Positioning
As an Engineer, I have been educated to think in Engineering Concepts. One of the old jokes about education is that it narrows the number of people you can have an intelligent conversation with.
Today’s blog post image was provided courtesy of Dr Marc Dussault, The Exponential Growth Strategist who is always on the look out for examples of antimimeticisomorphism, which I am sure you’ll agree this is!
There is a marketing concept known as Positioning. This refers to the way others perceive you and your offering and how you assist them to understand it. As Engineers we have been very bad at this. The picture above shows that depending on how you look at something, you get a very different impression. From one end it looks like three bolts on a bar, from the other is is only two. This is a trick of course but a cursory glance fools the eye. And so it is with value. If we don’t take the effort to present it well, a cursory look doesn’t show it for what it is.
Creating Value
As an Engineer, I firmly believe we create a tremendous amount of value with the work we do. The world we live in could not exist without the Engineering Design that made the technology we all take for granted possible. Looking at this from the Engineers’ perspective, we added a lot of value. But because we don’t explain that, it is taken for granted.
So it is not just necessary to create value, but to Position that value so it is understood as valuable. This builds on from my post on Creating Value where Edward De Bono is explaing why we are not so good at this.
I attended an IEEE Victoria chapter meeting Monday night and was blown away by the work done at CAWCR, The Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research, where they model, report and forecast on weather and climate. The presentation was excellent and I appreciated the Engineering and Science behind what they do, but I also realised that almost no one knows how hard they work and how smart the technology they create is. They create enormous value, but it is mostly invisible.
Successful Endeavours specialise in Electronics Design and Embedded Software Development. Ray Keefe has developed market leading electronics products in Australia for nearly 30 years. This post is Copyright © 2012 Successful Endeavours Pty Ltd
Ray,
This is an interesting metaphor that will make engineers re-think how they are perceived – well done.
It’s another example of creative thinking that triggers the innovative spirit you’ve created in your electronics design team to come up with award winning solutions for your clients.
Too many people (including engineers, technicians and other scientific professionals) pay lip service to innovation, totally missing the point that it’s all about having fun with the subconscious mind’s desire to make new neural associations and explore uncharted frontiers.
Onward and upward!
Dr Marc Dussault
The Exponential Growth Strategist