Positioning in a Wicked World
by robert eppley
The 10,000 Hour Rule contends that you can master any skill if you give it 10,000 hours of practice. Recently, our book club read David Epstein’s Range, in which Epstein forms a counterargument to the 10,000 Hour Rule, first advanced by a Swedish psychologist and later made famous by Malcolm Gladwell’s 2008 book Outliers. Epstein doesn't refute this theory entirely but says the road to becoming a “master” in a given trade doesn’t always follow this 10,000-hour approach. To elaborate, he breaks trades into two environments — kind and wicked. Kind environments offer perfect information and a range of repeated, memorizable patterns. In such environments, a 10,000-hour approach may suffice. However, kind environments are rare. More often we see wicked environments, in which individuals must pull from comparative experiences — whether conscious or subconscious — due to limited information and continually changing circumstances. It is in wicked environments, Epstein argues, that the famous 10,000-hour trope will not cut it.
The business world is dominated by wicked environments. For this reason, we never offer our clients plug-and-play solutions. When we begin a positioning engagement, we’re almost always sifting through imperfect information within a rapidly changing marketplace. Our job is to help clients identify what makes them special and, to do that, we rely on internal and external comparative analysis. We’ve found that the best method for winning within wicked circumstances is to incorporate extensive input from the client’s C-Suite, mid-management, and customers. Within Epstein’s framework for wicked environments, we might think of this ecosystem of individuals and their perception of their company as the “imperfect information” that we work to uncover. Digging through all of this research is the key to elucidating our client’s authentic strategy amidst a wicked sea of uncertain and uncontrollable variables. Unfortunately, this is the step that the majority of firms fail to successfully address — and it’s a critical error. Applying a plug-and-play method to positioning results in inauthenticity, an imperfect strategy, misalignment throughout the company, and confusion from the marketplace about the unique differentiators that said company offers.
If you’re playing chess or performing surgery — both kind environments — you may find a 10,000-hour approach benefits you hugely. In these areas, memoizable patterns will provide guidance and allow the best to succeed, especially in moments of crisis when we rely on learned instinct. For the majority of us, though, understanding our corporate DNA is key to winning in a wicked marketplace where crisis scenarios often present novel challenges. While a kind environment has an inherent framework for success — the 10,000-hour rule — a wicked environment does not. This is where your DNA comes into play.
For those who are skeptical, consider how foundational a company's DNA and position are to success, and how that DNA and position provide the framework that your wicked environment lacks. Internally, they dictate the questions you ask when hiring your team and the culture you build around it. They can guide office design, email sign-offs, and management structure. Externally, your DNA, position, and the messaging elements that accompany both will be drilled into the mind of everyone in your target market — but only if you get it right. To illustrate: think of the most well-known brand names. Each exudes clear and consistent messaging and likely occupies unique real estate within your mind. Zappos may be a shoe retailer, but the company has differentiated itself as the epitome of customer service and customer experience. It’s no wonder Amazon acquired Zappos for $1.2B on its pursuit to become “Earth’s Most Customer-Centric Company.” Rolls-Royce oozes an unobtainable level of class, to the point that some in the car community will judge you for driving your own Rolls rather than hiring a driver. In some cases, a brand name is synonymous with the very product that it offers. I don’t ask you to “catch a shared ride to the airport,” I ask if we can “Uber there.” I don’t tell you to “search that online,” I tell you to “Google it.”
While considering the parallels between Epstein’s Range and the work that we do at Cunningham Collective, I was reminded of our central dogma: to treat companies like people. This is something I’ve heard Andy say more times than I can count, and the longer I work here, the more I understand what she means by it. The corporate DNA that dictates every strategic decision is not too different from our human DNA, which dictates much of our behavior. In every cell, you have four exquisitely simple yet beautifully complex nucleotides working together to grow a unique organism. It’s this DNA that allows us to chart our path through Epstein’s wicked environments. In a company, you have a collection of similarly organized human beings working together to build a unique brand that can excel in a wicked space. In biological growth and development, particularly during cell proliferation, perfect replication of a healthy organism's DNA results in happy and healthy growth, while imperfect or inaccurate DNA replication can result in a host of unpredictable mutations. This is no different from the growth of an organization, where perfect awareness of your corporate DNA yields strong growth and a lack of awareness of corporate DNA will lead to failure. If you blindly pursue a 10,000-hour approach before establishing a clear position, you will not gain traction. To successfully navigate this wicked world, the only way to do so is by starting at square one: with your DNA.