Success is achieved by giving people what they want…then they show up en masse and blow out everyone’s expectations! Except for this concept, if you knew what they wanted, and gave them what they were clamoring for, then you are not surprised when they showed up.
Or. If you were able to create something they did not even know they wanted until you set the table before them, now that would be remarkable!
How do you determine what people want when the insane landscape is undergoing constant change?
The insanity of change may be, in part, related to the political landscape of the modern world, or the technological hurdles once thought impossible to overcome are being left in the dust as the new replaces the old! (Right now I’m thinking about Stemcell Therapy where doctors are now able to draw off patients stemcells and engineer them to strengthen failing body parts and reinject them into the patient with a mission!) It could even be the return to older moral values where you reject the future that is constantly in flux!
But here’s the other part of the equation we do not even have time to think about. The constancy of change! Life changes are faster than we can review and something sounds like it may be the best thing for us until you compare it to what happened in the past and you see it’s the “same ol’ same ol’“, only, the packaging has been prettied up! What I could never have imagined would be accepted has become the “normal” for the world, to which I say, “You ain’t seen nothing yet!”
So. Our needs become our wants that create more needs and even future wants!
“Don’t give people what they want,
give them what the need.”
~Joss Whedon [Source]
Needs vs Wants. This is the insanity of change! Why? We often confuse one with the other! What do I need vs what do I think that I need that may really be a desire of something I possibly only want!
Here’s a caveat: What do people need? Our needs are pretty simple if you think about them via groupings or categories similar to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Need: Physical, Spiritual, and Identity. You can sub-categorize all you want but I know this for a fact: when I have a roof over my head, food in my belly, the health to move and be, connected to my spiritual path, and I am with others who I identify with, then perhaps all the other categories you read about are simply different explanations of the same thing.
Okay? Got it… Let’s flip the coin then and consider our “wants“.
Steve Jobs is famous for stating something along this line: “Some people say, “Give the customers what they want.” But that’s not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they’re going to want before they do.” [Source]
This is analyzing, creation and marketing at its best. Figure out what people are going to want long before they know it themselves, and then work like the dickens to create the technology and marketplace for the future clamoring public! Some have timed the advance of science and skills, honed the market place so people will desire what can be created, and then direct the marketplace to help the business succeed.
There have been many failures along the way. Can you name some? Perhaps it was a marketing or timing failure, but it could easily have been too futuristic and the public was not ready for it! I’m not sure why I think about the Edsel, Tucker, New Coke, Google Glasses, DeLorean, Zune, Betamax… Get the picture? Any of these products and processes may work better if the timing and landscape were different. Who knows!
Part of the problem of everything is the constancy of change!
To continue the quote from Steve Jobs;
“I think Henry Ford once said, “If I’d asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, ‘A faster horse!'”
Henry Ford did not create a faster horse as people may have desired over 100 years ago, rather, he created a new way of manufacturing what everyone was starting to demand! Cars were first created and introduced in Germany. But it was Henry Ford who stole the show! True, he wanted to create cars that the everyday person could afford, but his cars were not as important as the production processes and assembly line he created to produce identical parts and products to the world. He revolutionized the manufacturing process and America took over the marketplace!
In fact, it’s probably his idea of innovations that has prompted success stories like Walmart or Amazon. Could I say that the key word here is revolutionized? It’s not just the manufacturing, but the entire scope of seeing a possibility and doing what it takes to create the momentum necessary for great success.
The reality is knowing the Needs now and satisfying those needs in such a way that you are the supplier of satisfaction! But knowing the Wants! That’s where it takes a gamblers attitude and plenty of investors money to create a market for what people will someday want and be there as the only supplier! Ground floor opportunity!
I was sitting this morning thinking about what I need vs what I want. The retiring years are approaching faster than a steaming locomotive. I’m not ready to slow down and be put to pasture, but I’m equally aware that I do not have the energy of the future generations that are presently ankle biters but will someday of have the power of changing my world!
Can you be happy knowing what you need is different than what you want? The changes we are seeing today are only going to keep changing into something you will never see coming in your present world. Share on XSo, it requires some investment into the youngsters so that they will keep in mind the needs and wants of the historical generations that produced them and the world as they know it. This is not a gamble, rather it should be a requirement of all of us! Time. Input. Faith in the outcome. Developing the spiritual person as well as the physical frame.
Think about this. I may have needs, yet it’s not necessarily what they want! (Money, Tech devices, Friends, Social Connections). The generational gap causes our needs and wants to be separated into opposing camps until they reach where I am! Then I’ll be long gone and they’ll be having the same thoughts I’m having today!
Herein lies my thought. My needs will change with time, just like my wants. But keeping in sync with the landscape that changes faster than I can handle it will someday force me off the scene with an approach that I may not happy with.
So, either be happy about what I’ve invested in, or wish that I had done more. I choose to be happy! And, I take consolation from the words of Jesus.
“Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life,
what you will eat or what you will drink;
nor about your body, what you will put on.
Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?
Look at the birds of the air,
for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns;
yet your heavenly Father feeds them.
Are you not of more value than they?
Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?
“So why do you worry about clothing?
Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow:
they neither toil nor spin;
and yet I say to you that even
Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
Now if God so clothes the grass of the field,
which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven,
will He not much more clothe you,
O you of little faith?
“Therefore do not worry, saying,
‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’
For after all these things the Gentiles seek.
For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.
But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness,
and all these things shall be added to you.
Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things.
Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
(Matthew 6:25-34 NKJV)
Invest wisely in the present, for it will define your future. When that future comes, then know you’ve done the best you good do and it’s now time to allow the next generation to move forward into a possibly insane future.