How Psychology 101 Impacts Your Business

Do you recall Abraham Maslowe's 'Hierarchy of Needs' from Psych 101? Maslowe postulated that in order for human to reach their full potential, they had to have increasingly complex levels of needs met.

His diagram to represent these needs resembled a pyramid.
Imagine a similar equilateral triangle with the base on the bottom. This triangle has five layers.

From top-to-bottom, they are:

• Expertise
• Correction
• Organization
• Knowledge
• Passion
  

I call this Barry's Hierarchy of Expertise and, similar to Maslowe's, you must satisfy the most basic levels before progressing towards the next. The result culminates with the attainment of expertise in your chosen field.

Before we are able to call ourselves an expert, we must satisfy each of these layered criteria:

PASSION Passion is the foundation for all expertise; without it you will find difficulty at each succeeding level. I believe it to be the common denominator is all successful ventures. Discover what it is you're passionate about and latch on to it.

KNOWLEDGE When you're passionate about something, you read as much you can about it; you become an evangelist for your topic; it consumes you; perhaps you bore even your family because every conversation comes back to that one central topic. The pursuit and acquisition of knowledge about that which you are passionate is critical.

ORGANIZATION As you acquire more knowledge, you begin to formulate a system, a set of techniques or principles. The passion that led to your knowledge bank is organized into relatable packages of information. Crucial to this level is the actual structure of your information. The manner in which organize your information will define you as an expert.

CORRECTION As you organize your information packages and put them in operation, eventually problems occur; unknown variables appear that must be identified and resolved. This stage can be lengthy but once all the issues are resolved and your organized knowledge base is error free, you enter the realm of...

EXPERTISE Your knowledge is tested; you've worked through each exception and overcome every barrier. You are now ready to take this knowledge to the world; you own it. Those to whom you pass it will reasonably expect that they will achieve similar results.

For more details about this topic, see my article in The Marketing Syntax Ezine.

--BWM