Personal Strategic Positioning: Don’t Be Dull

My Position Is Made

I can drink green tea. I don’t. It makes me nauseous and I prefer other types.

I can be an NFL fan. I don’t. I gave it up to focus my time and attention elsewhere.

I can specialize, be rigorous, offer empathetic support, deliver fast results, work collaboratively, operate established systems, appeal to broad audiences, and work long term with clients. 

I don’t. 

I’ve decided to take a position. My position.

Every Once In a While, Listening to Podcasts Isn’t a Waste of Attention

I was walking up Arbutus Street, heading home from my beach workout, when Dan Porter shared Roger Martin’s business strategy framework on the My First Million podcast:

For a position to be a good position, the opposite of that position has to be a reasonable position too.

“We have the best customer service” isn’t a strategic position because what’s the opposite? “We have the worst customer service”? Nobody chooses that. Real strategy requires trade-offs—choosing what you don’t do.

Real strategy requires trade-offs. Choosing what you don’t do.

• IKEA makes you assemble your own furniture to keep prices low.
• Facebook breaks things to move fast.
• Snapchat sacrificed permanence for privacy.

My first thought: “How does this apply to ARC?”

My second thought, hours later: “Wait… does this apply to me?”

Your Wiring Is Your Position

If you businesses need strategic positioning to succeed, what about individuals? 

Humans make trade-offs too, many of which are built into us. Psychologists just don’t call it “positioning.”

Take Values. Shalom Schwartz mapped 19 human values into a circle where each value has a diametrically opposite value. High self-direction (freedom to cultivate your own ideas) requires low conformity. You can’t maximize both “forge your own path” AND “follow established norms.” 

Same goes for hedonism versus humility, achievement versus benevolence. Etcetera. Neither is wrong. They’re trade-offs.

We confuse values with virtues. Virtues are table stakes, like justice, courage, integrity, knowledge. Martin calls these “operating imperatives” in business. Everyone has to work on virtues. But values? They require choices that are largely wired into you, whether you realize it or not.

Then there’s personality. The Big 5 traits and their branches exist on spectra. Wherever you land, there’s a valid mirror position:

• My 96th percentile Industriousness: I work relentlessly and complete tasks. The cost? I “don’t know how to relax or when to quit.” 
• My 1st percentile Neuroticism: I’m unflappable under pressure and hard to discourage. The cost? People think I’m emotionally flat and I sometimes miss threats because I’m overconfident.
• My 90th percentile Intellect, 9th percentile Aesthetic Openness: I grasp complex concepts fast and build creative, logical frameworks. But I’m practically blind to aesthetics and art.

Someone with the opposite wiring—spontaneous, emotionally reactive, aesthetically creative—can thrive doing completely different work. Neither of us is “better.” We’re just suited for different positions.

Both can win. Just at different games.

And both will struggle if we refuse to make strategic trade-offs. 

A Flat Edge Against a Dull Side Doesn’t Create a Blade

So I started wondering: What is my position? 

I pulled up my personal user manual and stared at my Focus Line (what I DO): 

“I dismantle conformity waste by reverse-engineering uniqueness into systematic frameworks that transform scattered effort into compounding advantage.”

That’s my positive positioning. My capabilities. I’ve spent years honing it.

Then I brainstormed with an LLM to channel Roger Martin: “If this is what I DO, what DON’T I do?”

The LLM busted out an overwhelming eight-dimension laundry list, including:

• I don’t specialize (I explore, pattern match, and go meta-level)
• I don’t lead through empathy (I provide intellectual precision, not emotional warmth)
• I don’t operate what I build (I research and move on, not maintain long-term)
• I don’t serve mass markets (I go narrow/rigorous, not broad/accessible)
• I don’t deliver quick fixes (I deliver lasting, compounding impacts)

Something clicked when I read this. A new dimension to my self-understanding. Articulating my superpowers always felt aspirational. But articulating my constraints felt real.

Whenever I’ve attempted these don’ts, I dislike it, suck, and lose steam. I figured I needed to try different strategies and keep at it. But maybe these aren’t things I need to get better at. They’re the cost of my strengths. The necessary trade-offs.

I’ve been sharpening only one edge, what I do well. But without the other edge, the explicit boundaries, there’s no blade. No clarity. No positioning.

So I distilled my laundry list of don’ts into a Boundary Line:

“I don’t specialize in single fields, lead through empathy, work in groups, operate what I build, or serve mass markets.”

Strong Positions, Loosely Held

Do I know if this personal positioning strategy is exactly right? Of course not.

Some of my boundary line feels wrong. It suggests I don’t get energized working with people, but I do in the right contexts. I’m still calibrating.

And I worry about self-inflicted harm from sharpening the wrong edge. What if I’m wrong about my boundary line? What if I convince a trusting client to close doors they’d be better off going through?

But here’s what I believe: We serve ourselves and society better by paying the cost of our strengths and making strategic trade-offs aligned with our wiring. The alternative, trying to be everything to everyone, leads to scattered effort and dullness.

So my position on personal positioning strategy is solid. But I’ll keep honing it. When I make mistakes, I’ll adjust. That’s what sharp tools do, they get resharpened. Both sides.

Don’t Be Dull

You’ve heard the saying, “If you don’t stand for anything, you’ll fall for everything.”

Here’s the corollary for personal positioning:

“If you don’t sharpen your positioning, you’ll drift into dullness.”

Yes, there’s risk in drawing the wrong boundaries and wielding false edges. But the greater risk, as Roger Martin would tell his business clients, is having no position at all. Trying to appeal to everyone. Grinding with a dull blade that cuts nothing.

I’d rather sharpen the wrong edge than grind with no edge at all.