Triangle - 2000 September

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2000 September

THE EXPONENT: Volume 00, Number 6

"Light a fire for a man and keep him warm for a day; light a man on fire and keep him warm for a lifetime." - Anonymous

In the future, there will be a Triangle Fraternity whose members realize how important it is to them that they develop their skills - both in and beyond the classroom - while studying at the university. Many tens of thousands of Triangle members will seek to obtain the kinds of skills and abilities that make Triangles wildly successful in life. Because of such self-driven achievements, these future Triangles will be actively sought out by employers, significant others, schools, communities, and more. These future Triangles will be found as leaders in business, academia, family, and community. There will be a future in which new member candidates, because they recognize the value of being a Triangle member, try to join in droves.

To get to that future, Triangle as an organization could try to do it all for you -- the equivalent of lighting a fire. Since Triangle's purpose is to offer each man an improved chance to develop his own intellect, ability to act well in society, leadership skills, and more, however, it would be rather foolish for Triangle to try to do it all for you.

Instead, Triangle looks for its members to be the ones who are ready to spontaneously combust.

The Exponent, like Scobie Leadership School, Presidents' Academy, Chapter Manuals, and Consultations, is just one piece of kindling you can use to get your flame going. Remember that "Knowledge gets you into the game. Passion wins it." We believe you can increase both here if you decide you want to. First, you've got to decide if you're the kind of person who wants to catch fire.

Contents

Find Strength in Weakness: Submitted by Dave Prentice tamu87

Sometimes your biggest weakness can become your biggest strength.

Take, for example, the story of one 10-year-old boy who decided to study judo despite the fact that he had lost his left arm in a devastating car accident. The boy began lessons with an old Japanese judo master. The boy was doing well, so he couldn't understand why, after three months of training the master had taught him only one move.

"Sensei," the boy finally said, "Shouldn't I be learning more moves?" "This is the only move you know, but this is the only move you'll ever need to know," the sensei replied. Not quite understanding, but believing in his teacher, the boy kept training.

Several months later, the sensei took the boy to his first tournament. Surprising himself, the boy easily won his first two matches. The third match proved to be more difficult, but after some time, his opponent became impatient and charged; the boy deftly used his one move to win the match. Still amazed by his success, the boy was now in the finals.

This time, his opponent was bigger, stronger, and more experienced. For a while, the boy appeared to be overmatched. Concerned that the boy might get hurt, the referee called a time-out. He was about to stop the match when the sensei intervened. "No," the sensei insisted, "Let him continue."

Soon after the match resumed, his opponent made a critical mistake: he dropped his guard. Instantly, the boy used his move to pin him. The boy had won the match and the tournament. He was the champion.

On the way home, the boy and sensei reviewed every move in each and every match. Then the boy summoned the courage to ask what was really on his mind. "Sensei, how did I win the tournament with only one move?"

"You won for two reasons," the sensei answered. "First, you've almost mastered one of the most difficult throws in all of judo. And second, the only known defense for that move is for your opponent to grap your left arm."

The boy's biggest weakness had become his biggest strength.

Be Different!: Review of Differentiate or Die: Survival in Our Era of Killer Competition by Jack Trout and Steve Rivkin (John Wiley & Sons)

The value of differentiating your business or project from its competitors is a fundamental marketing principle. There are just too many choices for buyers to wade through for your company to succeed as a "me too." You have to help buyers choose among their many options, and their choices are made based on competitive differences they can discern.

Anything, even commodities, can be differentiated. It's just a matter of knowing how to do it. You can't do it, he warns, on the basis of creativity and rarely with price, breadth of product line, quality or customer orientation. Instead, build your differentiation strategy around being first, owning a particular attribute, leadership, heritage, market specialty, how your product is made, being the latest or being the hottest.

The irony is that differentiation leads to success and success leads to growth. And guess what. Growth can destroy differentiation. Maintaining your differentiated position requires tough choices, consistency, and putting top people in charge of protecting it.

Ten Concepts You Can Take to the Bank

Price is often the enemy of differentiation.... being different should mean something.
If your difference is that your product can do a lot of things not very well as opposed to a product that does one thing exceptionally well, you haven't got much of a difference.
Four functions come into play when people solve problems: intuition, thinking, feeling, sensing. Most people lead with one of these four styles when making decisions. Intuitives are interested in the big picture and what's coming next. Thinkers want a lot of information. Feelers are interested in what others feel. Sensors respect facts.
Even commodities can be differentiated. Here are five ways: label them, personify them (Green Giant), create a new generic, change the name, reposition the category ("the other white meat").
The marketing game never involves just the company and the customer. It always involves competitors.
To get around a price attack, do something special, cause some confusion or shift the argument.
Your differentiating idea must make sense in the context of the category, it must be supported with demonstrations and credentials and you must communicate it in everything you do.
Your differentiating idea must be simple, visible and repeated over and over again.
Well-differentiated specialists tend to win the marketing wars. Why? Because the specialist can focus on one product, one benefit and one message. The specialist is perceived to do one thing very well because that's the only thing the specialist does.
"Giving up something can be good for your business." You must sacrifice "more" to be well-differentiated.

New College Students Meet Via the Internet: John Schwartz, Washington Post

[How can your chapter use the same concept? - Ed.]

Remember college summer orientation? You had a week or so to learn everything there was to know about your new school. Most schools still depend on spring visits and summer orientation to introduce newcomers to the campus. But increasingly, schools are adding another way to visit, meet, and greet -- via the Internet.

These aren't old-fashioned Web sites, with images and text as dull as a school's slick brochure. Schools are creating places where their incoming students can go on-line and chat with other new students, current students, and sometimes faculty.

Michigan's Albion College held a groundbreaking "Virtual Open House" in February 1998, a three-hour online meeting with more than 70 chat rooms hosted by students, faculty, or staff.

Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania is in its third year of a program that welcomes students with a combination of stored online discussions and live chats, said Tom Krattenmaker, a spokesman for the school. "It's real active in the wee hours, he said. The school monitors the free-wheeling discussions, but doesn't try to guide them. The students "can the best ambassadors for the school," he said, so that when new students do start, "they already have a sense of community and connection with other people."

Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania offers a password-protected "Accepted Student" Website that gives out information about school and has virtual meetings between newly accepted students and current students, faculty, and administrators. "It's a great asset to our admissions process," said Gail Sweezy, Gettysburg's director of admissions.

For the incoming freshmen - many of whom have been using computers since they could toddle - the virtual social club is second nature. Rebecca Hanifen, a Baltimore-raised incoming freshman at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachussetts, is one such child of the computer age. WPI offers registration and orientation online - but Hanifen said she found the message board, or the "Admissions Cafe," was the biggest help.

"On it, I have found student opinions on everything from housing choices to general social life," she said in an email interview.

Last spring, Hanifen started a discussion group titled "smart chiks" to bring together new female students, who are outnumbered 3-1 at WPI. "I just graduated from an all-girls Catholic school in Baltimore, and I have come to realize the importance of getting to know one's "girlfriends," and I personally wanted to get a head start on this." Predictably, WPI's men showed up in that discussion.

The idea underlying all these programs is to establish an early link to the campus, a sense of belonging.

"Anything we can do to connect them to each other is good," said Connie Gores, vice-president for enrollment at Randolph-Macon Women's College in Lynchburg, VA. The small women's college gets about 200 new students each year, and quickly distributes the email addresses of the new students to other new students, and matches up new students with current undergraduate volunteers, who answer questions and keep the discussion going. "It brings the college to life. It puts a face, a real-life human being who's living the experience and is able to answer every single question they have. Nothing is off limits - 'Are there men around? Can you get dates? Will I have a social life or will I be studying all the time?'"

Still, the online connection schools are offering can have a downside. One Maryland mother said her 18-year-old son, who had been accepted at Swarthmore, and who was inclined to go there, came upstairs from a long online bull session and told her, "Mom, I can't go there - they're all vegans and write poetry!"

Swarthmore's Krattemaker noted that not all Swarthmore students are vegans who write poetry, although, he was quick to point out, there's absolutely nothing wrong with vegans who write poetry. Still, he said, there's not much you can do to alter the impression someone gets from an online encounter with the school. "They can get a really good impression of the school using this tool, but you have to be careful that they don't get a wrong one, too. A poor impression, once formed, is nearly impossible to change."

Eight Ideas You Can Use to Grow Your Chapter: From The Invisible Touch: The Four Keys to Modern Marketing by Harry Beckwith (Warner Books)

Original ideas spring fastest from well-fertilized minds. To create more, learn something new.
Focus on two things: (1) Perform "with such a high level of consistency that people begin to feel a baseline confidence and comfort. (2) Focus on what your brand represents and "consistently present that to the world."
Unlike products, services are invisible. And while, the buyer controls the products he purchases, services are more apt to control the buyer. Because we crave control, "we feel less comfortable in our relationships with services. We need their reassurance that they will use their control intelligently, and in our best interests."
"Instead of thinking about value-added, think about knowledge-added. What knowledge can you add to your service, or communicate about your service, that will make you more attractive to prospects?"
Service businesses make the mistake of spending timidly on their self-promotion and they end up looking timid. Spending too little on self-promotion makes it appear that you don't believe in your business.
"In your key communications, you must immediately state your more compelling claim to expertise. [The Key Claim] Then you must offer the concrete fact that most strongly supports it. [The Key Proof]."
Communicate clearly. Teach everyone in your firm to communicate clearly. "More than you know, your prospects don't get it," - that is, they don't get what you are selling and why they should buy from you.
Passion attracts clients and keeps clients. "Knowledge gets you into the game. Passion wins it."

Hope you enjoyed this issue!!! If you have questions, feel free to email the editor ( This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ).

Tim Eiler
Exponent Editor
"Don't pursue greatness. Pursue excellence and pursue it relentlessly. If greatness follows, good for you. If not, you won't care because you'll already know you are good."