People comment that I seem very into self-improvement books. Maybe yes, maybe no. But the thing I realise as I age is that with my time so splintered and attention so fragmented, it’s very difficult for me to luxuriate in the aura of a fictional book setting, lose myself in it and follow its flow. I was reading a fiction book and getting bored with it, so I switched to “Trade-Off”.

And oh boy, was this such an easy and interesting book to devour. A feat no less, considering that I finished the last page on my last working day in 2024. You would have thought that the accumulated stress and exhaustion would have fired my headspace, but nooooooo, I sped through it during lunch, much like a cheetah chasing its prey.

It helped that the thesis of this book is easy to grasp: fidelity vs convenience. A product/service can aim to be either high fidelity or high convenience. Brands that try to have their cake and eat it are setting themselves up for failure as they realise that achieving high fidelity/high convenience is impossible and may even lead to disastrous outcomes, such as bankruptcy.

This book may come across as dated for some (you probably won’t score points for quoting its examples in a General Paper exam, an assessment that prizes recency), but I rather enjoyed reading them. How Tesla was launched as a high fidelity sports car that was incidentally an electric car. How Starbucks lost its competitive edge when it aimed to go mass market and set up stores inside supermarkets. How the iPhone set such a precedent for fidelity that it restored Apple’s battered reputation.

(Incidentally, I’m typing this on an iPhone.)

The author even came up with an equation: experience + aura + identity = fidelity. He didn’t come up with an equation for convenience, but his writing is so clear that I can remember the key points in my mind’s eye: convenience = cost + accessibility.

The trick to making your brand succeed is to be aware of where your competitors stand on the fidelity/convenience axis and see if you can be at the top. Otherwise, you scale back on either fidelity or convenience and aim to be good enough so that you can carve out a market share for yourself.

The last 0.5 chapter about formulating your personal strategy resonated deeply within me. Kevin Maney wrote that you can either choose to be at the top or strive to be most convenient in your area of expertise or create a novel category that fits what you are best at. An exclusive value which only you are uniquely qualified to provide.

Sounds like me. I’m not keen to live by others’ standards of excellence and professionalism. I just want to create things borne out of my eccentric nature and eclectic career. 😆