We all have blind spots. Those areas where we just can’t get a fix of what’s there. We have them, literally in our seeing capacity, but we also have them in our abilities, skills and philosophies. Recognizing where the holes in our thinking are allows us to round out those empty spaces by working with people who complement them.
We all have gifts. But we can’t have them all. So it is incumbent upon us to be honest about where are talents lie, and where we’re basically lost.
Discovering the Holes in Your Thinking
I am just now beginning to figure out where my holes are. For instance, I don’t really get traditional advertising, and as I’ve spent more time in the social media worlds, I get further and further away from seeing the benefits of it. That being said, one of the most important things I’ve learned over the past couple of months is that traditional PR and marketing approaches do have some value. It’s funny that we actually have to say that, but we do.
I am coming to a point where I am advising clients that their social media engagement is not mutually exclusive of their traditional outreach. In fact, ideally they would work together. Of course the problem with this is that PR firms don’t have the institutional framework to deploy social media for their clients. That is because their entire business is built on access, and its attendant “scarcity.”
Social media is the exact opposite. It starts from the premise that the world is now open, transparent and free. No more erecting faulty scarcity markets where we pretend everyone wants this or that, but only a select few will get in.
Want To Know Where The Holes in Your Thinking Are?
They are located in the places that you criticize and think you don’t need. That’s the lesson I’ve learned. After spending so many months railing against PR, traditional marketing tactics and other 20th Century inventions, I’ve arrived here, where I no longer need to criticize those practices. I need to learn from them. I need to pick and choose and basically curate what elements of those strategies I’ll cherry pick.
The reason that we criticize what we think we don’t need is because it is our way of keeping them away from us. Fundamentally, it is a bit of a self-destructive act. By criticizing certain things, we can assure ourselves internally that they have no value to us. They they aren’t worth our time and effort to investigate. It is actually a bit lazy too. So look for the things that you don’t think you need. You may find indeed that you don’t need them, but at least you’ve found out for sure.
Image Source: Tore Urnes on Flickr
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