YOUR CENTER OF GRAVITY
You’re a quirky-brained maverick entrepreneur — visionary, creative, and often dazzled by possibilities. You’re determined to make a real impact on the world; you’ve gained initial traction and started building your team.
But something’s wrong. You’re fighting against headwinds that seem to get stronger the farther you advance towards your goal. You and your team might be skating the razor’s edge of burnout. Spending too much in marketing and sales with minimal impact to profitability. Scattering attention and resources across too many products or customer types. Hiring the wrong people.
So. Much. Effort.
Find the still point
What if I told you that the shortcut to solving all these challenges is to simply find the still point: the center of gravity around which everything pivots and orbits? No, it’s not a pipe-dream and I’m not smoking crack. But it does require a fundamental shift in how you view power – from control and force to harnessing the large-scale power principles found in nature, such as gravity.
High-growth brands like Apple, AirBnB, Nike, Virgin, Slack, Starbucks (and many more) demonstrate that it’s absolutely possible to:
Shift your sales strategy from hunting to order-taking
Reduce your “spray and pray” marketing spend and decrease cost of acquisition and increase customer lifetime value
Confidently know where to place your bets and when to say no to customer requests
Attract the right employees and partners who want to be part of your growing ecosystem
Attract and afford your dream team thanks to improving reputation and profitability
Maintain personal and professional balance and presence
In this scenario, the center of gravity shifts from outer-world activity to inner-world stability, pulling what you need into your orbit.
An apple reveals gravity
When an apple dropped on Isaac Newton’s head, so the story goes, he discovered the immutable law of gravity that keeps us all from floating off into space.
One of the best demonstrations of gravity in the business world is Apple’s enterprise division, which emerged from organic customer demand. Unlike competitors, Apple had gradually attracted a sufficient mass of loyal customers who insisted that they be allowed to bring their beloved Apple computers to work.
“We estimate that enterprise markets accounted for about $25 billion in annual Apple revenue in the last 12 months, up 40 percent over the prior year and they represent a major growth vector for the future,” said Tim Cook back in 2015, the only time they revealed the magnitude of this segment's impact to their business.
Bill Gates once famously told Steve Jobs that Apple would never become a success because it was too niche. But a niche market, properly defined, creates the compact density required to generate a gravitational pull.
Being “all things to all people” results in scattering energy and resources, and negates the potential for a compound effect. But Apple’s center of gravity — their Think-Different, aesthetic-loving rebel mindset — attracts customers who buy everything they put out. Apple can keep relentlessly creating, and every additional product adds to their gravitational pull.
Is it any wonder that Apple beat Microsoft to the $1 trillion valuation mark? Or that Apple was created by a neurodivergent founder?
Organizational gravity
What is gravity, anyway? It’s a universal force of attraction that acts on all matter in the universe. Gravity results from mass and density. If you increase mass, it’s harder to knock it off center. Increase density, and its mass occupies less space; its compactness increases gravitational power because you shorten the distance to the center. Lastly, the center of gravity is the point around which the forces of gravity act and everything’s in balance.
How can a Founder/CEO apply these concepts?
Gravity is the force that emerges at the intersection of shared value: value for customers, company, employees, partners and even the planet. I’ll elaborate more on this idea in another law of power, Attraction.
I define mass as the percent of loyal customers, who don’t drop off but are held by the gravity of value. Every additional loyal customer compounds that gravitational force, reducing the need for marketing spend. Your aim should be a bottom-heavy conversion funnel in which every customer stays, buys more, and refers your brand to others.
Density is created in two ways: first by focusing on a single customer segment whose desired value is deeply understood by the entire organization. Second, by simplifying what you offer to these priority customers, ensuring laser-focus on value creation.
When Jobs was brought back to Apple to save the company, he famously eliminated all the product complexity that had sprung up in his absence. Drawing a 2x2, he focused the company on only 4 products: desktop and portable for Consumer and Pro audiences. And these two audiences aren’t that different: they share the Think Different mindset. That’s density.
Maintaining your center of gravity is critical for resilience and balance in a rapidly changing world. Your center will be found vertically within your organization, striking the right balance of top-down direction with bottom-up agility. The exact spot differs by company and leader: Jobs established a single P&L and all decisions ran through him; Tim Cook, by contrast, has been moving that center of gravity downward to enable more agility and responsiveness.
Alternatively, think about a central axis point of stillness in the midst of spin: you’re not easily distracted by competitors or pulled in a million directions by marketplace demands. You’re able to confidently hold your center, with all employees understanding the bounds of what you stand for and where the bounds are.
And there are other balance points like the one between costs and value creation, innovation and execution, similarities and differentiation, etc. Mastering gravity is all about mastering simplicity and balance while aggregating mass (loyal customers) and density (a compact definition of value that’s delivered through limited products or services).
As you grow, you’ll naturally expand into new markets, products and services that still spin around the same center. Your core customer and primary value proposition stay the same, just like for every other high-growth brand. Larger does not mean more complex.
“Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it's worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.” - Steve Jobs
Gravity must be embodied
Here’s the catch: as the leader, you can’t implement gravity until you’ve embodied it personally. Like the Matrix, no one can tell you what it is; you have to experience it for yourself. As long as an idea remains theoretical and separated from lived experience, it’s nearly impossible to act on it.
What does gravity feel like to a Founder/CEO following the law of gravity?
Presence – A grounded sense of presence, with energy held in the body and not spinning within the brain. You’re able to hold your center in the midst of chaos.
Authenticity – the company is an organic extension of the leader’s motivations and values.
Stillness – not chasing what you seek, but allowing it to come to you.
Yes, this evokes the Eastern principles in Zen and Taoism. As 12th century Chan Master Hongzhi Zhengjue, writes:
"Just resting is like the great ocean accepting hundreds of streams, all absorbed into one flavor...
“Right in here the central pivot turns, the gateway opens. You accord and respond without laboring and accomplish without hindrance. Everywhere turn around freely, not following conditions, not falling into classifications. Facing everything, let go and attain stability.”
Cultivating the Empty Field, by Dan Taigen Leighton
This all might sound like woo-woo hand-waving, but it works. There’s a reason why Eastern principles are sweeping through the tech sector: the Who’s Who list of subscribers includes Steve Jobs, Jack Dorsey, Richard Branson, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Skoll and many others.
I’m not saying that these leaders are perfect or are always using these insights for benevolent outcomes. Steve Jobs was notorious for applying the old command-and-control laws of power to get what he wanted. But it is possible to borrow from what’s been proven to work without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Experience it for yourself
If you’re a quirky-brained maverick entrepreneur, let’s talk about coaching to start embodying these new laws of power; I have 2 spots available.
The Way integrates with the body and does not get stuck. From this unstuck place, engaging and transforming at the appropriate opportunity, the wisdom does not leak out.
Leighton, Taigen Dan; Wu, Yi. Cultivating the Empty Field (Tuttle Library Of Enlightenment) (p. 34). Tuttle Publishing
