189. Understanding is power
A person can either believe one of two things about the Internet: it changes everything OR it changes nothing.
Since most people are concerned about how they make a living (and how they can keep making a living and earning a decent salary), the main question about the Internet is: "Does it change the way I create value and get paid for it?"
One of the major (I think) insights I stumbled upon is that either people use the Net to get information OR to get instruction.
Information is the content, whereas instruction is the structure.
Information can come into one's mind and leave it just as quickly. Instruction, on the other hand, if properly understood, can empower a person and forever change the way he/she looks at the world.
Instruction can be a single line revealing a critical insight. It can also be a thought that occurs to you as you observe something.
For example, a few years ago, I took a look at the revenues I generated for one of the corporate accounts of my employer and saw that it was rapidly increasing due to my business development efforts (it reached a six-figure number). I compared it to the income on my paycheck, which did not change from week to week. It was right then and right there that I finally understood what capitalism is all about.
This is why I say that "understanding is power." Knowledge is not necessarily power. I graduated from McGill University with a business degree, yet I can't really say I understood business or capitalism after they gave me that fine-looking BCom degree. (This being said, McGill is certainly one of the finest schools for management studies).
Tim Sanders, former Chief Solutions Executive for Yahoo!, wrote in his book Love is the killer app that one should read books, not newspapers or magazines or TV news.
He says that books contain knowledge and instruction, whereas magazines and newspapers merely contain low-value information (or worse: fads).
Sanders also wrote that one should choose whom one is talking to. According to him, some people are "funny" and some people are "money."
If you talk to people who are money, you will learn a great deal. I've been lucky to be able to meet and talk to people who are money. One can learn a great deal from them.
In fact, I had supper a while ago with a millionaire. I kept staring at his head, wondering whether he had a bigger brain that I! My conclusion is that our brain size is the same, but that he understood something I was trying to understand.
He not only understood something critical, he also MASTERED that principle utterly and completely. Publicly available records show he makes 3.4 million dollars a year (Canadian currency).
But it's not really that precise number ($3.4 M) that interests me, it's the (secret) principle of leverage that he's using.
Rich people all became rich by using some form of leverage (obviously, they took Archimedes seriously when he wrote, centuries ago: "Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand, and I will move the Earth.").
Media leverage, intellectual leverage, informational leverage, mathematical leverage, financial leverage, social leverage, etc.
Depending on our situation, strengths, education, training, social circle, etc. we all have access to certain forms of leverage.
Certainly, most people intuitively understand the leverage they have. But the success secret, I guess, is to so thoroughly understand the nature and structure of that leverage that one can systematically exploit every ounce of competitive advantage afforded by that leverage.
Here's an example of media leverage: studies show that one of the ten most common millionaire occupations is newsletter publishing. Obviously, these publishers understand that paper, coupled with the postal service, can create a media or distribution sort of leverage that multiplies the number of subscribers.
Here's something else that might be useful to understand: leverage comes most easily from some sort of system. If you can step back and look at the systemic nature of things, and how a system can predict, explain and control the behavior of things and people, then you are in a good position to discover sources of leverage in that system.
Peter Senge's excellent book, The Fifth Discipline, provides the powerful underlying knowledge concerning systems thinking, if you are interested.
Since most people are concerned about how they make a living (and how they can keep making a living and earning a decent salary), the main question about the Internet is: "Does it change the way I create value and get paid for it?"
One of the major (I think) insights I stumbled upon is that either people use the Net to get information OR to get instruction.
Information is the content, whereas instruction is the structure.
Information can come into one's mind and leave it just as quickly. Instruction, on the other hand, if properly understood, can empower a person and forever change the way he/she looks at the world.
Instruction can be a single line revealing a critical insight. It can also be a thought that occurs to you as you observe something.
For example, a few years ago, I took a look at the revenues I generated for one of the corporate accounts of my employer and saw that it was rapidly increasing due to my business development efforts (it reached a six-figure number). I compared it to the income on my paycheck, which did not change from week to week. It was right then and right there that I finally understood what capitalism is all about.
This is why I say that "understanding is power." Knowledge is not necessarily power. I graduated from McGill University with a business degree, yet I can't really say I understood business or capitalism after they gave me that fine-looking BCom degree. (This being said, McGill is certainly one of the finest schools for management studies).
Tim Sanders, former Chief Solutions Executive for Yahoo!, wrote in his book Love is the killer app that one should read books, not newspapers or magazines or TV news.
He says that books contain knowledge and instruction, whereas magazines and newspapers merely contain low-value information (or worse: fads).
Sanders also wrote that one should choose whom one is talking to. According to him, some people are "funny" and some people are "money."
If you talk to people who are money, you will learn a great deal. I've been lucky to be able to meet and talk to people who are money. One can learn a great deal from them.
In fact, I had supper a while ago with a millionaire. I kept staring at his head, wondering whether he had a bigger brain that I! My conclusion is that our brain size is the same, but that he understood something I was trying to understand.
He not only understood something critical, he also MASTERED that principle utterly and completely. Publicly available records show he makes 3.4 million dollars a year (Canadian currency).
But it's not really that precise number ($3.4 M) that interests me, it's the (secret) principle of leverage that he's using.
Rich people all became rich by using some form of leverage (obviously, they took Archimedes seriously when he wrote, centuries ago: "Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand, and I will move the Earth.").
Media leverage, intellectual leverage, informational leverage, mathematical leverage, financial leverage, social leverage, etc.
Depending on our situation, strengths, education, training, social circle, etc. we all have access to certain forms of leverage.
Certainly, most people intuitively understand the leverage they have. But the success secret, I guess, is to so thoroughly understand the nature and structure of that leverage that one can systematically exploit every ounce of competitive advantage afforded by that leverage.
Here's an example of media leverage: studies show that one of the ten most common millionaire occupations is newsletter publishing. Obviously, these publishers understand that paper, coupled with the postal service, can create a media or distribution sort of leverage that multiplies the number of subscribers.
Here's something else that might be useful to understand: leverage comes most easily from some sort of system. If you can step back and look at the systemic nature of things, and how a system can predict, explain and control the behavior of things and people, then you are in a good position to discover sources of leverage in that system.
Peter Senge's excellent book, The Fifth Discipline, provides the powerful underlying knowledge concerning systems thinking, if you are interested.
posted by Super Peter at 9:05 AM
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