Three Circles of Life & Intersection Point

There is an interesting phenomenon that i had observed in many things. This is more profound in things that DEPEND on one another but have have a CONFLICT of interest.

Business: SnapshotLet us begin with a simple case of any business /company. The stake holders here are Employees, Management & Inventors. Each have an interest in being associated and some times there is synergy and sometimes there are conflicts about what each stakeholder is expecting from each other  in the association. The higher the ‘area’ of the intersection, there greater is the chance for the business to survive.

 

 

Snapshot

Google: In case of Google search, the stakeholders are Users - Google – Advertisers. Here users interest lie is finding things they are looking for quickly, Advertisers interest lie in their Ads being shown up for the most relevant users, google’s interest lie in making money. At the center lies the common interest among all the participants. The responsibility of balancing the interests of User Vs Advertiser lies with Google. If it tilts more towards maintaining user experience, then it loses out on its revenue from advertisers. If it tilts towards advertisers, then it loses the users which in turn reduces the  inflow from advertisers. Hence, striking the balance is a very important thing.

 

 

Real Estate Agent: We can observe the same thing in Snapshotanother common situation as well. Here the real estate agent needs to find the right balance between the buyer’s expectation and the seller’s greed. Again the matching and balancing of conflict of interest becomes an important aspect for the real estate agent to be successful. The same is true for any ‘listings site’ (real estate, used cars, used things etc.,) that helps in connecting the buyers and sellers

Company X: I currently work for a company that has to balance the interests between its customers, channel partners and its own business objectives.

I had observed these in many instances and I am sure you will find many more such ‘Intersections’. Trying to focus on one thing makes that a particular circle big or move away from the intersection point, reduces the area of the intersection, which then becomes a recipe for disaster.

Conclusion: companies that have successfully balanced and focused on growing the intersection quickly have been more successful.

Here is an interesting post from Jeff Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn using a similar approach  in illustrating the ‘Intersection’ point

via : https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/20140824235337-22330283-the-three-qualities-of-people-i-most-enjoy-working-with?trk=pulse-det-nav_art

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