FBC #13 – Marginal Practices [2 pages]

An Executive Concern: Business Owners and Executives

To be “marginal” in this context means to be on the outside edge of something such as businesspeople’s career or business.

It does not mean that the practice that’s on the margin of a career or business is less important or of minor importance.

On the contrary, marginal practices, or practices that are marginal to a career or business can be the most important practices to keep available.

“Practices” are named actions such as selling, managing or leading.

People name practices such as “driving a car”, “hiring a new employee” or “leading a meeting” to identify it, locate sources of help and learn.

This drops the costs of learning everyday cultural practices or finding people who offer help.

In competitive situations, or the marketplace, Marginal Practices are an essential and low-cost way to increase competitive capabilities and advantages.

Most actions are not named, such as “I’m working to increase my productivity and value”. 

This means we don’t really know what people are talking about the same way we do when they say, “I’m buttoning my shirt” or “brushing my teeth”.

In IR#4, naming newly designed actions is a way of “taking linguistic territory” that can be used to establish identities of superior trustworthiness, value, authority and leadership.

Marginal Practices differ depending upon the specific business, marketplace and strategy being used to produce competitive capabilities and strategies.

In rapid change, offers of Marginal Practices are growing and are enormously important strategically and competitively.

Accounting, for example, can be taken care of inside a business or a marginal practice for which vendors are hired.

Technology, or different types and categories of technologies, can be taken care of inside a business or treated as a Marginal Practice.

A children’s sports business, for example, might see professional training as a marginal practice and hire professionals to come in and teach to produce a marginal utility that customers value highly and find scarce.

A manufacturing business full of engineers might see sales and marketing as marginal practices and hire outside experts and services to work for them or teach them.

A sales business organized around promotions might see accounting or graphic design as marginal practices.

Marginal practices are “financial” because they are used to increase competitive capabilities and advantages, productivity, value and incomes.

They are “strategic” because they are used to help businesspeople execute, improve and design new strategies.

They are “competitive” because they are loaded with power businesspeople can use to increase the value of their marginal utilities.