Questions? (877) 643-7244
FutureNow Post
Monday, Apr. 9, 2007 at 3:31 am

Einstein’s Gunfight at the O.K. Corral

By Jeffrey Eisenberg
April 9th, 2007

wyattearp_from_startrekEinstein would’ve never fired a bullet.

Gunslingers are called in to solve problems–big problems–and gunslingers don’t charge by the bullet, they charge by the size of your problem. Executives are the modern day equivalent of gunslingers.

Einstein’s “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral” would be different. It might go down as it did in Star Trek’s “Spectre of The Gun“; a victory without firing a bullet. Einstein once said, “If I were given one hour to save the planet, I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem and one minute resolving it.”

So simple, so rational, so sane, so intelligent. But we love our gunslingers! They get the job done. We admire and celebrate them. They’re heroes. Just bury the bodies and move on.

We want ACTION! Do something NOW–anything–as long as it’s tangible. We want RESULTS!

But we don’t want to focus on fundamentals or ask strategic questions before we act. And that’s a shame.

I’m not the only one who thinks so, am I?

Comments (1)

  1. I live with this pain too. We want results to problems we haven’t taken the time to define. It is why creative thinkers (risk takers) leave well-paying jobs.

    I think that risk is not doing something without understanding why you do it - its doing something in spite of what you understand about it. People in corporate jobs are on a yearly-cycle of accountablity and most strategies don’t show results in one year. So we are forced into low-risk small scale thinking.

    To keep with the gunfighter theme;
    “Bullets are cheap, just keep shooting and you’re bound to hit someone you would have aimed at.”

Print this Article
Share

Jeffrey is CEO & co-founder of FutureNow an interactive marketing optimization firm. Jeffrey is the co-author of a Forbes.com column and of two Wall Street Journal, Business Week, USA Today and New York Times bestselling books: "Call To Action" & "Waiting For Your Cat To Bark?". Jeffrey is also speaker at major business conferences and corporate events. Jeffrey is proudest of the success stories from readers, students and clients using FutureNow’s Persuasion Architecture®, a framework for optimizing online experiences to maximize conversions to registrations, donations, lead generation, subscriptions and sales. You can friend Jeffrey on Facebook

More articles from Jeffrey Eisenberg

Name:
Your Company:
Your Email:
Your Phone:
Company Website (optional):


Comments (optional):

Marketing Optimization Blog
FREE Newsletter Sign Up
send it once every: