The first time I heard Johan Cruyff’s quote it blew my mind in its simplicity:
There is only one ball, so you need to have it.
Johan Cruyff discovered Total Football (the real football 😏) playing for the amazing Netherlands national team and Ajax during the 70s, and with it came the simple realization: if your team is in possession of the ball the other team can’t score!!!
This simple truth enabled Cruyff to focus his vision throughout his career. Under Cruyff, players no longer played in predefined positions. Instead, they focused on coordinated movement and teamwork with one goal in mind:
There is only one ball, so you need to have it.
What’s the underlying undeniable truth behind your business?
Startups tend to obsess over “the next great thing”. The race to predict changes and introduce solutions to the newest, latest problems. There is another approach though: look for the problems/needs that will NEVER change. Understand them and become the best in the world in serving them.
In this interview, Jeff Bezos shares Amazon’s undeniable truth:
We know customers like low prices and we know customers like big selection… And we know that customers like fast delivery. Those things will be true ten years from now.
And in this interview, he adds…
It is impossible for me to imagine a scenario where 10 years from now a customer comes to me and says “Jeff I love Amazon I just wish you delivered a little more slowly”. This is so inconceivable that you can have great conviction as a leader to continue to put energy into driving speed of delivery
The power of the undeniable truth
The power of the undeniable truth is that it gives you the confidence and courage to build for the long term. It provides the ongoing focus to ensure your actions align with your long term vision.
As counter-intuitive as it sounds, sometimes the key to change is focusing on the constant. A constant you can use as an anchor of certainty around which you build a disruptive vision of the future.
What’s the undeniable truth that guides you?