Identifying where your business skills come from: Part I
A crucial step towards improving your business skills is the understanding of their origins. By understanding where your business skills originate from, you will become able to transcend their boundaries and make breakthroughs.
As far as I am concerned, it is only recently that I started to find out the roots of my business orientations.
Sometimes I would remember the words of a late friend who was working for the headquarters of the United Nations in New York: "Look around you and discover what you know and that other people would also like to know". This friend used to be a spy during WWII and then made a fortune by leveraging the social network he had built in the UN heardquarters (he was acting as a commission agent, matching sellers with investors from his huge address book).
Sometimes I would remember my working class hometown and see it as an explanation for my risk aversion and preference for zero-investment projects (of course, there isn't really such a thing as a zero-investment project: if you do not invest funds into a project, you need to compensate with creativity and expertise, which in themselves could be traded for money).
Sometimes I would remember my business classes and how capitalistic they would encourage us to be.
Sometimes still I would remember that sentence from American Pie: "In order to be successful, you must be projecting at all times an image of success" (which is wrong, methinks).
The purpose of this series will thus be to list the origins of business skills in an organized fashion, starting with social background.
The impact of social background in business orientations
When it comes to analyzing your business skills, an analysis of your social background is often key.
Where were you raised and where are you living: rather in a place of financial abundance or in one of scarcity ?
If you were born or if you are living in a place of financial scarcity, you might be more prone to skimping. Skimping is both good and bad for your business. It's good because you will make the most out of every penny and this will cut on your operational expenses. It's bad because you might be ignoring growth opportunities because you don't want to pay the price for them ... in any case, being aware of this tweak is beneficial because you can correct it. Indeed, skimping can be seen as an irrational / emotional reaction, and being aware of it allows for a certain dose of rational control.
To what extent does your social background explain your choice a business sector ?
If you are living in a modern city such as New York or Tokyo, you will tend to invest in a *sector of services* (because purely industrial sectors are very competitive, very capital-intensive, and realize very thin margins; therefore, entering such efficient markets is very difficult). Similarly, if you are living in the US at the beginning of the 90's, you are more likely to become a pioneer in the Internet industry than if you are a Japanese in Tokyo (because the domain names registration process was centralized and first made popular in the US).
What does all the above tell you ? It tells you that beyond all the social and administrative hurdles, taking an interest in different societies or different financial backgrounds can enlarge the scopes of your business perspectives. Awareness in itself constitutes a limit that can alter your level of business productivity; increasing your awareness will thus enable you to push your boundaries even further. (article to be continued ...)
