Points of View
I think my talent, such that it is, is this ability to view things systematically and to see very clearly and quickly how a business model flows through to product decisions.”
Capital Thinking • Issue #152 • View online
Lee Child was fired from television at the worst time, late in his career.
The network said he was too expensive. He didn’t know what to do next. His wife joked that he could be a supermarket ‘reacher’, helping old ladies and small children get things from the top shelves.
Luckily for us, that’s not what he did. Child become a writer because he saw it could be done.
“(John MacDonald) made me think it was possible. I could see how it could be done. I love to see how things work on a granular level.”
From Mike Dariano at The Waiter’s Pad:
Ben Thompson spoke with Shane Parrish on The Knowledge Project podcast. Their conversation covered Ben’s start, tech today, and one of my favorite topics – strengths as weaknesses and weaknesses as strengths.
… In the same way that Thompson is insightful because his new point-of-view, one of the NBA’s most outlandish basketball players succeeded because of his literal point of view.
This player was so good, he often played against kids who were bigger and stronger. So our future NBA star played guard. In a book about his career the author wrote, “…and this was crucial to the breadth, depth and originality of his eventual style; he became the quick little man who brought the ball up.”
This experience was formative because, “Most big men in basketball have always been big, which means they have always played as big men and seen the court as big men.” They developed one point of view.
But our player, “by contrast, developed a guard’s view of the entire court, and he could, as few centers could, see an entire series of moves even before they developed.”
Our player? Bill Walton. Our author? David Halberstam.
These advantageous POVs are disadvantages too. Strengths have a weakness and weaknesses have a strength. Thompson, for example, reflected that he’s not so good with the granular.
“I’m a strong believer that anyone, their strengths are their weaknesses and one is the same. If you’re super strong, one day you’re inevitably going to be weak in a corresponding area. I think my talent, such that it is, is this ability to view things systematically and to see very clearly and quickly how a business model flows through to product decisions.”
Andy Rachleff agrees, “One’s greatest strength is always one’s greatest weakness.” Bill James (of Baseball Abstract) too, “Every form of strength covers one weakness and creates another, and therefore every form of strength is also a form of weakness and every weakness a strength.” Jocko Willink advances flanking exercises, which exist as a weakness because of a strong front.
Here’s Thompson on Microsoft:
“They didn’t miss it (the smartphone). They just were fundamentally unequipped to compete in it, and that’s what happens. That’s how disruption happens, and the stories of companies moving seamlessly from one paradigm to another are basically nonexistent because all the things that make you strong and competitive in one paradigm make you fundamentally ill-equipped to be in the next one.”
Read More from The Waiter’s Pad at the link below =>
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*Feature post photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash