K.I.S.S.
Not the Prince song, the acronym – Keep It Simple, Stupid.
It’s blunt advice, but also very valuable. In many areas of life, the simple strategy is often the best one.
In his landmark book Good to Great, Jim Collins and his team came across this same thing in all of the successful companies they studied. A simple understanding of what it was they did, how they did it and, as importantly, what they did not do.
They termed this the “The Hedgehog Concept”.
I’ll explain.
Foxes are clever things and like to eat small mammals like hedgehogs. A fox has many different strategies to achieve this end. We don’t call people wiley old foxes for nothing. Those creatures are very, very smart!
A hedgehog, by contrast, has none of the fox’s guile. They have one simple means of defence – rolling into a ball with their spikes on the outside, their vulnerable underside protected within that little ball of sharpness. And, as anyone who’s ever tried to pick one up without gloves will attest, they are really, REALLY sharp.
So the fox tries one attack. The hedgehog just rolls into a ball. The fox tries a different approach. The hedgehog just rolls into a ball. And so on, and so on… Eventually the fox goes away with a sore nose and the hedgehog carries on with its day.
This can also apply to us too, in our lives generally and in the work we do. We’ll be far more successful when we have a clear and simple understanding of our own strategy. It allows us to focus. It removes distractions. It means we don’t freeze when difficult times come. We just carry on, like the hedgehog, doing what we do. Over and over. Building momentum (another topic for another day…)
Some of the most interesting, not to mention successful, people and businesses I’ve worked with exhibit this trait strongly. Sure they may have many different interests, but everything that they are and all that they do boils down to a simple “hedgehog concept” for themselves. They’re able to say with clarity “This is who we are and this is what we do. This is why someone would want to work with us.”
Other organisations and people try to be all things to everyone and this is a recipe for disaster. No one really understands who they actually are or what they might be able to do to help. When difficult times come along, as they always do, people like this shift strategies again and again trying to find something that works for the particular circumstances. It takes a lot of energy and rarely leads to a successful outcome.
As the late Bruce Lee once said “I’d rather face someone who’s practised 10,000 different techniques than a single technique 10,000 times.” Such is the power of something simple and well-drilled. It removes the need to think under pressure. It allows you to focus relentlessly on being effective in your simple way.
So think about this for yourself. For your own life, your work or your business. How can you distil the value you really bring, the difference that you make, to a simple statement? And looking through that refining lens, can you understand more clearly what you do and what you don’t do?
In short, straightforward language, what’s your “hedgehog concept”?
Photo by Ratapan Anantawat on Unsplash
That Richard Bloke 