I advocate an approach called “Utilising your hidden resources”. It’s an approach with a lot of advantages. It boosts your productivity, because you’re getting more out of what you have already paid for.
It also keeps you ahead of the competition, because by building on your own success rather than copying others, you naturally become more distinctive in the eyes of customers. Plus as your productivity and distinctiveness flourish, you’ll be building a platform for sustained success.
There are ten principles for discovering and utilising hidden resources, and each gets a chapter in my book, Start With What Works. Here they are:
- Principle 1: Recombine existing elements so they create more value
- Principle 2: Escape from fixed purposes
- Principle 3: Reverse engineer yourself
- Principle 4: Let the world teach you what works
- Principle 5: Watch what actually happens
- Principle 6: Find the few things that really make a difference
- Principle 7: Use very plain words to describe what you want
- Principle 8: Look beyond ‘Us and Them’
- Principle 9: Bring customers inside
- Principle 10: Give control to get control
You can learn more about these ideas by downloading a free sample chapter here.