The Sunday Mail
Hunt for Greatness
Milton Kamwendo
Playing a game in the same old way will never produce different results. The playbook of greatness is different from that of a victim. To change the results you are getting either change the game you are playing, how you are playing or where you play.
In strategy, aim not just to play, but to play in order to win. Instead of playing by the rules set by others, create your own rules and own the narrative. You will never soar like an eagle when you are happy playing with ducks and playing their game.
Distinguished professors W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne of INSEAD University in their 2005 book: “Blue Ocean Strategy” pointed out that there are two places one could compete namely the Red Ocean or the Blue Ocean. The Red Ocean is where you choose to go head to head with the competition. In the Red Ocean the mindset is one of scarcity, limitation and dog-eat-dog.
The strategic choices are: Look at your strengths and weaknesses, play hard to beat the competition, rush to exploit existing demand and block out competition. The strategy choice is either differentiation or pricing where you compete to be the lowest cost player.
In Red Ocean thinking, you are obsessed with the market as it is and all you see are boundaries and limitations. All you see is the existing market space, the existing reality. However, the Red Ocean Mindset is not the only strategic option.
The other way to play or think is to adopt the Blue Ocean Mindset. The dominant logic in this mindset is abundance and unlimited possibilities. You seek to create uncontested market space and make cut-throat competition totally irrelevant. If everyone is playing like a dog you choose to be a cat and play differently. You seek to create and capture new demand with new irresistible offers. Instead of thinking that you will have to make a trade off between value and cost, you happily embrace both.
You align the total thinking and perspective to both differentiation and low cost. When a mindset is shared by a group it becomes a culture. Change your culture from shortage to abundance. From limited space to unlimited possibilities. Go beyond the existing space and frames and there is a new game there waiting to be played by those who see differently.
Energy equation
There is an always-on energy equation that is at play in any game you play. Energy will always go where attention goes. If all your attention is on competing and eliminating competition you are obsessed and terrorised by the competition. You essentially become a victim and abandon your own game plan. Instead of pursuing your goals and creating new plays you are obsessed with taking notes and playing your opponent’s game and not yours. The results are frustration and pain. When energy is spent putting down your opponent you have no more energy left to fuel your rise and growth. Develop your own strategy, instead of trying to duplicate your opponent’s well-worn strategy.
Change the energy game by playing differently. While others are playing to compete, raise the room, create new possibilities that make competing unnecessary. Many times, win-lose is unnecessary. Win-win is a better alternative. Think differently and challenge the dominant logic in your industry space. Instead of thinking in terms of limitations think about unlimited possibilities. Instead of thinking about constraints, boundaries and obstacles, think about possibilities for growth.
Adopt possibility thinking. Do not take your limitations, boundaries and obstacles as permanent. What things are today is not always what they will be if you are willing to shape them and create a different reality. Instead of starting your strategy thinking by examining you weaknesses, limitations and the toxicity of the environment, choose a different starting point. Think possibilities beyond your wildest dreams and this will inspire you to play differently. Existing conditions were created by people and different conditions can also be created by people. Look at your reality not as a judgement but as a creation challenge and starting point. Where others ask, why, choose rather to ask why not? Refuse to take the current boundaries and limitations as fixed because they are not and they can be changed.
Mr Steve Job’s embraced this different mindset and that made him think, behave and create differently. He once said: “You tend to get told that the world is the way it is. But that’s a very limited view. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact.
“And that is everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it. You can influence it. You can build your own things that other people can use. And the minute you understand that you can poke life that you can change it. You can mould it.
“That’s maybe the most important thing — to shake off this erroneous notion that life is there and you’re just going to live in it. And once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.”
Yes, everything around you can be moulded.
Refuse to be limited by the boxes that have been set by other people. Think in new boxes. There are unlimited possibilities to think and play differently.
Once you start thinking like this you will start to see opportunities everywhere. In you lies unlimited potential to create, invent and reinvent. The people you see doing great things are in no way more brilliant that you. That is a mere fallacy. You can be whatever you dare to be. You can do great things. You can play a new, exciting game.
Thinking without limitations enables you to change and transform the game you have been playing all along. Think in terms of four critical moves: Reject your limitation, Raise your Roof, Reframe your reality and Re-platform your game.
Reject
What is it that you have held as true and accepted as a barrier and limitation that you need to reject and eliminate? Stop accepting the limitations set for you by others or by history. Reject every excuse that tells you that your world is limited and there is so little to go around.
Reject fear and choose to believe in possibilities. Reject boundaries and refuse to respect the limitations and structures that have been created for you to play in. As long as you think of playing in the mud pool as the only game you will always be a stuck duck.
Roof
Ask how you can raise the roof and set new standards. Records are set and broken every day. It is a choice, to accept records that were set as your only reality or to set new ones. For many years it was thought that human beings could never run a mile in less than 4 minutes. That was the dominant logic until 1954 when a 25-year old medical student, Mr Roger Bannister, completed a mile in 3 minutes and 59.4 seconds. He broke not just a record, but a paradigm. This changed the mindset of runners globally. The following year 20 runners were able to complete a mile in less than 4 minutes.
The current record holder is Hicham El Guerrouj with a time of 3 minutes 43.13 seconds set in 1999. What roof can you raise like Rodger Bannister?
Raise the roof, challenge constraints and up your game. Stop competition with mediocrity and make sure that anyone who competes with you competes with your shadow. Raise the roof. Up the game. Challenge the limitations.
Reframe
Choose new frames to look at the realities around you. You will always be playing the same old game until you change the way you look at things. Changing frames and models changes games. Reframe your context. Mr R. Buckminster Fuller had the Blue Ocean and possibility mindset. He spend his life challenging existing reality and thinking differently and creating amazing things and ideas. He once said: “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
Reframe the way you see your organisation, your industry and your context. Until you change the frame you will be fighting a frustrating and losing battle.
Re-platform
When you change the platform on which you are playing the game changes and so does the you way play. Check your tools and platform you are on. Some platforms are archaic and new total shift. Move to new platforms with new possibilities and you will start getting new results and new realities. Re-platform your plays.
There is opportunity all around because opportunity is not a closed book. There is space for your idea and dreams. The sky is big enough for any bird to fly and the airwaves are big enough for any bird and animal to sing its song. You have more talent than you think. You are able to do a lot more and be more.
There is more than you can be. You are destined for greatness, stop thinking, playing and talking small. You have so much power and potential within you that your challenges are scared of what could happen if you woke up to your potential. Shortage is a state of mind never a statement of fact. It is what you see in your mind that makes all the difference.
Committed to your greatness.
Milton Kamwendo is a leading international transformational and motivational speaker, author, and a virtual, hybrid and in-person workshop facilitator. He is a cutting-edge strategy, team-building and organisation development facilitator and consultant. His life purpose is to inspire and promote greatness. He can be reached at: [email protected] and His website is: www.miltonkamwendo.com
