Tug-of-War

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Tug-of-War
"One defends when his strength is inadequate; he attacks when it is abundant." Sun Tzu

A football coach tried to determine which positions on his team are strong and which are weak. His strategy is then built by minimizing weak areas and capitalizing on strong areas.

You must be aware of the positive and negative forces operating in a challenge before you develop a strategy for solving it.

Blueprint


 * 1) Write the challenge you are trying to solve.
 * 2) Describe the best-case scenario and the worst-case scenario; the best that can happen and the worst.
 * 3) List the conditions of the situation.
 * 4) Note the "tug of war". As you list the conditions, you will find the forces pushing you to the best case and those pulling you toward catastrophe. Pit each condition against its opposite on the continuum by specifying its push and pull powers.

Example:

Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak create Apple computers. In 1976, their principal strength was a unique design for a personal computer; their principal weakness was an utter lack of capital - between them they had $1300.


 * Jobs maximized their principal strength by selling fifty as-yet-unbuilt computers to a string of computers hobby stores, based on their unique design.
 * He minimized their weakness by securing credit to buy parts, based on sales of unbuilt computers.
 * He added a positive force by using the profits gained from the sale of the first six hundred computers to start work on the enormously successful Apple II.

Once there was a man who died and found himself in Hell, with the road to Heaven blocked by a huge mountain. Although indignant that he was in Hell, the man assumed he could do nothing to change his situation and settled down to an eternity of suffering. He never discovered that the mountain was on wheels - to reach Heaven he needed only to push the mountain aside.

Once you identify the forces operating in your challenge, they become as negotiable as a mountain on wheels. You can either learn to live with the negatives by limiting your options and compromising your goals, or you can change their position and neutralize their impact.