The Strategy [56 pages]

An excerpt from

Aji Notes, Volume 1, written by Toby Hecht.

Aji Notes, Volume 1

(pages 55-111)

What Is The Aji Source Fundamental Strategy?

The Aji Source Fundamental Strategy is a competitive, fundamental strategy with 12 tactical, strategic and competitive intentions that businesspeople fulfill in sequence.

* The intentions are listed and then explained later in this section.

The Strategy is “competitive” because every outcome used to execute it is designed using Aji as a dominant strategy to produce competitive advantages and “good aji”.

This makes each outcome businesspeople create, or their new OPNS, more productive and valuable by giving them marginal utilities whose benefits are superior to competitors’.

Aji is “fundamental” because its 12 intentions underlie and enable the constant production of fresh, new offers, practices, narratives and strategies (OPNS) that are highly valued and scarce relative to demand.

Using The Strategy is one way businesspeople, and entire businesses, can adapt to The Fourth Industrial Revolution (IR#4) so that they are able to double their productivity, value and incomes, or earn and save enough money to live a good life with their family, including 25+ years of unemployment during old age.

Using The Strategy enables people and business organizations to adapt to IR#4’s rapidly changing competitive situations by:

1. Showing them how to use their computers and the internet tactically, strategically and competitively to produce entirely new competitive capabilities and advantages, orientations, intentions and business skills to fulfill their financial, career and business intentions.

2. Enabling them to quit using IR#3’s task orientation, common sense, processes and procedures, and incremental improvements that are now obsolete, uncompetitive, define mediocrity in IR#4,

… and that suppress businesspeople’s incomes by at least 100%.

Each industrial revolution (IR) produces new competitive situations in which businesspeople are forced to compete to take care of their families. It is created, and won, by the businesspeople who, regardless of their role, invent completely new ways to think and act to produce outcomes, especially goods and services, with a new category of tool,

… i.e., steam-powered tools (IR#1), electrical tools (IR#2), transistorized tools (IR#3) and now computer-driven tools (IR#4).

Industrial revolutions are begun when ordinary businesspeople get access to new tools they can use to produce new goods and services whose value is superior to anything produced in the past industrial revolution with older tools.

Gradually, those who create new ways to produce goods and services also create new competitive and financial pressures for everyone else that prevent businesspeople and businesses who have not yet adapted, or who continue to use old business skills, from making enough money.

This is why most businesspeople are so far behind saving enough money for their old age and are certain to run out of it with their spouse long before they die.

Using The Strategy is one way businesspeople, and entire businesses, can pivot towards IR#4 and fulfill their financial, career and business intentions.

The consequences produced when businesspeople can’t earn and save enough money to avoid running out of it with their spouse after they become too old to work eventually force everyone to adapt.

Psychologists, scientists, doctors, philosophers and economists agree. When human beings face a future without enough money to afford enough food, housing, medical care and transportation,

… they experience increasing hardships, desperation, despair, chronic stress, suffering and shortened lifespans.

When businesspeople use The Strategy, they adapt to IR#4. Their productivity, value and incomes double because they learn how to use their computers and the internet to produce new competitive capabilities and advantages that are tactical, strategic and competitive, rather than task-oriented.

It’s easy, enjoyable and definitive.

After this short introduction, you will find:

#1 – A two-page summary of The Strategy

#2 – Brief explanations of each of The Strategy’s 12 strategic and competitive intentions

Use them to learn each of The Strategy’s intentions and why they flow in sequence to produce new competitive capabilities and advantages with your offers, practices, narratives and strategies to fulfill your financial, career and business intentions.

Use them to change your action package, which is the set of (1) ambitions for your future, (2) moods, (3) explanations about business and how to make money, (4) distinctions, (5) interpretations, (6) intentions to produce outcomes, (7) commitments to customers, employers, employees, etc., (8) business practices and (9) outcomes that you use to make money.

When businesspeople, and business organizations, use Aji’s Action Package, they can double their productivity, value and incomes, and then do it again.

You can find a short summary of The Aji Source Fundamental Strategy in Chapter Two of Aji, An IR#4 Business Philosophy,

… and a longer version in Chapter Six.

About The Strategy

(Short Version)

The Strategy, or The Aji Source Fundamental Strategy, is a new way of thinking and acting to make money in a rapidly changing and intensely competitive global marketplace organized around the use of computers and the internet.

It’s also a new dominant strategy for IR#4. (This is explained elsewhere.)

The Strategy’s purpose and value are located in its ability to help businesspeople use their computers and the internet strategically and competitively to double their productivity, value and incomes,

… so that they can produce a Normal IR#4 Income

… that is twice as high as their Normal IR#3 Income.

To double their incomes, The Strategy specifies and shows businesspeople why and how to fulfill 12 new strategic and competitive intentions every day, all day, instead of using obsolete business knowledge to get jobs done invented for IR#3.

To continue to produce a much higher income, businesspeople use The Strategy, instead of their common sense to complete tasks, which worked in IR#3 but is now an “inferior strategy”.

The Strategy is executed using four fundamental tactics: designing and executing steady streams of fresh, new (1) offers, (2) practices, (3) business narratives and (4) strategies (OPNS).

The Strategy uses a new set of business orientations, intentions and skills that shows businesspeople, and entire businesses, how to use and exploit the new strategic and competitive capabilities made possible by computers, computer-driven tools and the internet.

The Strategy is launched in Part #1, Ambitions, when businesspeople constitute their financial, career and business intentions, which must now include having enough money saved to retire by their 60th birthday, which is when doctors say the infirmities of old age begin to appear.

An Aji Ambition includes earning and saving enough money to live a good life while raising one’s family and saving enough money to afford the goods and services everyone needs to survive, adapt over time and live a good life with their spouse, including 25+ years of unemployment and old age.

The Strategy Produces New CDVF

When businesspeople use The Strategy to formulate their financial, career and business ambitions, their actions create completely new:

The remaining 11 intentions of The Strategy show businesspeople, and business organizations, how to fulfill the financial, career and business intentions that they constituted in Part #1.

The Strategy’s intentions are tactical, strategic and competitive, and are constituted with new:

1. Orientations, or ways of being productive, competitive or valuable

… such as being strategic, rather than being task-oriented

2. Intentions to produce tactical and strategic outcomes

… such as producing identities of superior trustworthiness, value, authority, leadership and dignity with customers

3. Business skills to use with their computers and the internet,

… such as knowing how to design a new offer that is fresh, new, highly valued and scarce relative to demand

… that increase businesspeople’s competitive capabilities and advantages very quickly.

This enables businesspeople to fulfill their financial, career and business intentions, or to simply double their productivity, value and incomes.

The Aji Source Fundamental Strategy

#1 – Constitute ambitions and business missions

#2 – Formulate Philosophies of Care and Competition

#3 – Learn tactical, strategic and competitive knowledge needed to execute The Strategy

#4 – Use Ethics of Power to produce competitive capabilities and advantages

#5 – Design offers, practices, narratives and strategies (OPNS) that are fresh, new, highly valued and scarce relative to demand

#6 – Build IR#4 Tactical, Strategic and Competitive Networks of Capabilities (IR#4 NWC)

#7 – Increase autonomies, competitive capabilities and advantages

#8 – Produce steady streams of accomplishments that are fresh, new, highly valued and scarce relative to demand

#9 – Establish identities of superior trustworthiness, value, authority, leadership and dignity (TVAL&D)

#10 – Hold highly compensated leadership roles

#11 – Build business organizations that are strategic and competitive in IR#4

#12 – Anticipate future competitive threats to avoid, obligations to fulfill and opportunities to exploit

The Aji Source Fundamental Strategy’s

12 Strategic and Competitive Intentions

#1 – Constitute and fulfill financial ambitions needed to survive, adapt over time as one’s body and circumstances change and live a good life with one’s family and in society

The most fundamental purpose of working to make money is to be able to afford the goods and services needed to take care of people’s most fundamental human concerns to:

1. Survive from moment to moment.

2. Adapt as our bodies and situations change.

3. Live a good life with one’s spouse and children that is deeply meaningful, satisfying (no regrets), worthwhile and enjoyable,

… and to live with dignity in society with one’s extended family, friends and neighbors,

… including 25+ years of old age.

The minimum amount businesspeople must earn and save during their career, according to economists, psychologists, scientists and philosophers, is enough to afford the non-discretionary goods and services everyone requires to survive day-to-day and adapt over time as people’s bodies and circumstances change until they are at least 90 years old.

There are four “non-discretionary goods and services”, according to economists.

Non-discretionary means people must buy them, because if they are not available in sufficient quantities and quality human beings cannot survive in the moment or adapt over time as they and their situations change.

When human beings are unable to take satisfactory care of their non-discretionary concerns they and their spouse become desperate, stressed and unhealthy, and cannot live a good life.

The four non-discretionary goods and services are:

The amount of money businesspeople need to earn in order to save enough money by age 60 to live a good life for 25+ years of old age is surprisingly simple and easy to calculate.

Businesspeople already have records to determine how much food, housing, medical care and transportation cost them today. It’s easy to adjust these costs, approximately, for old age to determine how much income they’ll need to retire.

Every $40k of annual before-tax income businesspeople need to afford food, housing, medical care and transportation for 25+ years of old age requires them to have $1m saved and invested passively by age 60. ($40k is 4% of $1m.)

Every $100k of income, for example, businesspeople need when they retire with their spouse requires them to have $2.5m saved and invested.

Because of inflation, which averages 3% annually, the amount of money businesspeople and their spouse need to save to produce $100k in annual income increases by:

50% for 46-year-olds to $3.75m

100% for 36-year-olds to $5m

Decades of financial reports from private and public sources agree: businesspeople who continue to earn normal IR#3 Incomes can’t make enough money to avoid running out of it with their spouse during old age.

When businesspeople decline or fail to earn and save enough money to afford the goods and services every human being requires, the situations they create as they age trigger increasing hardships, chronic financial stresses, desperation and despair.

These stresses are unhealthy. They make people ill, shorten their lifespans by as much as 20 years and make it impossible to live a good life.

Using Aji, The Aji Source Fundamental Strategy and the four fundamental tactics — how to design an (1) offer, (2) practice, (3) narrative and (4) strategy — enables businesspeople, and entire business organizations, to double their productivity, value and incomes so they can fulfill their life, financial and business ambitions to live a good life.

#2 – Formulate Philosophies of Care and Competition

Every industrial revolution creates new financial and competitive pressures that make it impossible to earn a living using old, or “traditional”, business knowledge. Eventually, financial pressures and the suffering they cause to businesspeople and their families force them to create or adopt a new philosophical approach to why and how to make money.

Those who resist adapting and changing how they think and act to make money suffer and fail to make “enough money” to take care of their family until they surrender, learn and adapt.

Since most businesspeople are not yet able to earn and save “enough money” when 25+ years of old age is included, and will discover they can double their incomes when they use Aji, it is clear they need to learn how to adapt and quit using IR#3 business skills.

*****

To use computers and the internet competitively to produce a Normal IR#4 Income that is twice as high as the Normal IR#3 Income most businesspeople continue to earn,

… businesspeople need new:

1. Orientations

2. Intentions

3. Business skills

The first two sets of new orientations, intentions and skills that businesspeople use to double their productivity, value and incomes — their Philosophies of Care and Competition — are philosophical, or thoughtful. Together, the two new philosophies shift businesspeople’s orientations from task orientation to strategic orientation.

The first set, their Philosophies of Care, is an interpretation of the completely new business concerns individuals and businesses need to take care of using their computers and the internet, and in what sequence, to double their incomes.

* Aji shows businesspeople how to take care of 22 fundamental business concerns.

Read about the Fundamental Business Concerns on aji.com, ASAP.

Read the list of fundamental business, career, human and marriage in these notes.

The second set, Philosophies of Competition, is an interpretation of the completely new competitive situations, capabilities and strategies that have appeared in IR#4, and how to compete in them successfully enough to double one’s income.

IR#4 is the most:

1. Rapidly changing

2. Intensely competitive

3. Increasingly complex

4. Technologically advanced global marketplace in history

In IR#4, new competitive situations are created throughout the day. None are obvious, objective, perceivable or commonsensical. No one can “figure them out”.

Each one needs to be approached, and interpreted, using a competitive, fundamental strategy such as Aji.

When businesspeople use Aji, for instance, they learn to interpret each IR#4 competitive situation as a new set of:

1. Competitive threats they must avoid, or cope with

2. Competitive obligations they must fulfill to:

Keep their existing opportunities to make money

Produce new opportunities to make money

Avoid avoidable threats, risks and costs

3. Competitive opportunities they need to exploit

… to fulfill their financial, career and business intentions.

This part of The Strategy reveals why and how “traditional” IR#3 orientations, intentions and business skills such as hard work, reliance on common sense and task orientation are not competitive in IR#4.

Philosophies of Competition show why knowing how to:

1. Learn competitively to increase their competitive capabilities and advantages, productivity, value and incomes

2. Communicate ambitions, moods, explanations (DMRVPs), distinctions, interpretations, intentions, commitments, practices and outcomes, completely, strategically and competitively

3. Coordinate thought and action using commitments, e.g., requests, assessments, assertions, promises, declarations, complaints, apologies, offers, etc.

4. Design and execute steady streams of fresh, new offers, practices, narratives and strategies

… is the only way to compete successfully in rapidly changing and complex competitive situations

… when using computers and the internet

… to earn and save enough money to live a good life when 25+ years of old age with one’s spouse is included.

#3 – Learn tactical, strategic and competitive knowledge

All three categories of knowledge — tactical, strategic and competitive — are needed to execute The Strategy and double productivity, value and incomes.

All three are significantly more powerful ways of thinking and acting with one’s computer and the internet to make money than using common sense to get jobs none.

Each one enables businesspeople to design and execute fresh, new offers, practices, narratives and strategies (OPNS), to execute The Strategy, and to double productivity, value and income.

What does “knowledge” mean when using Aji?

Knowledge is the capability to produce an outcome intentionally in a given set of circumstances, such as knowing how to hire an employee, speak a compelling business narrative or sell a service to make money.

Whenever a new competitive situation appears, such as a new tool or application, or a new offer made by a competitor, which can happen as often as every 15 minutes in IR#4,

… businesspeople need to be willing and able to design their own new knowledge in the form of being able to produce new and more valuable outcomes with OPNS in as little as 15 minutes, too.

With Aji, learning, or accumulating knowledge to produce new competitive outcomes as competitive situations change, is done all day, every day.

Being in an Aji IFP is one of the new competitive practices IR#4 businesspeople use to steadily increase their competitive capabilities and advantages, productivity, value and incomes to fulfill their financial, career and business intentions.

Tactical knowledge, such as how to design a new offer,

… is used to change competitive situations, or their threats, obligations and opportunities,

… such as to produce new customers, employees, employers, colleagues and vendors,

… to advance action, or make progress, executing a strategy or larger plan of action.

Examples of tactical knowledge include designing new OPNS, selling, leading a meeting and showing someone how to design a new business narrative to advance action, or make progress, to produce a strategy’s objective.

Strategic knowledge is used to:

1. Execute a strategy

… e.g., knowing how to use a sequence of tactics to produce a sequence of interim situations to make progress, or advance action, to produce a strategic objective.

2. Improve the execution of a strategy

… e.g., knowing how to reduce an action plan’s costs (time, energy, money and lost opportunities).

3. Make a new strategy possible

… e.g., knowing how to design and execute a new strategy.

Knowing how to design a fresh, new business practice that improves how you execute The Aji Source Fundamental Strategy, or fulfill one of its 12 intentions, is strategic knowledge in IR#4 when using computers and the internet.

Competitive knowledge is competitive capabilities,

… such as superior identities of one’s trustworthiness, value, authority, leadership and dignity,

… and knowing how to design OPNS with marginal utilities that make them fresh, new, highly valued and scarce relative to demand,

… that are used to create and maintain competitive advantages that double productivity, value and incomes every day.

#4 – Use Ethics of Power

“Ethics” are standards of conduct based in a standard of values, e.g., moral, safety, financial and medical ethics that enable people to live a good life.

“Ethics of Power” are ways of thinking and acting in the marketplace, or in IR#4’s competitive situations, that increase businesspeople’s competitive capabilities and advantages.

Aji uses about 50 different Ethics of Power, which you can find in Aji, An IR#4 Business Philosophy, such as:

1. Use new Aji dominant strategies, i.e., a competitive, fundamental strategy and four tactics.

2. Design and execute offers whose marginal utilities are highly valued and scarce.

3. Learn competitively all day using recursion, recurrence and reciprocation.

4. Always move first, fast and persistently to produce steady streams of OPNS needed to make money in competitive situations, instead of thinking about it or waiting to feel comfortable.

5. Establish identities of superior trustworthiness, value, authority, leadership and dignity with business narratives.

6. Build IR#4 Networks of Capabilities.

7. Lead, manage and govern one’s career and business, always (personal responsibility).

IR#3’s ethics of power, or those invented before 1980 that worked with single-purpose tools, or before computers were first sold, such as “working hard” while relying on common sense to complete tasks and make incremental improvements by executing processes and procedures, are now common, inferior strategically, uncompetitive and define mediocre outcomes in IR#4.

IR#4 Ethics of Power are tactical, strategic and competitive, and always increase competitive capabilities and advantages.

#5 – Design new offers, practices, narratives and strategies (OPNS)

This is Aji’s “tactical pivot”.

A new dominant strategy

A new action package for IR#4

This is where new OPNS are first designed and used to make money tactically and strategically to execute The Strategy.

A “tactic” is an action, or practice, that is used to change a situation to advance action, or make progress, needed to execute a strategy, or produce a “strategic objective”.

A “tactical pivot” is the set of actions, or practices, people need to know to execute a strategy, e.g., drive a car, sell a service, lead a meeting or build a house.

Using new tools competitively to make money, i.e., computers and the internet, requires businesspeople and entire businesses to learn and use a new:

1. Tactical pivot

2. Dominant strategy

3. Action package

Once businesspeople learn each of Aji’s four fundamental tactics, they can begin to execute The Strategy, lead an Aji IFP, and start to double their productivity, value and incomes.

The four most fundamental practices businesspeople and businesses perform tactically to make money in the marketplace are designing their own steady streams of (1) offers, (2) practices, (3) narratives and (4) strategies, or OPNS.

These include goods and services, of course, as well as every thought and action that is invented, learned and used to produce them.

The more OPNS businesspeople and businesses design and execute strategically and competitively, the more likely they are to fulfill their financial, career and business intentions.

This makes knowing how to design and execute steady streams of OPNS that are (1) fresh, (2) new, (3) highly valued and (4) scarce relative to demand with customers, employees, employers, colleagues and vendors,

… an Ethic of Power or a source of “good aji” in IR#4.

Designing new OPNS is an Ethic of Power because it forces, seduces or compels Buyers to:

1. Accept offers quickly to produce the lowest possible transaction costs

2. Increase their willingness to pay a premium to produce the highest possible purchase price

“Offers” are announcements we make to people that we would like to transact with them, or exchange goods and services for a purchase price.

When people transact and their capabilities to take care of their families are increased because they “made money”, they have made a “profit”.

It is in the moment that two parties agree to transact that money is made for each party.

“Practices” are named actions people use to:

1. Take care of concerns

2. Cope with situations

3. Increase their capabilities to produce outcomes to fulfill their intentions

4. Design and execute strategies, or create ways to produce outcomes, that people name in order to identify them.

(CSCS)

“Business narratives” are always action stories about making and fulfilling commitments to make money needed to survive, adapt and live a good life.

They must always be complete (no parts can be missing, ever) because that is required to make them effective, strategic and competitive.

Each must contain a complete (1) exposition, (2) conflict, (3) rising action, (4) resolution and (5) denouement.

* Making money is always really about the denouement.

“Strategies” are complex action plans executed to produce an intended outcome, or “strategic objective”.

Strategies are always constituted and organized the same way, fundamentally.

They always contain:

1. Commitments to produce an outcome that is called a strategic objective by performing…

2. A sequence of tactics to produce…

3. A sequence of situations…

… that progress, or advance the action,

… until the purpose of the strategy is fulfilled.

Walking up a flight of stairs is a simple example of a strategy, or action plan, with an objective, tactics and interim situations.

1. Getting to the top of the stairs is the strategic objective.

2. Stepping up with one’s right and left foot, and repeating the actions, is the sequence of tactics.

3. Each step up the stairs produces the sequence of new situations that makes it possible to advance action to step up to the next one

… until the strategic objective is produced.

A sales conversation is a complex example.

Each part of the conversation — marketing, prospecting, greeting, qualifying, presenting, objections, closing, re-closing, fulfilling and satisfying — is its own mini-strategy with its own objective, tactics and situations.

To produce a transaction and “make money”, which is the Sales Conversation’s strategic objective,

… businesspeople use a sequence of tactics such as Greeting and Qualifying Questions

… to produce a sequence of situations with the Buyer (new interpretations and commitments) such as them trusting and accepting the offer,

… which is the strategic objective.

#6 – Build IR#4 Tactical, Strategic and Competitive Networks of Capabilities (IR#4 NWC)

This is Aji’s “strategic pivot”.

A new Dominant Strategy

A New Action Package for IR#4

This is where the strategic capability to design and execute action plans to produce competitive capabilities and advantages needed to double productivity, value and incomes is made.

Simply put, until businesspeople are able to perform Aji’s four fundamental tactics (Part #5 of The Strategy) and are able to design and execute their own offers, practices, narratives and strategies (OPNS), they cannot execute Parts #6 – #12 of The Strategy.

* It takes most businesspeople about 100 days to complete the first half of The Aji Starter’s Course on aji.com to learn the four tactics.

Once businesspeople learn the four fundamental tactics — how to design and execute OPNS — they can build a completely new “Source of Strategic Power” — IR#4 Networks of Capabilities (IR#4 NWC) — to double their productivity, value and incomes.

IR#4 NWC could not exist practically, or technically, before computers and the internet made remote learning, communication, coordination and production possible.

When using Aji, businesspeople build an array of IR#4 NWC such as networks of transaction, tactical support and collegial help to increase their productivity and value.

The purpose of IR#4 NWC is to increase businesspeople’s autonomies, or freedom, to produce highly valued accomplishments, or Parts #7 and #8 of The Strategy.

IR#4’s Networks of Tactical, Strategic and Competitive Capabilities are global, strategic and competitive. They are not local, except by coincidence.

IR#4’s Networks of Capabilities replace reliance on IR#3 networks of convenience,

… which are local, cheap, commonsensical, task-oriented,

… and a source of uncompetitive ambitions, moods, explanations, distinctions, interpretations, intentions, commitments, practices and outcomes,

… when using computers and the internet to make money.

As businesspeople increase their capabilities to design and execute their own OPNS (Part #5),

… and begin to build their strategic and competitive capabilities and advantages with IR#4 Networks of Capabilities (Part #6),

… their productivity, value and incomes increase naturally.

#7 – Increase autonomies, competitive capabilities and advantages

To double businesspeople’s productivity, value and incomes, or the enterprise value of a business,

… people and organizations must increase their freedoms, competitive capabilities (skills) and competitive advantages (marginal utilities),

… to learn, communicate, coordinate new thought and action, and design and execute fresh, new offers, practices, narratives and strategies (OPNS).

Businesspeople can’t be “too busy” to learn in IR#4 because they are working hard with their common sense to get the job done.

In IR#3 being too busy to learn was a virtue. It meant workers already knew what to do and how to do it to get their jobs done so resources needed to “train” them were not needed.

Business is a game of power. It’s about producing capabilities to produce outcomes (OPNS) that are superior to one’s competitors in the eyes of Buyers, i.e., customers, employers, employees, colleagues and vendors.

Whoever has the most power to produce superior outcomes wins and makes the most money.

Knowledge is power needed to produce and increase competitive capabilities and advantages in IR#4.

In non-competitive situations, knowledge is the capability to produce an outcome intentionally in a given set of circumstances, such as growing a garden, driving to the store or changing a diaper.

In competitive situations such as designing an offer or running a race, power is the capability to produce a superior outcome in the eyes of the judges, or Buyers.

The monopolies and auctions superior OPNS produce naturally and spontaneously compel Buyers — customers, employees, employers, colleagues and vendors — to:

1. Buy quickly to produce the lowest possible transaction costs

2. Increase their willingness to pay a premium to produce the highest possible purchase price

Knowledge is also freedom, or the absence of unwanted constraints and limitations on a human being’s abilities to think and act to fulfill their intentions.

The more knowledge businesspeople acquire, the more power and freedom they have to fulfill their financial, career and business intentions, or to become rich.

Ignorance and working without a network, on the other hand, reduces and suppresses the freedom businesspeople must have to think and act as they need to in order to fulfill their financial, career and business intentions.

One way to acquire new tactical, strategic and competitive knowledge, power and freedom, is to learn Aji, or how to execute The Aji Source Fundamental Strategy throughout the day, instead of using hard work, common sense and task orientation, which shut down power in IR#4.

Another way IR#4 businesspeople who know Aji increase their knowledge, power and freedom is by building their IR#4 Networks of Capabilities (Part #6) and working with them in an Aji IFP.

Businesspeople increase their autonomies, power and freedom to make money as they increase their abilities to think and act tactically, strategically and competitively to produce steady streams of highly valued accomplishments and build superior identities of trustworthiness, value, authority, leadership and dignity.

When businesspeople use their IR#4 NWC to increase their competitive capabilities to (1) design a new offer, (2) execute a new practice, (3) speak a new business narrative or (4) plan a new strategy to execute The Aji Source Fundamental Strategy,

… they increase their autonomy, or freedom, to fulfill their financial, career and business intentions.

#8 – Produce highly valued and scarce accomplishments

The marketplace understands the dangers of bullshit, hype, humbug, lies, glamour and caveat emptor (buyer beware) quite well. The idea of “fake it ‘til you make it” is deeply flawed.

To double productivity, value and incomes, “proof of knowledge” as well as identities of superior (1) trustworthiness, (2) value, (3) authority, (4) leadership and (5) dignity (TVAL&D) are always required.

The only proof of knowledge and expertise that Buyers will accept, or of people’s claims that they can produce an outcome in a given set of circumstances, is their history of accomplishments.

Everything else is simply talk. It’s noise people make.

To produce the proof, businesspeople must be able to explain how their accomplishments are proof of their knowledge with seductive and compelling explanations using (1) descriptions, (2) meanings, (3) relevance, (4) value and (5) purposes, or DMRVP.

In addition to proving businesspeople have the capabilities to produce an outcome they claim is highly valued, accomplishments prove superior TVAL&D.

It doesn’t matter whether we are talking about answering simple questions for customers or building a football stadium.

To produce any outcome intentionally:

People must be trustworthy enough to produce it.

They must know what is, and is not, important, useful and worthwhile. (Value)

They must know what is, and is not, required, forbidden and allowed to produce an outcome intentionally in a given set of circumstances. (Authority)

They must know how to anticipate and have others accept their help to deal with new threats, obligations and opportunities that exist in the situations they encounter by having their “leadership offers” accepted. (Leadership)

And, they must act with integrity and have value with those around them at work and in their family and communities. (Dignity)

Therefore, the more sincere, reliable and expert businesspeople become as they execute The Strategy to produce their own steady streams of accomplishments that are fresh, new, highly valued and scarce relative to demand — regardless of their role in business — the more evidence or grounding they produce to support claims that their trustworthiness, value, authority, leadership and dignity is superior to their competitors.

#9 – Establish identities of superior trustworthiness, value, authority, leadership and dignity (TVAL&D)

Business is social. Being a distrustful and prideful lone ranger who will not learn, accept new interpretations or trust others, shuts down the competitive capabilities and advantages businesspeople need in IR#4 to double their incomes.

People’s willingness to transact with a Seller depends upon the Seller’s identities of TVAL&D. This is because people and their careers, businesses and families are fragile. They are easily harmed or ruined when betrayed. It doesn’t matter whether the betrayal is intentional, accidental or due to incompetence.

Identities are characterizations, or interpretations, of a person’s or business’ virtues or capabilities to fulfill their commitments, or to produce intended outcomes in a given set of circumstances such as rapidly changing and intensely competitive situations.

They are interpretations that characterize a Seller’s virtues and vices, such as their trustworthiness or mediocrity.

They help Buyers anticipate how Sellers will think and act to fulfill their commitments with OPNS, including goods and services, to help Buyers fulfill their intentions.

A businessperson’s identities, or characterizations, about their TVAL&D enable customers, employers, employees, colleagues, vendors and competitors to judge the likely costs, risks and returns of accepting an offer, practice, narrative or strategy from them.

The most important and fundamental characterizations businesspeople must work to produce to double their productivity, value and incomes are that their TVAL&D are satisfactory and superior to competitors’.

The more rewarding, scarce, inexpensive and low risk businesspeople and businesses make it to accept their offers, practices, narratives or strategies,

… the easier it is for Buyers to produce a return and the more profitable, valuable and competitive the offer becomes.

The more businesspeople’s identities of TVAL&D are superior to those of competitors because of the outcomes they can produce expertly and reliably (and it doesn’t matter what role they hold),

… the more they can produce monopolies and auctions naturally and spontaneously for their goods and services to drive up their incomes or revenues

… or the enterprise value of their business.

#10 – Hold highly compensated leadership roles

One of the new competitive situations produced by the most rapidly changing, competitive, complex and technologically advanced global marketplaces in history creates every day, all day,

… that characterizes IR#4,

… is an explosion in the need for businesspeople who are able to lead others in meetings, when managing or when selling,

… who actually know what they are doing when they lead or follow.

What businesspeople do when they learn how to lead from Aji is design OPNS, or a Leadership Offer, to help others fulfill their intentions to produce outcomes in competitive situations that the leader understands better than their followers.

In return for their leadership, followers agree to:

1. Accept the leader’s interpretations of threats to avoid, obligations to fulfill and opportunities to exploit.

2. Fulfill the leader’s requests to coordinate thought and action with other followers, employees or colleagues to produce outcomes.

The explosion in the need for leaders in IR#4 is a consequence of how IR#4’s competitive situations change throughout the day, especially changes in standards of value — what is most important, useful and worthwhile.

This means someone working in a warehouse who is using a new application will inevitably find themselves in meetings where they understand the competitive threats, obligations and opportunities the application brings into existence for the business better than their colleagues, employees or employers.

In IR#4, every business owner, executive, manager, supervisor, salesperson and individual contributor must know, formally, how to lead people through competitive situations.

Businesspeople lead by offering helpful interpretations about how to cope with and exploit a new situation’s threats, obligations and opportunities that they are in a better position to understand than those around them.

They lead by explaining the new specific threats, obligations and opportunities in a competitive situation, or with a new device or competitor, so that their followers, including their managers, are able to think and act effectively in the situation to fulfill their intentions.

To lead, businesspeople need to be able to speak descriptions, meanings, relevance, value and purposes (DMRVP) about a situation’s threats, obligations and opportunities, so that they are (1) easy, (2) enjoyable and (3) definitive to hear.

#11 – Build strategic and competitive business organizations

Business organizations are groups of businesspeople whose orientations, intentions, commitments and skills are arranged, or organized, around the fulfillment of a shared intention to make money by thinking, acting and working together.

The strategic and competitive purpose of building business organizations is two-fold:

First, to increase the power of businesspeople’s leadership roles with their followers and in the marketplace.

Second, to exploit the organization’s capital structures,

… i.e., (1) human capital,(2) capital equipment, (3) capital inventories of OPNS, (4) operating capital and (5) financial capital.

To compete successfully in rapid change, increasing complexity, intense competition and advancing technologies,

… a business organization’s orientations, intentions to produce outcomes and business skills,

… need to be ambitious, thoughtful, tactical, strategic and competitive,

… and not task-oriented or commonsensical.

The organization’s competitive capabilities using the first 10 parts of The Strategy need to be solid.

That is, the businesspeople who constitute the organization, or who coordinate thought and action together to produce outcomes to fulfill the business’ mission, must first be able to:

Part #1 – Constitute their real and deeply meaningful financial, career and business ambitions

Part #2 – Use Philosophies of Care and Competition that exploit the new tactical, strategic and competitive capabilities computers and the internet make possible

Part #3 – Learn Aji’s Tactical, Strategic and Competitive Knowledge, instead of using common sense

Part #4 – Formulate and use Ethics of Power, instead of being busy and working hard with common sense

Part #5 – Produce offers, practices, narratives and strategies that are fresh, new, highly valued and scarce relative to demand that they can use to execute The Strategy in as little as 15 minutes, instead of getting jobs done

Part #6 – Build IR#4 Networks of Capabilities (customers, employees, colleagues, etc., whose ambitions and knowledge are strategic), instead of using IR#3’s networks of convenience because they are cheap, obvious and local

Part #7 – Increase autonomies continuously by working with IR#4 Networks of Capabilities to reduce unwanted limitations and constraints to produce highly valued accomplishments,

… instead of being “too busy” working hard with common sense to learn, communicate, coordinate and design

Part #8 – Produce highly valued and scarce accomplishments every day, instead of making incremental improvements that don’t really matter

Part #9 – Establish identities of superior trustworthiness, value, authority, leadership and dignity with customers, employers, employees, colleagues and vendors,

… instead of faking it, being arrogant and prideful, or bullshitting

Part #10 – Hold highly compensated leadership roles in the marketplace with followers who accept their interpretations about competitive situations and fulfill their requests to coordinate thought and action,

… instead of common and low-paid ones

Then the focus on the business organization’s competitiveness shifts to using Ethics of Power that continually increase the business’:

#12 – Anticipate future competitive situations

Anticipating new competitive situations — their threats, obligations and opportunities — is essential in rapid change.

The skill to anticipate new competitive situations increases the amount of time businesspeople and businesses have to design fresh, new offers, practices, narratives and strategies (OPNS) needed to increase their competitive capabilities and advantages, or their value in the marketplace.

The more time employees, employers, vendors, colleagues and customers have to design fresh, new OPNS, especially their goods and services,

… the more likely they are to create and maintain monopolies and auctions by:

1. Being first to market with their OPNS

2. Having the best designed OPNS with the most valuable marginal utilities

3. Having the most complex and powerful combination of new technologies or tools

Time is the first space of possibilities that limits and shapes businesspeople’s thoughts and actions to fulfill their financial intentions.

The more time businesspeople have to design and execute fresh, new OPNS because they are able to anticipate competitive situations, the more likely they are to fulfill their financial, career and business intentions.

When there is no time because a competitor’s new offer is already launched, thought and action to take market share with competitive advantages, or to fulfill financial, career and business intentions, is no longer possible.

When individuals or businesses create a monopoly with their OPNS by being (1) first to market, (2) the best designed or (3) the most powerful combination of new technologies,

… they produce auctions that drive up their value, incomes and revenues.

Producing monopolies and auctions with fresh, new OPNS for employers, employees, customers, colleagues and vendors compels or seduces Buyers to:

1. Accept offers quickly, which produces the lowest possible transaction costs

2. Increase their willingness to pay a premium, which produces the highest possible purchase price, or compensation