The Swiffer Strategy

The career and business opportunities we miss when we define ourselves too narrowly

With three dogs and two cats, our Swiffer gets a workout. I'm not sure there's a surface in the house that doesn't need some help.

I've always thought of the Swiffer as the love child of a mop and a duster.

Turns out the actual story is even better.

When P&G developed the Swiffer WetJet, it took two things it already knew really well: the highly absorbent materials used in Always and Pampers, and cleaning solutions like Mr. Clean.

Two completely different aisles at the grocery store. One new way to clean the floor.

In the business world, we call this an adjacency -  taking an existing capability and applying it somewhere new, usually not too far from where you started.

And I think adjacencies are one of the most overlooked opportunities for growth on the planet. Not just in business. In our careers, too.

The genius of adjacent thinking

Imagine a donut shop that's packed in the morning but practically empty after lunch.

They've already got a storefront, food preparation equipment, employees, and customers. What if they started selling ice cream in the afternoons?

Would it work? Maybe. But they've got a head start compared to someone opening an ice cream shop from scratch.

Or consider a wedding photographer who starts offering corporate headshots. Same camera. Same skills. Different customers.

That's the beauty of an adjacency. You're building on what you've already got. Looking back, my career has been full of them, and I attribute much of that to my 20 years as an Army Combat Engineer.

Combat Engineers are trained to solve field problems, often with whatever happens to be available. You learn to get creative when you don't have the tools you need.

Cot ends become levers, cocoa powder becomeds pudding, and duct tape? I can damn near do anything with a roll of duct tape...

One of my earliest corporate assignments was in risk management. The company was struggling with projects running over budget, missing deadlines, and failing to deliver results. I was tasked with developing a framework to better manage those risks.

My solution? The same risk management approach every private in the Army learned in basic training.

We used to carry little laminated cards and grease pencils so we could assess mission risks in the field. Identify what could go wrong, assess the likelihood and severity, and figure out how to mitigate the risks.

I took that same approach, adapted it for a multibillion-dollar corporation, and suddenly I looked like a genius.

I wasn't. I just brought something that worked in one world into another.

The problem? We often can't see what's next door.

We tend to define ourselves by our roles, industries, and experiences. Those definitions are useful, but they can also quietly limit what we believe is possible.

I see this all the time in coaching.

Not long ago, I was working with someone looking for a job in Human Resources. They were passionate about leadership development, improving culture, and helping teams reach their potential.

But their search was focused almost entirely on HR positions.

So we explored an adjacency.

HR functions often compete for limited budgets. But what about sales organizations? They need strong leaders, healthy cultures, and effective teams, too. And when those capabilities improve sales performance, there's a direct connection to revenue.

Suddenly, we can explore sales enablement, sales effectiveness, and leadership development roles embedded in revenue-producing organizations.

Same skills. Different part of the business.

And the conversation changes from "I'm looking for a job in HR" to "I help leaders and teams improve performance."

That's a much bigger world.

Making the invisible... well, visible

So how do we get better at seeing adjacencies?

First, simply recognizing that they exist is a start.

Second, expose yourself to different worlds.

I've spent 20 years in the Army and another 20 in corporate America, working across four Fortune 500 companies. That diversity of experience has helped me see connections that might otherwise be invisible.

Read outside your profession. Meet people who do something completely different. Take a class on something unrelated to your work. Try new things.

You never know what might connect.

One of my favorite techniques is a little game called force fit.

Take two seemingly unrelated things and make them work together.

I once worked with someone preparing to retire from the Air Force. He was an experienced program manager who wanted absolutely nothing to do with aircraft in his next career.

He also loved playing guitar. And he was pretty good, but was he going to land a record deal? Probably not.

So we tried a force fit.

Program management + guitar = ???

We started kicking around ideas.

Gibson. Fender. Yamaha. Maybe another company in the music industry.

Why couldn't he manage programs for a company that makes guitars instead of one that maintains aircraft?

Would those companies have suitable openings? We didn't know. And there's certainly more to a career transition than connecting two interests.

But something important had happened.

He'd spent years thinking about how to get away from aircraft. Now he was thinking about an entirely different industry where his existing skills might be valuable.

We didn't find him a job that day, we found places he hadn't thought to look.

That's a pretty good start.

Rules Unlearned Bonus: The Force Fit

Ready to try a force fit in your life?

Take six post-it notes. For 3 of them, write down one thing you’re really good at (professionally) on each.

For the other 3, write down one thing you love to do on each. Then create pairs and brainstrom with options come out if you had to make those work. 

I'd love to hear what you come up with.