Tai Chi For a little over 4 months now, some coworkers and I have been attending a Tai Chi class during our lunch hour. I’ve found it to be a very beneficial experience, for mind and body. It’s refreshing to take a break from the hectic day to day office routine and focus solely on the body for an hour.

One of the most interesting concepts, that I am still trying to grasp, is Wu Chi. It is a meditative state entered before you begin the Tai Chi form. In Wu Chi, you move to an internal focus, where desires and cravings have no meaning and outside thoughts are lost. You essentially free your mind of all the clutter and focus inward.

So far I haven’t even come close to entering Wu Chi. My mind running 24-7 and all I seem to be able to do is slow the process down a little. The more I try to clear my mind the more thoughts seem to race across my mind. It’s almost as if I have an internal news ticker with headlines scrolling across it. My Si-fu, or teacher, calls this lack of focus “monkey mind.” The sad thing is, I actually thought of the topic for this post while I was supposed to be in Wu Chi.

I can’t help but think of how a lot of products are positioned in this same fashion. Positioning is the perception that happens in the minds of the target market. In the early planning stages is where you usually find the clearest idea of what the target market looks like. From there everything seems to get out of control. Situations arise that muddy what was a very clear picture.

  • A competitor is taking a different approach and there is an impulse to match and better their product claims.
  • Stockholders don’t like the message the product is promoting, it is “too edgy” for their taste.
  • Some have become bored with seeing the same product branding everyday and feel it needs a face-lift to boost the image.
  • An idea is introduced, that the selling message should be watered down and simplified to reach a larger audience.

These are all examples of things that I’ve seen get in the way of what was effective product positioning. When positioning a product, the focus should be solely on the target market. Outside factors only clutter message to consumers. We need to develop a Wu Chi for Positioning, in which we can solely focus on the target market, where outside factors that clutter and confuse the message to consumers are lost.

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Yesterday, Seth mentioned kanban, which is a term used by Japanese car factories to describe a sacrifice of proficient production to insure quality.

Basically with a kanban mindset in place the assembly line will stop, if needed, to maintain that all parts of production are no less than perfect. It seems there are a lot of lessons to be learned from the Eastern World.