouldn’t be a test at the end.
“Another example. When you were in school and you misspelled a word, what did the teacher do?”
Silence in the classroom.
“They underlined the word in red. Now I ask you, when someone writes on a computer, what does the computer do when you misspell a word? It underlines it in red. See, everything is different and everything is the same.”
“If I may, your Majesty. I don’t really understand what you’re saying, but assuming I did, how does that help us in business?”
“Slide, an excellent question. Very good Slide.”
Slide smiled proudly and looked at Igor who was making faces at him.
“Everything is the same, and everything is different means there are trends, and these trends repeat
themselves. In business it’s sometimes referred to as the pendulum effect. What was here today is gone tomorrow, but it will return, eventually in a new way.”
“Ahaaaa, you’re being a bit vague. I still don’t know how to apply it to business to help me make money.”
“OK. Try this out-a long time ago, pioneers had to cook outside, as we do. Then people became civilized, and they cooked inside. Then barbecuing became the new way to cook, so people cooked outside on special occasions while they have a perfectly good stove on the inside. Then people who wanted to barbeque decided they should barbecue inside so special ranges are produced that include a grill on top to simulate barbecuing.”
“Everything is the same, but everything is different. I think I’ve got it,” said Slide.
“It gets worse,” said the King. “Some people are now putting brick ovens outside on their patio. To top that, someday when people go on vacations, they’ll cook around an open campfire.”
“I am so confused,” Igor said.
“Okay. Let me explain how this can help you. Now, here is the important point; understanding that everything is the same and everything is different means that you must change your marketing message to reflect today. One way to accomplish that is to do a survey of your present clients, your past clients, your prospects and your employees around key business indicators. You take the results of these surveys and compare them to what you think are relative to these indicators. What you will find is you are out of sync with what people think of your company. It’s referred to by some as gap marketing. You want to close these gaps with your marketing message and future positioning strategies. The goal is an image that your prospect will identify with your company and the products or services that you market.”
“Wow, so times change and when they do, we need to know what has been filtered into society in terms of perception, so we can better adapt to the selling climate based upon needs and wants.”
“You got it; everything is the same, and everything is different,” said the very happy King.
With the exception of an occasional guest appearance by the author, any similarity to actual events or people living or dead is purely coincidental.
Ronald A. McKenzie is president of COMPASS Consultants Corp., a strategic planning and marketing company specializing in developing business growth. He is a published author and has made nationwide presentations on the subject of strategic planning and marketing. He can be reached at (630) 740-4434 or ramckenzie.compass@gmail.com.
Source URL: https://www.metalarchitecture.com/articles/nothing-changes-ever/