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LESSONS FROM THE JUNGLE…

The creative thinker and all-round genius that is Dave Trott, coined expression Predatory Thinking; he even wrote a few books on the subject.

At its heart, predatory thinking is focused on first understanding what you actually need to overcome to achieve your goal and then how you change the story to achieving that win. It’s about out-thinking rather than out-spending the competition.

The simple, and perhaps apocryphal, story we’d use to express this is the tail of the two explorers in the jungle. Our two heroes, explorers, were walking through the jungle when they heard a tiger roar.  Instantly one of the explorers reached for his bag, pulled out his Nikes, other trainers do exist, and started lacing them up.  

“You idiot, you can’t outrun a tiger”, his compatriot yelled. 

To which he calmly, and perhaps coldly responded, “I don’t need to, I just need to outrun you”.

SO WHAT?

This is a simple story but it really demonstrates the point that all action or choice is a zero-sum game, something or someone needs to lose for you to achieve your goals.  Our explorer wanted to live, that meant he needed to escape the tiger but knowing he couldn’t do that head-on, he sought another route to achieve his goal, ensuring his colleague lost.

And in spending the time to better define who or what that needs to lose is often the route to a quicker, bigger or cheaper win. And quite often the best solutions aren’t always the obvious ones, going head on against the market leader, the tiger, and following the rules of their game, won’t work (well, unless you have very big pockets).  WHO OR WHAT COULD YOU REFOCUS YOUR ATTENTIONS TO ACHIEVE YOUR WIN?