A few weeks ago, I was in conversation with a leadership team. They had asked me to review their messaging, when someone painfully said: “Everything we say sounds reasonable, but none of it makes anyone care.”
That line hit me because it nailed the real problem: not that you sound wrong, but that you sound boring. In business, boring is fatal. But how do you get rid of it?
Through differentiation. Differentiation is what makes people excited. It’s what makes them care.
I’m a differentiation advisor. Leaders bring me in when they want people to light up about something that matters: a product, a service, a brand, an internal policy, a movement, a team, a speech, a book, a video. The challenge is always the same: “What’s going to get the right people to stop and pay attention? What’s going to turn this into the conversation everyone wants to have? What’s going to make them care?”
Differentiation isn’t a marketing trick. It’s giving people a reason to choose you over anyone else. It’s why customers cross the street to shop with your company instead of a competitor’s. It’s why an idea spreads through an organization like wildfire while another one dies on the conference room floor. And it applies to everything: products, services, personal brands, even policies.
If something matters to you and you want it to matter to others, you’ve got to make it stand out. You’ve got no other option. You’ve got to make it feel not just logical, but fascinating and essential.
Differentiation is the foot in the door. It’s what stops people mid-sentence and makes them say, “Hold on. Really? Tell me more.”
Trap One: Conventional Logic
The first trap in creating differentiation is logic. Here’s the paradox: most leaders are brilliant at being logical. And, when it comes to differentiation, that brilliance is exactly what keeps them stuck.
Clinging to conventional logic ties you to assumptions long past their expiration date. What feels “obvious” often isn’t truth; it’s just an old workaround. Blockbuster thought late fees were untouchable. Taxi companies laughed at ride-sharing. The leaders of these firms were right . . . until they weren’t.
I understand why leaders keep their feet firmly planted in logic: it seems safe. But conventional logic keeps you moored to the past.
Strong differentiation demands a leap into illogic. You need to ask questions that sound absurd: “What if the opposite were true? What if the thing we’ve always clung to doesn’t matter anymore? What if the story we’ve been hiding is the very thing that sets us apart, and makes people care?”
When you dare to think this way, you stop playing the same old game. You redraw the field into something that’s never been seen before.
Trap Two: Familiarity
The second trap to differentiation is familiarity. You know your business too well. You crop out the very things that could hook someone else. The stories that could electrify others? You dismiss them before they leave your mouth.
That’s why you have to become a stranger in your own business. Step back and walk in like you don’t belong there. What would make you do a double-take? What little quirk would make you curious enough to dig deeper?
I’ve seen this again and again. An executive will start telling me about an odd early customer, or a side project they did with Apple, or a strange obsession from childhood. Mid-sentence, they’ll stop themselves and apologize for “getting off track.” And almost every time, that’s the gold: the thing that makes others lean forward; the thing that makes them care.
The very stories you’re most likely to dismiss are often the ones most worth building on.
