The Differentiator Problem
This whole journey began nearly a decade ago with a simple exercise in continuous improvement.
At the time, I was working at IMPACT, a marketing agency with a newly constructed Messaging and Branding workshop we provided to clients. What's one of the best ways to test and improve a new service? Try it on yourself.
We gathered our CEO, COO, Sales and Client Services leaders in one room to put them on the client side of the table for our workshop. To say we walked into this process nervous would be an understatement. We were ready to be torn apart by some of the most critical marketers in the world.
What happened instead was nothing short of magic.
The "Our People" Problem
As we waded through the first few exercises to distill our brand style and message, we ran into a roadblock. In trying to define our key differentiators, we kept coming back to the same conversation: "Our People."
Now, it's very difficult to successfully use "People" as a key differentiator. First, it's incredibly overused. Almost every company will tell you their people are amazing and unmatched. When everyone says it, it doesn't differentiate you at all. Second, it's an incredibly difficult differentiator to prove. How are our people different? What makes them better?
The problem was that every single person in the room knew our people were truly unique. They were the lifeblood of the company, and there truly was a quality in them that you'd be hard pressed to find elsewhere. But nobody could articulate what that quality was.
The Search for Words
In the week that followed, our team brainstormed at length. We left one meeting with nothing more than the word "it" to describe the quality, followed by a litany of adjectives that helped explain part of what this quality was. But none truly captured what we wanted to say. Nothing felt "big" enough to explain the magnitude of this elusive trait.
Upon inspection of our people, one incredibly important personality trait came to light: our team had this uncanny ability to embody paradoxes. We could think of examples over and over again where two traits were so opposite that they should never exist within the same individual. Somehow our people were able to use those opposing traits together to create something far better than they otherwise would have been able to.
But the simple paradox wasn't explanation enough. There was something layered on top that made it truly magic.
I poured over dictionary and thesaurus entries for days to try and find a word that might possibly help describe this ability. And I found nothing.
What's a marketer to do when there isn't a good enough word? Create one, of course.
The innate ability to take incredibly opposing forces within yourself, balance and tune them appropriately, and create a result that is truly the highest point achievable.
The Moment
I had hit a wall. I was frustrated and going nowhere, so I decided to sleep on it.
And that's when it happened. The moment when the stars aligned and I found myself halfway between asleep and awake, when suddenly an idea emerged.
There were two words that individually described half of this quality. Equilibrium is the state in which opposing forces (in this case, two opposing personality traits) are perfectly balanced. Peak describes the highest point or the pinnacle of achievement.
Peakuilibrium was exactly the word I was searching for. It seemed almost obvious once I found it, as if I should have seen it the whole time.