Haddow Press Experiment

Rule 1 - Use the resources at your disposal

Archived in Business, Risk, Planning | No Comments

So, you want to be successful in BUSINESS, eh?

First of all, what does that even mean? Does it mean making a lot of money? Does it mean having a good product? Does it mean providing a great environment for your employees? Does it men doing something useful, meaningful, and for the good of society as a whole? Or, does it mean a little bit of each of those things — and more?

Brad’s first rule of BUSINESS success is to use the resources at your disposal. And I mean that quite literally. But let’s break this down a little bit first, and perhaps that will make things a little more clear.

use: Certainly a strong word, any dictionary will describe the word along the framework of ‘to put into service and function’ or ‘to apply for a purpose.’ And the definition itself begets another handful of strong words; function, service, purpose all speak of action and strength towards an end. Consider that. Consider your end. Consider the actions to get to your end, and then frame your “use” towards that end. Make sense? Probably not by itself, so let’s continue…

the resources: This term speaks to a generalization. What is a resource? What is the purpose of a resource. If we look at BUSINESS from a black and white perspective (everything is either black or white, yin or yang, left or right, et cetera) we are met with the comparison that everything in between you and success is either an ‘asset’ or a ‘liability.’ Assets are things that push you forward. Liabilities are things that pull you back (not hold you back: PULL, but that’s another rule altogether.) In this black and white world, resources should fit on one of those colour palettes: black as an asset, white as a liability. But wrong again: the resources that will make your BUSINESS a success are never that simple. The resources are going to be a particular shade of grey. In other words, they are going to be both assets and liabilities. Which leads us to…

at your disposal: While this could come across as a vague way of saying ‘available to you’ or ‘that you have on hand’ DO NOT — I REPEAT — do not read it that way. When I say ‘your disposal’, I mean it. Disposal is related to the word ‘disposable’ which itself is related to words like ‘trash’ or ‘garbage.’ Trash and garbage aside, I’m going to take a lighter approach to the word while still using it literally. Things that are at your disposal are things that you are not afraid to lose, toss, or throw away.

So, let’s put it all together: let’s use the resources at your disposal.

People often ask me why I seem to have so many interesting ideas. (I’m not actually claiming that things are neccessarily interesting, but only that I’m often perceived that way.) They consider it good intuition or good insight into what will work and what will not work. They think I have some kind of special gift when it comes to generating successful products.

Quite the contrary. The secret is: I’m not afraid to ‘use the resources at my disposal.’ That’s it. It’s my number one rule. It’s the reason why things sometimes (sometimes!) work out quite well for me.

Still unclear? Read on.

We’ve already been over what each of the parts of the rule mean individually, so let’s put them together in an extremely basic imaginary scenario — a framework for your understanding. And there are two parts to this scenario, as described below:

1) USE, the action, function, and purpose behind it all, and

2) a DISPOSABLE RESOURCE, as it were. This is something you are willing to discard when it is more white (liability) than black (asset): it could be an idea, your TIME, an investment, an employee, a piece of equipment… you name it.

In this very simplified scenario we’re going to USE (via pure consumption) two RESOURCES at my DISPOSAL (TIME and an idea) — and when the TIME is gone, and the idea is nothing more than that, we’re going to walk away having learned a little bit more about what we did right and what we did wrong. Our USE came from consuming the RESOURCE and learning from it. We disposed of some TIME, we consumed some knowledge, and we disposed of an idea that (while it may have seemed promising before actions) turned out to be just another piece of trash. But at the same TIME, look at what we’ve gained: again, knowledge of our process, a faint hope that something might have come out of our efforts (and occasionally things do) and the ability to understand how much we can accomplish with what resources.

So the rule, rule 1, ‘use the resources at your disposal’ is really a reflection on fear and failure. Don’t be afraid to fail. Don’t be afraid to clean house. Don’t be afraid to try things: someday — somehow — something will work out.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Read more posts by Brad K (About the Author)

del.icio.us Digg it Earthlink Furl iFeedReaders ma.gnolia Maple.nu Netvouz Netscape RawSugar reddit Scuttle Shadows Simpy Spurl StumbleUpon Wink Yahoo MyWeb

Posts that might have similar content:

DJ Modular Remix Engine - Part One >> This is the first part in a series of articles I'm putting together to sketch out some ideas for a fully automated electronic music synthesizer-tool. In the long term I'd like to do a little more patent research and move towards finding

Good-Bye Mr. Wizard >> The scientist in me wants to take this opportunity to say a sad farewell to the man who (likely) single-handedly help change the public perception of science for multiple generations and inspired numerous youth to turn their fascination with "making a great