What is Aji? [5 pages]

An excerpt from

Notes for Aji IFP Leaders written by Toby Hecht.

Aji is a new business philosophy and a new dominant strategy for IR#4,

… including completely new business orientations, intentions and skills,

… that enables businesspeople to earn a Normal IR#4 Income

… that is twice as high as the Normal IR#3 Income they currently earn.

Aji is a business philosophy invented for The Fourth Industrial Revolution (IR#4). Using it enables businesspeople to use their computers, computer-driven tools and the internet tactically, strategically and competitively, instead of with common sense, task orientation and hard work.

Using The Aji Source Fundamental Strategy shows businesspeople how to double their productivity, value and incomes so that they can earn and save enough money by their 60th birthday to avoid running out of it with their spouse before they are 90 years old.

The Strategy is based in a completely new set of (1) business orientations, (2) strategic and competitive intentions to produce outcomes and (3) business skills to fulfill those intentions.

When businesspeople, or business organizations, learn how to execute The Aji Source Fundamental Strategy, it shows them why, with whom and how to double their productivity, value and incomes easily, enjoyably and definitively.

How to double their productivity, value and income becomes obvious!

To use Aji, businesspeople learn the:

1. 12 strategic and competitive intentions of The Strategy

2. Four fundamental tactics businesspeople use to execute it

How to design and execute a fresh, new (1) offer, (2) practice, (3) business narrative and (4) strategy

… that is (a) fresh, (b) new, (c) highly valued and (d) scarce relative to demand.

The Strategy and its four fundamental tactics are explained in these notes, on aji.com and in Aji, an IR#4 Business Philosophy, by Toby Hecht.

Once businesspeople learn The Strategy and the tactics, which usually takes about 100 days or until they finish the first half of The Aji Starter’s Course, they can begin to execute The Strategy to fulfill their financial, career and business intentions.

What Does Aji Mean?

The name Aji comes from the strategy game Go, which is a 4,000-year-old game invented in Asia to teach generals how to think strategically.

The word “aji” means “having the potential to win”.

Go is a board game. The board is a grid like a chess board with 19 intersecting and perpendicular lines.

Two players alternate placing black and white stones, or pieces, on the intersections created where the lines cross to take territory, or market share in a marketplace.

The player who controls the most territory at the end of the game wins.

Each game requires about 250 moves.

Good and Bad Aji Moves

When players put down a stone that increases the likelihood they will win the game, it is said that they made “a good aji move”. A move that does the opposite is called “a bad aji move”.

When players are well positioned on the board with competitive advantages, it is said “they have good aji”.

When their competitive position is weak or flawed, “they have bad aji”.

When businesspeople, and entire business organizations, shift their orientations, intentions and skills with Aji, they immediately begin to produce “good aji” for themselves and their organization by designing and executing steady streams of fresh, new offers, practices, narratives and strategies… instead of simply getting the job done.

Full Moves

A “full move” is the move businesspeople can make in their career or business at any given moment with their offers, practices, narratives and strategies (OPNS),

… or in any competitive situation, among a dozen or so alternatives,

… that takes care of the highest number of tactical, strategic and competitive concerns and situations at the time.

The ability to make “full moves” when playing Go is an essential competitive capability to win the game.

When people make a full move, they produce “good aji” that helps them fulfill their financial, career and business intentions.

When businesspeople execute The Aji Source Fundamental Strategy, it shows them how to make full moves with their offers, practices, narratives and strategies.

The immediate increase in businesspeople’s productivity, value and incomes when they make full moves with Aji shows that this approach is at least twice as competitive as completing tasks and using common sense.