Magician's Rock Star Metaphor For When Prospect's Falsely Believe They Can Do-It-Themselves

It wasn't long after my cubrep days that I came across one particularly toxic delusion of the internal IT team.

In those days, they were firmly under the grip of the Finance dept.

A combo which could go out of its way to ensure disaster.

Selling innovative modules plugging gaping Enterprise system holes, not a week would seem to pass without a bean-counter-in-chief dismissing our approach in the guise of saying their own tech staff could come up with what I offered.

Spoiler alert hardly necessary, but never, not once, did any such company do so.

Yet their entire operation was hammered by their continual insistence.

I recount still today such experiences.

Such as the Board meeting where all convened agreed to my Proposal. Then left me aghast as only the finance guy deferred. He wanted time to give it a try. It was 'temporarily' granted. He should've got sacked. Even the top boss couldn't believe what happened.

Here's a paragraph from PR surrounding the upcoming 50th anniversary of a bigtime magic duo;

Penn & Teller have been criticised for revealing the closely guarded secrets of the trade, by, for instance, performing the “cups and balls” trick with clear plastic cups. They’ve been refused membership of the Magic Circle, the famous society of magicians, because of such routines. [Penn Jillette:]
“The whole idea of keeping secrets is so offensive. I love the fact that you can go on the internet and find out how a magic trick is done; pretending that all we have is secrets is an insult. It’s like, if I were to come to you and say, ‘Here’s the words of the Dylan song, here’s the sheet music, here’s the tuning of his guitar, that’s all you need.’ Well, no, it’s not.”

I'm no fan of the 'singer' cited. Yet you can swap in your chosen music icon of choice and make the same inescapable point.

Thinking you know the ingredients and recipe and being able to replicate from them afresh, alone, yourself to the required standard are two wildly different things. Which in our business solutions sphere have a chasm between.

Back in the day, I had a raft of handles that did open eyes, and close down the folly.

Often starting from posing the gentle query along the lines of;

'Are you a software house now, then?'

In the last few years, I've had this in its latest guise. People that think they can improve their video calling for themselves.

Yep.

Just get on Youtube. Watch a couple of videos on 'the topic'. Job done.

I'm not kidding. And these can be serious people, too.

That Buzzfeed listicle on '12 ways to close more Sales in video meetings' is sure to make all the difference. And only takes 2-minutes to read. Why bother with me, hey?

Away from my withering English sarcasm, is a central point.

The arena-filling magician's "secret" is inimitable.

For over twenty years now best-practice has been growing around outsourcing all that is not truly core to your business.

For anything outside that sure, you can take the lyrics, score, instruments and start your own song. The only sound emerging will be the screams of both those distracted trying reinvent someone else's wheel and the stranded colleagues desperately awaiting their output which never comes, accompanied by the steady beat of clients leaving you.