The Impact Equation: Are You Making Things Happen or Just Making Noise?

What to do will no longer be obvious. People will have to take control in order to get anything done at all.

High Articulation means an idea is like a sword, cutting through the fog of the brain and hitting you in exactly the right place to make you understand it. If Contrast is about being seen, Articulation is about being understood, instantly.

We are more platform agnostic than ever. Coming to a new Web site, you may trust it or you may not, but you care much less about where an idea originates and much more about who shared it with you.

Learning metaphors helps with Contrast like you wouldn’t believe. If you want to build impact, learn and practice to understand metaphors. Learn how to build mental bridges between something that’s hard to understand to something that’s a lot easier to understand.

We have placed Contrast as our multiplier in the Impact Equation because its value cannot be underestimated. When Contrast is low, nothing you do has any impact whatsoever. When you begin to differentiate yourself, however, you create an immediate visibility that is not easily trumped.

This disconnection between sender and receiver has left us unprepared to truly deliver an effective message unless we’ve already tried and failed to do so multiple times.

creating today’s garbage is an important aspect of creating tomorrow’s gold.

Owners, for example, search out opportunities, while employees wait for opportunities to come to them. Owners create their own job titles by creating their own jobs, while employees wait for job openings to exist before they rise—which is a form of asking for permission.

So whether you are creating value by building a sense of freedom, learning how to do more with less, or creating more income, the mind-set is the same: Think like an owner.

He hadn’t been anointed or given the golden touch by some TV station. He didn’t need them. He had picked himself.