Look for the lesson

January 19, 2011 by Christopher Penn in How To with View Comments

How much can a video game teach you about marketing strategy?

How much can pizza dough teach you about innovation?

How much can Robocop teach you about social media?

There’s a lesson in everything if you look for it. There’s meaning to be found if your eyes and mind are open. Most people sleepwalk through life. The greatest opportunities you can take advantage of in life will never be handed to you, but they may well be right in front of you if you have the ability to perceive them.

The formula for finding the lesson is simple: what can something teach you about something else?

What gets results in your area of specialty, be it cooking, Warcraft, martial arts, marketing, etc.?

What methods, ideas, or strategies led you to achieve those results?

How do you translate those to the next area of growth for you?

About Christopher Penn: My name is Christopher S. Penn. If you look at the items on the resume, it says I’m a Vice President of Strategy and Innovation at Blue Sky Factory email marketing, a co-founder of PodCamp with Chris Brogan, a co-host of the Marketing Over Coffee marketing podcast with John Wall, a professor of Internet Marketing and lead subject matter expert, curriculum designer, and professor of Advanced Social Media at the University of San Francisco online. What the resumes, business cards, and blogs don’t say is that I’m a bridge. I stand between different fields, professions, and ideas in order to help people on both sides understand each other. I can speak and sling code, but I’m not an IT professional. I can design campaign strategies and write copy, but I’m not a marketing professional. Where I provide value is in helping IT understand marketing and vice versa. The same is true for the martial arts, for education, for all of the different worlds I work and play in. I play World of Warcraft, but take the lessons from a virtual battlefield and apply them to business. I take solutions from the dojo floor and bring them to marketing. The net effect of all this is that fresh ideas, insights, and solutions are never far away because I can take a problem in one world, look for a similar problem with a solution in another world, and find solutions when “pure professionals” in just one world get stuck. That’s who I am, that’s what I do.

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  • http://www.experiate.net Paul Flanigan

    You achieve them by learning. Don’t read one of those posts and bookmark it for nine months down the road when have time to really understand what it was you should have learned. Read it, now, make notes, and apply it at least once today. See what happens.

  • http://www.whoisandywarner.com Andy Warner

    I believe this is why people struggle to produce. People are too busy thinking and pondering and surfing instead of producing. Instead of providing their individual and thought-provoking view. After all, you might be one person in the world, but you might be the world to one person.

  • http://cashwithatrueconscience.com/rbblog Ryan Biddulph

    Hi Christopher,

    Super tip.

    The moment carries the lesson and every moment is a vehicle for our advancement. We are designed to move forward.

    It’s up to the individual to take the lesson out of any situation. You can see obstacles or opportunities. You can see fortunes or misfortunes. It’s all up to you as the perceiver creates the experience.

    Thanks for sharing your insight Christopher.

    RB

  • http://www.grammarjunkie.com Glad Doggett

    I love the idea of finding inspiration in everyday things. I agree that there is a lesson in every encounter — even that annoying, chatty, slow moving person in front of you at Wal-mart can give you insight to a new way to see something.

    The key is to be awake to the present moment, and open to the lesson.

  • Jack Lynady

    This post reminds me of a truth about night vision. Due to the anatomy of the eye, in the dark if you try and focus to much on an object it will actually become blurry to the point of disappearing. You actually have to look at it from an angle not directly to “gain” back clarity. It’s no different in life. Sometimes we need to go watch a movie, go on a run, or listen to some music instead of always focusing in on our project. It is amazing how interconnected life is we just sometimes need night vision.

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