I was shooting hoops earlier this evening. We had just finished off a Halloween party with the kids and parents on the block. It was great fun.
The rest of the parents headed across the street from us to our friends and neighbors to roast S’mores. I stayed behind to shoot some hoops on our front lawn. I was perfectly content and having a good time playing.
I was thinking about what I would be writing for an article and had my micro cassette recorder ready.
I missed my first seven or eight shots cold. Off the side. Off the backboard. Ricocheted off the rim. Directly back to me. And so forth. Eight cold, without a point. Suddenly, I started shooting 100 percent from every angle. Straight on. Three pointers. Cross shots. It didn’t matter. I was hot.
I realized something was different but I wasn’t sure what it was. I continued doing it and continued scoring. I started analyzing and started missing. I put down my micro cassette and took another shot. Straight in. No backboard. A swish. What’s that all about? Why can’t I do that all the time? As I was shooting, it occurred to me that shooting hoops is probably not a whole lot different from what 2001 was for most of us in business.
2001 was a pivotal year. We are coming off the “New Economy” and shifting into the “Next Economy.” Midway through the prior year, we had invalidated the “Old Economy” and suddenly were thrust into the need to now invalidate the “New Economy.” After all, it simply didn’t work. It left us all disappointed, of course.
But it also left us changed in a fundamental way.
The Old Economy had the rules. It had the business models that we know worked. After all, business is not brain surgery. It is delivering a product or service the public wants in the most efficient and effective way.
The New Economy turned the Old Economy on its head. Fundamental rules were no longer in vogue. If you didn’t get “it,” you didn’t get it! Not too long thereafter, the New Economy imploded; a new perspective does not a successful model make. New language does not, in and of itself, mean transformation.
With the demise of the New Economy, the Next Economy was born. Somewhere around March or April of 2001.
A Next Economy emerged, with flesh and blood, suggesting that the Old Economy had its place after all. Successful, tried and true business models do obviously work, so why reject them out of hand?
At the same time, the New Economy also had much to offer. After all, digital consciousness sensitized us to what the Pentium generation and the Internet could offer—information and communication when combined together.
It was up to the Next Economy, to integrate the two.
Thesis. Antithesis. Synthesis. It’s always the same in Business. Politics. Economics. Not much has changed in 120 years.
So what does it look like today with 2001 just about behind us?
The rules for the Next Economy begin to emerge.
1. Fundamental business models are clearly intact. Business models still and always will rule, because human instinct is based on self-interest and business rules satisfy that self-interest.
2. If you keep your eye on the target, techniques can always be tested with impunity.
The New Economy was not about changing the target. In the final analysis, business is about making money; it is not about raising venture capital.
If you test different techniques for doing that, that’s fine, but you cannot be enamored with any one technique unless the technique works to achieve the objective.
Straight up shots are infinitely easier without a backboard.
Angled shots are far easier off the backboard. Net shots work better when the eye is trained on the net, not on the backboard.
3. The reasons behind failure or success are far less important than the reality of failure or success.
Why the shot went in or why the shot missed is far less important than whether it went in or whether it missed.
Why it hit or missed gives us the rules for application. The rules for application are far more important than whether something hits or misses at any one time. The one gives you a point. The other gives you a history of points.
4. Sharpened tools beat rusty tools any day.
An inflated basketball.
An exercised arm.
Limbered legs and leg muscles.
Sharpened tools produce far more consistent results.
Original writing date: December 2001