There’s money to be made in repackaging common sense and reselling it to the market as wisdom.
This happens all the time, everyday. For example, a training course is often a repackaging of some common sense information about a topic, which is fed back to participants in the form of a “model” or “approach” to help the topic make sense. But within the model, there’s no single component that is anything but common sense.
I should be clear that I am not being negative here. Packaging information up so that it can be delivered to people in a format that they will welcome, understand, and even seek out is hugely valuable.
Example - one of the most influential business books of our time could be viewed through this lens. Stephen Covey’s 7 habits series focuses on key areas for self improvement. As a reminder, the 7 habits are:
- Be Proactive
- Begin with the End in Mind
- Put First Things First
- Think Win-Win
- Seek First to Understand, then to be understood
- Synergize
- Sharpening the Saw
When you look at the concepts presented above in isolation, don’t you think you could have come up with some of these over a coffee? Being proactive, and beginning with a defined goal in mind certainly seem like very common sense tips for making yourself a more effective person. Yet, millions upon millions of people bought the book, making Covey a recognized expert in his field.
It’s the packaging that makes it work. It’s the relationship between the 7 habits, and Covey’s way of delivering them that create the package that people buy into. When it’s packaged this way, it makes sense to people and gives them a framework to work within, even if there are really no components within the framework that are lightning bolts of insight.
This has implications for how you approach communicating. It’s not always about inventing a new message. Many times, it’s about making sense of the world around you and giving people a new way to look at what they already know.
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