Business Strategy Coaching

Opportunity Matrix™ – how NOT to be a Busy Fool

Note:The idea for this post came out of a discussion about being authentic, and providing genuine value in exchange for reward. When you get to the questions at the end, please don’t treat them as an excuse to have a pop at other people’s business types (eg all coaches are charlatans, all MLM is theft etc etc). Try to add a positive suggestion for improvement as well.

Looking at the so-called “melt-down” in the financial markets, it seems to me the basic problem is that people who weren’t clever enough to create anything of real value started to play around with complicated derivatives that no-one else could really understand the value of, and demand silly amounts of money for them.

Meanwhile the world’s richest man, Warren Buffet, kept on doing what he’s always done – buying bits of companies in the form of straightforward shares. That served him well enough – to the point where he was able to come to the rescue of two basically-sound companies that were in short-term difficulties, with multi-billion dollar investments that he could agree pretty much on the spot. No complex unwinding of positions with multiple levels of counter-parties for him.

That started me wondering, how much of what we put together – complicated stuff that’s supposed to make us stand out from the crowd – really adds authentic value? Or is it yet more smoke-and-mirrors, covering up the fact that we don’t have anything new to add to the good old recipe of do or make something that other people want or need, do it really well, and charge them a fair price for it.

What kind of “dodgy derivatives” do you see on offer, that leave you wondering where the genuine value is? And how could you simplify them?