The ‘Parable’ of the Talents: A Business Case.

The ‘Parable’ of the Talents: A Business Case.

A prestigious business school conducted a final practicum for end of year project. They divided the graduating MBA class into 3 groups, and gave each group $500 hundred dollars, and instructed them to go and make as much money as they could with the seed capital by the weeks end when they return and present their results and process to the class. The group that made the most, would get the highest marks, the second highest would be award the next the so on…

The first group concluded this was a team management exercise and invested the money in a safe investment and presented on the ‘leadership learnings’ they employed to reach consensus and various business plans. They 1X their money.

The second group bought material for a carwash, promoted it strongly in their well-researched target market. Their one-day event had a strong 5X ROI.

The third group approached the exercise differently. They realized that both the funding and the time period weren’t the most valuable assets at their disposal. Rather, the most valuable resource was the three-minute presentation time they had in front of a captivated class. They sold their three-minute slot to a company interested in recruiting prestigious graduate students. They walked away with 20X return.

The challenge illustrates the difference between tactics and strategy. Although the terms are often used interchangeably, they refer to different concepts. Simply put, a strategy is a plan for achieving an objective. Tactics, in contrast, are the actions you undertake to implement the strategy.

The students who bombed the challenge fixated on a tactic—how to use their time and money—and lost sight of the strategy. If we focus too closely on the tactic, we become dependent on it. “Tactics without strategy,” as Sun Tzu wrote in the Art of War, “are the noise before defeat.”

“Tools can be the subtlest of traps.” When we’re blinded by tools, we stop seeing other possibilities in the peripheries. It’s only when you zoom out and determine the broader scheme that you can walk away from a flawed tactic.

Once you move from the “what” to the “why”—once you frame the problem broadly in terms of what you’re trying to do instead of your favored solution—you’ll discover other possibilities waiting in plain sight. #drlusk #salescoaching #salesleadership #salesstrategy #ceomindset #fractionalexecutive