What the Heron Taught Me

When you stop and think about it, the heron has a poor prospect. He gets his dinner by standing on his spindly legs in the shallows waiting for an unsuspecting fish to come his way. And waiting. And waiting. And waiting some more.

If you’ve ever stood in the shallows, you’ve probably noticed that not a lot of fish are swirling around your feet. So, at first sight, it would appear that the heron’s business plan is not a smart one, and he would have a high likelihood of starving to death. But this is not the case.

A closer study of the heron reveals that he doesn’t fish just anywhere. You’re going to see the heron, or multiple herons, in the exact same shallows time after time, and there are many places along the coast where you will never see herons because they know it’s not worth their while being there..

This is because the heron has learned something that many professionals and entrepreneurs understand poorly: go to where the fish are.

As we all know, part of the evolutionary success of species is the ability to anticipate where your most likely food source will be. So, over the millennia, the successful herons who figured out the best fishing spots were the ones who lived to have little herons, and the less clever ones starved to death before they could procreate. The result is that every heron hatched has, hard-wired into his little birdy brain, a precise understanding of exactly where to stand in the shallows with a high prospect of fish swimming by.

Lawyers and architects and pharmacologists and sales professionals aren’t blessed with being born to know exactly where they could stand while clients and customers come to them. They have to learn this. (This not to say they aren’t as smart as herons– it’s just that they have so much more on their minds.)

Fortunately, though, there is a key paradigm that makes it easy to be where the clients are: be the expert that your ideal client needs you to be! This is what we call the Alignment Doctrine, the notion that your innate giftings, combined with your experience and your training, make you absolutely perfect for solving the needs and wants of certain specific clients.

In other words, while you may not have the heron’s instinct for where the fish are, you can be absolutely certain that if you produce the kind of work that you are uniquely qualified to do, you will have clients aplenty. And not just clients, but the best kind– those who understand the value of what you do, pay you well, and tell their friends about you. Glowingly.

Some professionals are a bit like the heron and seem to know instinctively where they belong. Many others don’t, and this is where I can often help, sometimes with a quick tune-up, sometimes with a major re-orientation. I don’t promise more fish, but a proper application of the Alignment Doctrine inevitably means higher professional success, safety, and enjoyment.