The Lookinglass Consultancy

Simon Mainwaring, the marketing and social media guru, tweeted a link the other day to 20 unique and creative logo designs.

In a world added to each day by a new technologcal marvel, it is too easy to assume that all original thought comes attached to a piece of code or a microprocessor.

Simon's tweet, and the compilation put together at Toxel.com demonstrate three things.

1. Technology connects us in new and increasingly powerful ways
2. What it connects us to is more important than how
3. The most powerful connections are the result of simple truths and shared experiences

In support of which I offer you a representative sample of the logos from the Toxel collection. I encourage you to look at the entire set, complete with individual accreditation to the designers and companies in question.

Proof, if we needed it, that there is as much value in innovation as invention.

And further incentive to relentlessly challenge how we look at our own businesses.

Ideas are cheap. The cost of this blog for instance is a few moments of your time. Paid as you go. A mutually agreeable arrangement.

At latest count, there are well over 150 million blogs. To which 900,000 new posts have been added in the latest 24 hours. A rich idea pool from which to draw. And does not take into account books, magazines, newspapers, television, radio, websites, art, apps, conversation. Or personal inspiration.

What you do with ideas, whatever their source, determines many aspects of your business. And your life.

In a world in which everything is possible, and most information is always available, we are not deprived of new possibilities.

But increasingly I am aware, through my own experience and that of others, that exploration and investment in the possible is best guided by an understanding of what we are trying to achieve. A definition that can and should evolve. But through conscious choice. Rather than the endless opportunism of interesting investigation.

Otherwise, we spend our lives in a pool of diluted distraction.

Exploring everywhere.

And arriving nowhere.

When we built our first office in the mid 90s, we knew nothing. About construction. About negotiation. And especially about leverage.

In any commercial space build-out there are usually three participants. The renter, the landlord and the general contractor.

The landlord will often press to have “his people” do the work. Doing so is death by a thousand cuts. Usually of your standards. Followed by your will to live. Rent rebates being no substitute for functioning air conditioning in the dog days of summer.

We had avoided this fate and had brought in our own GC. The work took six months, twenty percent longer than promised and cost twenty percent more. Typical in all regards. We know now.

Towards the end of the project things started to get tense, and disagreements between the GC and the landlord’s electrician had become hourly events.

There are twenty three steps between deciding you want an outlet in a room and being able to plug in a toaster that toasts. They are all required if the biggest issue you face each morning is to be bagel or muffin.

Our nascent business depended on technology. A million dollars worth, give or take. And having the right kind of power in the right kind of places was a fundamental assumption of our business plan. A poor assumption we discovered. In the end, we withheld payment from the GC, who placed a lien on the building for the landlord’s failure to comply with the contracted scope of work.

The landlord, rattled from arrogance for the first time in a year-long negotiation and construction process, came cap in hand to us and agreed to correct everything they had previously denied responsibility for. In return we agreed to settle with the GC.

We accepted the deal, signed the revised agreement, and went to the GC with the happy news.

Did I mention we signed the agreement? An act also known as giving away your leverage.

Because now, instead of sitting on the top of the pyramid of power in which the chain of non-compliance sat beneath us, we had unwittingly made ourselves the fulcrum. We were now responsible for settling with the GC. We were now responsible for getting the work finished.

The GC, rather than lifting the lien, decided that he now had issues with various other aspects of the scope of work, and demanded payment for areas we had assumed were settled.

Never assume. Particularly during construction.

The GC refused to complete the project or remove the lien until his issues were resolved. The landlord reminded us of the agreement requiring us to settle with the GC and have the lien removed. Our lawyer reminded us of the terms of the lease and the first day rent was due. Our newly hired staff reminded us their paychecks were due. And our clients. Actually, we didn’t have any clients. Because there was nowhere for them to be clients.

Between a rock and a hard place choose the rock. It hurts more. But is over faster. And time is your greatest asset.

We paid the GC, who finished the work and we opened our office.

The cost of signing the Agreement with the landlord before we had used our leverage with the GC? About $200,000.

You have leverage in every negotiation. Exercising it requires two things.

Recognizing what it is.

And understanding when to use it.

I watch buyers of services haggle over prices almost every day. A fanatical fixation on fiscal fine tuning.  

The result of which is the buyer saves some money. The seller feels worth less. And the process is constantly measured by both to ensure the output is worth the price.

An exercise in defining the bare minimum.

In any negotiation, price is only one reference point. The other is value.

A focus that motivates both parties to work on creating more.

It is the difference between negotiating a price. And negotiating a deal.

A difference that recognizes that profit is only minimally affected by how well you save your money.

But massively affected by how well you use it.

Circumstances are a siren’s call to disaster. Temporary temptations that rip the hulls from ambition.

But circumstances are never substantive. Blow on them with intent and they change form in ways that seem unimaginable to begin with.

You can recognize them by words such as 'before', 'because', 'always' and 'must'.

They show their face when you introduce the question 'why'.

And fly screaming into the night when you say 'what if' with conviction.

The conviction that comes from recognizing that our journey is of our own making.

And that the path lies where we lay it.

Not where others decide.