Copyright 2013 Dennis S. Vogel All rights reserved.
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The following analogy is meant to apply to businesses & personal struggles.
What somebody else has done could be a "proven method". But what possible good could a "proven method" be unless you'd know what worked or didn't? Could you accurately evaluate results of using a method if you don't know what the goal was? Would you know if there even was a goal that fit the real situation? How would you determine what to adopt (use the same thing in the same way) & what to adapt to your situation?
Because of your experiences (including formal & informal education), some things may be obvious & clear to you but obscure to others. A customer may want a result & be frustrated because nothing seems to work. Even what seemed to be a success for a neighbor, could be a failure for anybody else.
After you get sufficient information you may know why the desired results didn't materialize, yet the customer may still be confused. Maybe s/he doesn't have your powers of observation & discernment. Or it's probably just that s/he doesn't know how to evaluate what s/he observes & discerns.
I hope my analogy (below) will give you & others necessary clues to apply to other situations.
You can improve lives - including yours, when you use your knowledge to help others (who have different experiences).
Zig Ziglar often said, "You can have anything you want in life if you will help enough other people get what they want." I paraphrase that as "If you help enough people end or mitigate their struggles, you'll earn what you need to decrease your struggles."
Empathizing with others involves listening to &/or observing them. Helping others involves interpreting their statements & actions to assess what's right/optimal, what's suboptimal & what's wrong/not optimal at all.
You should be sure to interpret words & actions in their contexts instead of thinking they mean other things. People's actions & statements make sense to them. In their contexts, it may all be rational.
It's challenging to totally put aside your context so you can clearly interpret their contexts. Yet, every nuance of meaning from your perspective may cause you to misunderstand more of their situations. It could be like substituting a series of individual genes. Each change would alter a chromosome. Continual changes could an organism's species.
(Some of what I wrote below could be interpreted differently depending on the context.)
Your Body May "Shout" While Your Mouth Whispers
Your thoughts (judgments) may be expressed nonverbally (body language & facial expressions) even if you don't want them expressed.
If you verbally &/or nonverbally indicate you think something is wrong or weird, you could lose a customer & everybody in his/her circle of influence. The difference is positive referrals for you or negative against you (referrals for your competitors). It's more than the customer's self-esteem. If s/he thinks you don't know enough or won't take her/him seriously, s/he will ask somebody else for help.
The analogy below can fit how you interpret what you see & hear, plus how customers interpret your advice & the results they get from implementing it.
A bright idea (in one situation) may seem dim in another. A small change can make a big difference. Sometimes (what seems like) a mistake works in another context. Doing something with limited resources may seem to lead to an incomplete result. Yet, that seemingly incomplete result could be good enough as a complete solution for somebody else.
I Did What You Told Me (sort of)
If you sell a product & a customer misuses it, that customer may blame you for a bad result. S/he may think you lied or you were foolish enough to believe the claims of a manufacturer's rep. If it happens, hopefully you'll have a chance to help that customer clearly reinterpret the circumstances.
The Analogy:
(I wrote it in present tense so it may seem you're observing it today.)
An ancient European (named Juan) walks through what today is Portugal. He's more tired than ever because the load on his back is the heaviest so far. He'd almost seriously consider giving his nuts for a better way to haul food.
His load was even heavier when he was carrying fruit. When it started to spoil he quickly ate as much as he could. The only comfort he has now is - nuts don't spoil quickly like fruit. If he doesn't get home soon he may end up eating the rest of his cargo before he gets there (if he gets there). His family depends on him.
Though he wouldn't sell/trade rotten fruit, he wonders if he could've gotten the fruit earlier & travelled faster so he could arrive home sooner.
Days later, he's almost delirious from exhaustion, hunger & dehydration but he's sure he sees reality when a Portuguese man passes him. The man is easily pulling a load bigger than Juan & his load combined. That man has a wooden box on some logs that have round things mounted on them (Today, we may call it a wagon.).
Juan is amazed, he quickly looks for leaves or wood he could draw on, yet the only thing smooth enough is the large expanse of rock he's walking on. He decides to 'draw' the image in his mind.
The idea is like a bright nova -- an exploding star.
He finally arrives at his home in what we call Spain & gets some sleep. The next day, he gathers wood to make copies of what the Portuguese man has. Juan is sure his copy is exact except different measurements.
It seems like such a bright idea, he calls it a nova. When he starts on another copy, he notices he doesn't have enough of the right pieces for another exact copy. Instead of looking for more materials, he adapted the design.
He thinks he can build & sell these so he won't be away from his family so much & lose parts of his loads to spoilage & his hunger.
He summons the villagers. They gather along the rutted, dirty path in the middle of their village.
Juan proudly pulls his nova as he turns onto the main village path. That path could accurately be called the main drag, because dragging is how those villagers move big loads. Some spots look like they're ready to be used to play Tic Tac Toe.
As he pulls his nova it bumps along for a while, then it gets stuck. He doesn't understand why & neither do the villagers, yet they're upset about their time being wasted. Besides that, part of their main drag is blocked by Juan & his nova. Villagers scoff in an early version of Spanish, "Some bright nova you have there. You should call it 'No Va!' because it won't go anywhere."
Juan wonders if he imagined the Portuguese man or just misremembered what he saw.
In his haste to build an inventory, Juan built 2 wagons before his failed demonstration. Was all of his work wasted?
As he struggled to move his product out of people's way, his son (Raul) came out to help. Raul was successfully struggling to pull Juan's 2nd wagon over & through the ruts. Juan was about to call out to the villagers, but he hesitated because he wanted to know why this other wagon worked. He also wanted to test it more so he'd be sure it worked over a longer stretch of road.
Raul & Juan loaded the 1st wagon onto the 2nd wagon. They pushed & pulled until they got home (which wasn't far since Juan could barely pull the 1st wagon). Juan remembered how he was frustrated last week because he only had 2 logs (axles) to connect circles (wheels). He mounted wheels on his 2nd wagon without axles between them. It was that wagon Raul pulled successfully.
Juan did some deep thinking. The Portuguese man pulled his wagon over a relatively smooth expanse of rock. Juan tried to pull his 1st wagon over ruts in mud that was starting to dry. Because Juan connected wheels together with axles on his 1st wagon, those wheels couldn't turn independently. His 2nd wagon didn't have axles like that, so the wheels could be turned individually. As a wheel got stuck, other wheels could still be rolled if they weren't jammed. It also didn't have axles that could break & disable 2 wheels. Pulling that 2nd wagon was hard, yet that was easier than carrying heavy loads on his back.
Later, Juan discovered he could make wagons easier to pull in various situations. He did it by looking at various surfaces & changing the diameters & thicknesses of his wheels.
He didn't reinvent a wheel, yet he innovated. His great inNOVAtion was very profitable.
The Lesson:
Even when you're on a roll, you may end up on a rough path. Maybe you can continue on your way if you change how you roll.
I could have made my analogy shorter by eliminating some details. I added those details to emphasize how important observation is. As Arthur Conan Doyle wrote for his Sherlock Holmes character, "You see, but you don't observe."
There are reasons for things to work or not work. Some reasons may be subtle, yet important.
Struggling can mean success as long as there's some progress, even if that progress is limited to learning what doesn't work in a situation.
Thank you for using my blog. Please let me know if I should clarify anything.
Copyright 2013 Dennis S. Vogel All rights reserved.
When you compete against big businesses with big budgets you need powerful marketing strategies & tactics. You'll find them here-
https://thriving-small-businesses.blogspot.com/
http://www.voy.com/31049/
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