The Amber Zone - Ignoring The Signs To Slow Down
Most companies move so fast that they don’t pause long enough to rediscover their original genius— they blow right through it like cars through a traffic light.
If you think about traffic lights—red, yellow, and green—the hardest light to deal with is the yellow light because we don’t know exactly what to do.
Do we slow down like commonsense (and the law) dictates?…
Or do we floor it and speed forward to try and beat the red light?…
We’re not good at the amber zone… and this is how it plays out:
When things are going well, we find ourselves in a green zone where we’ve got the time to think. This is when we are making decisions with a full understanding of the picture, out of a clear and level-headed place, and are able to accurately assess opportunities and risks without fear or hesitation.
The emotion behind the green zone is curiosity and opportunity.
We are driven by excitement for the things that can happen to us and an intuitive sense of creativity and experimental genius.
But inevitably, we come out of the green zone and slide into the amber zone, where urgency cranks up. This is when we feel that subtle pull of pressure when we have a coming deadline or a conflict arising, which adds unforeseen complexity and chaos into the mix.
However, it isn’t a burning bridge, we feel like we have time and control.
It is in these moments that we are faced with that warning light, but we don’t notice the signals.
Before we know it, we’re in the red zone, where we operate out of fear.
This is when we keep ourselves small and think not out of creative thought but commoditized thought, focusing on what we feel we should do or must do and not what we are most deeply called to do.
It is from this zone of thinking—this red zone—that original genius is threatened and actively degraded.
But how do we develop that awareness to stop, to breathe, and to save ourselves before it’s too late?
Wisdom In Layers - The Inner Facets Of Visual Models
When we stop and breathe and think more deeply than the rest of the marketplace, we can differentiate ourselves in ways that the marketplace isn’t and can’t.
That’s because deep thinking is the only true differentiation that there is in the marketplace.
And when we apply this depth of thinking and investigation to models, we uncover that underneath every model is a profound depth of insight that can help us drive our our businesses and the decisions that shape them from the green zone.
Level 1 – The Story:
If all you’re selling is the story at the surface and the words on top of the model, the market knows that this is shallow and superficial. This is when you’re just focusing on the message but not the movement underneath, like a speaker reading words that weren’t written by them off of a teleprompter.
This is the shallowest level of interpretation and, unfortunately, the level where most businesses that fail to take off exist.
Level 2 – The Structure:
Below the story is the structure that sits behind it. This structural underpinning allows something to be repeatedly, reliably and dependably delivered to the marketplace.
When you’re aware of the structure behind something, you can understand how it works, optimize it, and systematize it because you’re operating knowing what makes it tick and how it is likely to make others tick.
Level 3 – Solution:
Before building the structure behind the thing you do, you must find the solution to build that structure around. Only then can you repeatably solve the known problem that your audience has or in some cases the problems they don’t know they have.
There have been relatively successful businesses built from this depth of thinking, but they are never the ones who stand out and change the world. This is because having a solution that your audience will buy is very different to transforming your audience with indelible, intuitive genius.
Level 4 – Discovery:
While most business owners will stay at the Solution level, something begins to happen when you look more deeply into the structure of your business and why it is the way it is—with an eye on what truly sets you apart. This is the place from which original genius starts, once you’ve taken the time to pause, taken a breath, and thought more deeply about the grander purpose of your organization.
Once you embark on this journey, there is no going back as you begin to see things in ways you never have before. From the invisible design of your original genius to the invisible deepest drivers of your audience (that you haven’t known about yet), the unknown slowly starts to take form and come into focus.
Level 5 – Tension:
The OGs (original geniuses) of any marketplace have learned that all value lies in ambiguity and that value can only be truly expressed when you can articulate a level of tension that others haven’t seen.
This is the deepest level of the problem (the unknown unknown) that everyone else is blind to. At this level of depth, the founder has the realization that if they solve that tension, they solve everything above it—creating something that has never been created or envisioned before.
Level 6 – Wisdom:
Underpinning all this is the intuitive wisdom that the great inventors and creators display. They may not know what the tension is, and they may be a long way away from solving the problem, but they have the wisdom to know there is something there that matters.
Thomas Edison didn’t know how to make the lightbulb work or even how to get electricity to individual houses when he started out, but he did have the wisdom to know that electric light was the future, and it would solve all the problems of hand-lit, kerosene street lamps and the gloom of living by candlelight.
He understood the tension; he had to invent the solution and then he had to create the structure of electrical distribution to make it all work.
That all became the COmpany genius of general Electric.
Slowing Down To Speed Up
As you dive deeper and deeper into these layers and unearth the hidden wisdom within, you can find that even this process by which models are layered is a model in and of itself.
It’s a model of discovery—one that can and will push you and your company to deeper depths and higher heights.
After all, it is from this place of true wisdom in the market, where you are the Sage to your audience, that you operate from green-zone thinking with clarity of mind, clarity of communication, and clarity of purpose.
So when you’re faced with that decision to slow down and breathe or floor the gas and barrel into the red zone, consider the insights (and income) waiting for you when you take the time to think.
Slowing down is the key to speeding up—to realizing the largest opportunities and landing the biggest deals—and visual models are the vehicle to take you there.
Whether you’re a growing SMB or a billion-dollar enterprise, we’ve successfully used models to help organizations codify organizational genius and canonize company legacy.
And you can, too …if you pause and breathe long enough to re-discover it.
Ready to experience the multi-faceted magic of models for yourself?
If you accept the call to think and act more deeply…
And you’re ready to turn your original genius into potent visual models so you can preserve your genius over time and take your business to staggering heights…
Apply using the link below.
Watch my masterclass to learn more about The Models Method, or apply to work 1:1 with me to get a custom suite of models for your business.
