WATCH: Exploit Explore

Today I’d like to talk to you about the concept of Exploiting and Exploring. So if you can imagine that many years ago, you’re part of a tribe and they’re living in a little cave here. The have their little fire and they’ve got some bushes nearby. And everything is fine. They’ve got a regular food source and everyone’s really happy.

What do you think would be necessary for them to actually stop exploiting what they have here, which is very convenient, and go trekking all the way over here to explore what might be over there. What are some things that might happen? Well it could be that the food source runs out or that they begin to have a curiosity about what else is out there.

So there could be two different types of things going on.

Lack of or A Desire For

And then they go out and explore. And then you need to think about what might need to be happening if they would like to cross the river here and explore over here. Well, that would require a lot of innovation. They’d have to either learn a new skill to swim or build a bridge or create a boat or something else which would require a lot of innovation which is again a whole extra level of ingenuity, exploring and new brainpower.

So now what I’d like to do is explore this with you in regards to business. So if we look at explore here and exploiting here we can see that if we’re just exploiting our current services, our current products and services, We can actually end up being Unsustainable in the long term and you can see so many businesses that have continued to use their own business model with the rapidly changing around them technology and whatever, changing habits demographics and they’re simply unsustainable and go out of business but you can also have some startups that are continuously exploring, Trying something new, trying something new, continuously trying something new and actually are not commercially viable.

Now if you’re doing neither these things you get the stagnation, again a lot of bigger businesses fall into that trap. Well, what we need nowadays is to say “what can we exploit?” what the products and services that we can exploit and “where do we need to continue exploring?”

Integrated Sustainable Growth

So I’d like you to consider this with your team and ask “Where do we have things that we can exploit and you know continue to get a good revenue from?” And “Where are the areas that we need to explore, where do we need to find new things and be innovative?”

So that’s food for thought insights for busy leaders and managers in just 150 seconds.

With best regards,

David Klaasen

Talent4Performance help business leaders clarify complexity. We inspire people and drive continuous performance improvement, so they can convert thinking into action and results.

©David Klaasen – 2023