As a worker aspiring to become a true professional, you must clearly understand what resources you have at your disposal and what authority you can consolidate and command. In the early stages of work, when resources are unknown and difficult to master, confusion and emptiness inevitably follow. You want to accomplish things but find yourself unable to do so. Therefore, the most critical thing is to grasp the resources you need.
To articulate ideas more clearly, I'll categorize resources into three types: A = Existing Resources B = Undeveloped Resources C = External Resources
1. Combining existing resources to strengthen and create a multiplier effect (A × A = B)
Think about the resources currently available in your environment—your company, school, and other institutions you can access and use—and how they can be combined with your own expertise, responsibilities, and authority. Here are some simple examples:
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Have business development needs and a company-wide contact list? Look through it to identify upstream and downstream suppliers and clients of your brand enterprise, and use your current position to find business development opportunities.
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Want to increase your team's learning capacity? Mobilize a book club using your company's existing venues and meeting rooms.
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Want to improve data analysis skills? With your company's existing customer member list, can you gain the opportunity to privately practice different tools?
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Want to enhance your professional capabilities? Can your company's existing colleagues and mentors answer your questions and help you increase your value for the future?
In essence, existing resources × your own resources generate resources that didn't previously exist, including knowledge, capital, collaboration opportunities, and networks—encompassing both tangible and intangible resources.
2. Resources you don't yet have—find ways to obtain them or develop them yourself (A + B > A)
Often you want to execute ambitious projects but discover a knowledge gap between your current abilities, resources, and the desired results. For example, imagine you have a friend with technical skills who wants to scale up a factory operation but lacks experience in equipment and workflow layout. In such cases, you need to find methods to acquire this knowledge.
So-called "methods" to obtain resources include finding the "right people," which can mean hiring full-time employees or bringing in consultants to assist on-site. Alternatively, you can extensively visit other actual factory facilities, accumulate experience, develop solutions hands-on, and establish internal knowledge systems and assets.
Both approaches certainly require financial investment, but they allow you to accumulate practical experience from which you discover the details and adjustable aspects of each stage. The next time you face similar situations, you can reduce errors and lower time and financial costs.
In simple terms, when facing resources you don't yet have, you should think about how to acquire the "key connection between point A and point B," and ultimately this strengthens your existing resources.
Using the factory example above, existing resources (A) + resources you don't yet possess (B), connected through methodical approaches and retained internally, support the development of your existing resources.
3. Resources others have—consolidate through networks and capital (C + C > A)
Under this premise, you'll discover that sometimes when you want to accomplish something but lack resources in others' hands needed to make the project reality, you must consolidate those external resources (note: the second point is about "acquiring" resources accumulated from outside; this point is about "consolidating" resources).
For example, you want to create printed products. You have content ideas but lack design and printing expertise; you have ideas but lack web development expertise.
This is similar to outsourcing—entrusting specialized tasks to professionals while focusing on the application and allocation of your existing resources, and using project management techniques to control the project's completeness and execution level.
Thus, other people's resources (C) × other people's resources (C) expand the effect of your existing resources (A), while also saving internal time on communication and learning costs.
In Strategy 9's discussion of "resource theory," it similarly mentions resource mastery and allocation capability, viewing enterprises (individuals) as a mechanism of "resource governance." By integrating resources and reducing costs, we form important competitive advantages. Once you can apply resources effectively in your life, you'll navigate it with ease.
