Why Knowing What You Want Is Like Spaghetti Sauce

I was watching the clip above on TED by Malcolm Gladwell about how Howard Moskowitz, a food scientist, discovered 1/3 of americans liked extra chunky spaghetti sauce. To cut a great story short Howard tested lots of different types of Spaghetti sauce and after testing every conceiveable type of sauce, Howard discovered that 1/3 of people liked extra chunky spaghetti sauce and that no other sauce company was servicing that need, by tapping into this gap in the market Prego, the brand he was working with, made $600 million.

What stuck out for me was that spaghetti sauce companies always researched their product by asking people what kind of sauce they like and no one ever said they liked extra chunky sauce, even though it turned out a 3rd of people actually did.

Which I think proves what Super Coach Michael Neill say's that most people do not really know what they want, and are just ordering off the menu for what they think they can have.

For example if you're someone who is thinking about a change of career, promotion or looking to start up a new busniess, are you thinking about doing something that really lights your fire, that you'd love to do and would make a difference to people or are you thinking about doing something that you think you can, something that is already on the menu and doesn't particular inspire you or make you happy?

I was talking to a colleague at work other day he mentioned that he wanted to build a career but did not know what he wanted to do, he mentioned that he was thinking or doing a qualification in carpentry, which is a great proffesion, hell we'll always need carpenters. When I asked why he wanted to be a carpenter, he said 'he had looked at the local college prospectus and that was the only thing he thought he would be able to do', in other words he had looked at the menu and picked what he thought he could have. I went on to ask what was he good at, and what did he enjoy? He explained he is just great at dealing with people, and putting on recruitment event and after a short conversation he discovered that in fact he'd love to get paid to do event management.

Howard Moskowitz says "The mind knows not what the tongue wants" but you could also say "The mind knows not what the person wants?"

It also struck me that in order to find out what kind of spaghetti sauce 1/3 of people liked, Howard and Prego had to create it because it previously didn't exist, at least not on supermarket shelves.

So rather than ordering off the menu of what you think makes you happy, ask yourself what would you love to create?

And go do that!


Lenny

For more information about Lenny Deverill-West and making changes with Cognitive Hypnotherapy & NLP check out www.startlivingtoday.co.uk