![[icons/dah_mail.gif]](../icons/dah_mail.gif){kind=icon}
<Who is this "Dennette"
person?>
The first "on-line" entry of the year, and lots to tell, but that's all recorded elsewhere and will get archived here in cyberia someday … or not.
Listening to Mozart on Vinnie Boombox while I collect my thoughts for a lecture on "Strategy and Tactics: Learning to use them as tools for acquiring profit." But I got distracted …
The recording of the soundtrack from the movie Amadeus was recorded by the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, and I had a flash-back to October of 1983 … London … Trafalgar Square at sundown.
It had been a longer than usual day, crawling around London close on the heals of my second wife, just ten months into our marriage. We were on a two week holiday in the British Isles, with a base camp for free in London. We were doing this tit-for-tat thing … we each had our own agenda and itinerary, but going our separate ways for even an hour was Not An Option, so we had this combined list of places and we'd catch things in the same area on the same day. She'd been there a few times before, and wanted to show me all the Good Stuff as well as all of the places she'd missed the last time. <sigh!> Well, I guess there was also a little bit of pay-back for dragging her through those Maya ruins on our honeymoon.
Anywho, we'd done the Tower of London and beaucoup cathedrals, and I'd learned more about Sir Christopher Wren that afternoon than anyone should ever have to endure in an entire lifetime. My feet hurt and my hemmoroids were acting up, and suddenly I find myself on this portico overlooking Nelson's column in Trafalgar Square, and Jean points out another bloody church spire, but this time I come bolt erect in the middle of a Magic Moment, one of those experiences where you say, "TIME OUT!" and savor the moment so that it will never be forgotten.
She'd pointed to the church of St. Martin in the Fields. "You mean the church after which the orchestra is named? The one conducted by Sir Neville Mariner?" O frabjuous day, caloo-calay! Like, I'd only played their recordings for about a thousand hours while working part-time as a classical music announcer on a PBS affiliated radio station in the early 1970s. When listeners called and requested specific compositions on Period Instruments, that's the wax I'd stack.
So, let's carve this moment in stone … I'm standing in one of the most well know landmarks in Western Society, a place that you can find on any encyclopedia map of London. I've seen it in movies and on television all of my life, but never from this angle! Damn, that column with the lions at its base is like a giant sundial, but the sun's behind the buildings. I look back towards St. Martin in the Fields, and clutch my collar against the chill, having moved from the last rays of setting sunlight into the shadows for a better view.
Suddenly, everyone becomes quiet, and I realize why everyone has just been standing around up there on the portico of this museum … the square below has become filled with birds, flocking together to head for their night resting places, all circling in the same direction. It's like some kind of aerial parade … pigeons followed by sparrows followed by doves … half a dozen flocks sometimes overtaking each other and mixing for a moment, then separating to different altitudes or directions, some stragglers from each group reversing direction after having realized they were in the wrong flock.
Yeah, you don't forget something like that. Years later, we drove way out of our normal haunts to see Amadeus … it was a few days after it had won 8 academy awards, and the only theater where it was still showing was in another county. When I saw the name Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, I remembered the smell of Autumn in London, and birds flocking around Nelson's Column at sundown, and a woman that I loved very much at the time, but not as much that particular night. Tonight, as I take the CD from its jewel box, and remember the birds again, I wonder if I'll ever be that happy again.
But that's not what I started to write about tonight. :-)
I've been reading SunTzu again. The Art of War. I was talking with someone about the strategy one should use when faced with a superior adversary; Deprive them of something which they hold dear, and you will command their attention. This is the essence of Guerrilla Warfare … strike where your opponent is most vulnerable, and you deprive them of their confidence in their own superiority. Terrorism will deprive them of their feeling of safety and security, while non-violent passive-resistance will deprive them of their feeling of being in control by placing them in a moral dilemma.
Violence and passive-resistance are two diametrically opposed tactics that can both be used to implement a strategy, which in this case is to bring your opponent to the Peace Table. War is, after all, a military solution to a political problem … the Ultimate Negotiating Tool. Don Vito Corleone put it most succinctly when he said, "Make them an offer they can't refuse."
While pondering the gulf between the Art of Strategy and the Art of Tactics, I decided to go back to First Principles and dusted off my trusty dictionary to see what it had to say about strategy and tactics. Whoa … Insight Time!
Under tactical we find "of or relating to small scale actions serving a larger purpose." Under tactics we find "the art or skill of employing available means to accomplish an end." So, it's not just "how you get it done", but "the small things that add up to a big difference."
Strategic means "of great importance within an integrated whole or a planned effect." Let's see here, strategy is from the Greek word for "generalship" … skip over a bunch of stuff … Ah, here we go … "the art of devising or employing plans or stratagems toward a goal." OK, what the finagle is a stratagem? Hmmm … "a cleverly contrived trick or scheme for gaining an end." Oooh … I like it!
Now, how can this insight be applied to business and economics? Good question. Sure wish I had the answer!
Well, the key is in identifying the goal, not the adversary … the goal will determine the strategy, and the adversary will merely determine the tactics. Now's the time for a little lateral thinking to consider the problem from a different perspective.
The goal is to acquire profit. This means that I want people to give me money, and since they would rather keep it or give it to someone else, my adversary is the customer, not my competitors … this is the Bottom Line.
Customers spend money on three kinds of things; things they need, things they want, and nothing else. :-)
A clever salesman will make a customer want something by convincing them that they need it. That's one strategy, and it works for most things for which the need is not self-evident, like insurance or a more expensive version of anything. Or immortality, which is what I'm selling.
Yes, boys and girls, I've gone into the Vanity Market, selling people a chance to be remembered forever. I'm selling tombstones and monuments. Not necessarily big ones, but very, very permanent ones.
Nobody needs a tombstone, but a lot of people want them, and even more can be convinced that they are a Good Thing and Well Worth the Investment. So, my strategy is to (a) attract the ready buyers, and (2) create a desire in the hearts and minds of the totally clueless who have never considered the possibility of a Virtual Tombstones™. Now, I've been studying guerrilla tactics for most of my life … how can I apply them to this enterprise? Can there be such a thing as Guerrilla Economics? (Man, I wish I'd paid more attention in those economics courses in college!)
OK, I am in a kind of David & Goliath situation, but the superior force that I'm facing is Ignorance … the rubes ain't never heard of such a thing before, let alone given any thought to paying cash money for it.
Oh, my God!! Paradigm shift … I'm a cybernetic undertaker, right? So why don't I just partner with the Funeral Industry?!
Something this simple can't be the answer, but Occam's Razor sez it's on the square and level. The culture is already predisposed for the services of funeral professionals. All I have to do is learn the lingo and schmooze my way into their package offerings. "Its the latest thing, don't you know, and it's so much more utilitarian than just visiting the burial site!" Oooh, I can hardly wait to start calling the funeral parlors!! Yeah, you can buy your Eternal Web Page at the same time you put down the deposit on your casket and plot.
Like the Ferengi say, "A wise man can smell profit in the wind."
That is all I have to say. -=DAH=- 19-Jan-96
Last update: 19-Jan-96 by dennette@wiz-worx.com
<Who is this "Dennette"
person?>