How many ideas do we need?

There’s a Greek poem in which a cunning fox tries (and continually fails) to catch the seemingly vulnerable hedgehog. The fox keeps plotting the perfect attack. He keeps coming up with new ideas on how to be able to catch the hedgehog.

The rather simplistic hedgehog goes about its business unaware. When the fox ambushes, the hedgehog rolls himself into a spiny, impenetrable ball.

Undeterred, the fox keeps re-strategizing, but the pattern repeats itself over and over. And the poem concludes “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”

Jim Collins in his business book, Good to Great, discussed this as the hedgehog concept. He points out that the fox is just trying different things over and over and trying to implement new strategies, yet ending up with the same results. However, the hedgehog is doing one thing, over and over, and doing it successfully.

Sometimes we just need to figure out our one thing. What can we realistically be (and equally important, not be) the best at? What are we deeply committed to?

And what resources and energy will we devote to pursuing that one thing and doing it well, rather than continually searching around for new strategies and solutions? What’s our plan for being successful?

It might be smart to identify our own personal “hedgehog.” In our individual lives, we often try to do too many things rather that focusing on just one at a time. (and I can plead guilty to this!)

So if we’ve been busy being the fox, with all our possible ideas and plans, maybe we might want to allow ourselves to choose one at a time.

What do you think? Shall we be hedgehogs for a while?

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