Stick to Your Knitting

But understand what your knitting really is

I often use the story of my friend Frances Turner from chapter 7 of the book on how she lost over 150 pounds thanks to Calibrate, which subsumes the GLP-1 Wegovy into its transformation offerings. If it’s a pure transformation speech or workshop where I do not lead into it by first talking about the Experience Economy, I love it as my opening story, as it exemplifies so much of what I then get into.

In my work I have also made the point that Novo Nordisk should have been the company to come out with such a transformation offering, or Eli Lilly with Zepbound. They should go beyond merely manufacturing the physical goods but guide transformation themselves, since it takes so much than drugs to be truly transformed (as I recently discussed in “The Cost of Not Guiding Transformations”). It’s not unlike how smoking-cessation goods manufacturer Nicorette came out with My Quit, which subsumes its gum and patches into its program (although it’s not an actual economic offering but a free program, and so I don’t think is as good as it could be).

And the objection I’ve received? The manufacturers should just stick to their knitting.

The Origin of the Phrase

If English is your first language, you’ve probably heard this phrase which means to focus on what you do and not to get into matters you do not know. I did some digging and found out that it’s not that old a saying, coming from the late 1800s with some earlier precursors such as “mind” or “attend to your knitting”.

Surprisingly, it seems to have originated in the context of business, not one’s personal life! A similar saying, “Let the cobbler stick to his last”, dates to ancient Greece and Rome, where a “last” is a physical representation of a foot around which a shoe is crafted. It, too, relates directly to business, apparently coming from a story of a shoemaker who wanted to opine on the length of a pant leg.

The phrase originated in the context of business, not one’s personal life

So, shouldn’t GLP-1 manufacturers stick to their knitting and not get into the business of guiding transformations on how their pharmaceuticals are used?

The Popularization of the Phrase in Business

Whenever I encounter this phrase my mind goes back to the seminal book In Search of Business by Thomas J Peters and Robert H. Waterman Jr., which still sells thousands of copies a year 44 years after its publication. It sold over three million copies in its first four years, and was, I believe, the first blockbuster management book ever written.

One of those three million books sold was to me. It was around 1982 when I was at IBM that a switch flipped in my mind and I decided to get into management instead of remaining in technical jobs. I don’t remember if reading the book helped cause that flip, or if buying and reading it was a consequence of it, but either way it had a big impact on me.

That’s why it was so gratifying to know, less than two decades later, that Tom Peters was such a big fan of The Experience Economy. He called it “A brilliant, absolutely original book” – which Harvard Business Review Press used as a blurb for years. After Jim Gilmore and I published Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want interviewed us as two of his “cool friends”. (If you knew me in my technical days, you would never call me “cool”….)

Believe it or not, Tom Peters considers me a “cool friend”!

Now retired, for years Tom talked about the Experience Economy. In 2005 we had Tom come and speak to our then-annual thinkAbout gathering in Keystone, Colorado, where our theme was “guru on the mountain”. So, naturally, we went to the top of the conference center there – it had never held an event on its roof before! – for Tom to speak to our gathered group, outside amidst the Rocky Mountains. Here’s a standard slide he used in his presentations in his own, 2000s-era style:

So with apologies for that personal digression, back to In Search of Excellence. It was written based on research that Tom and his coauthor (and, I’m sure, many others) did at McKinsey & Company to discover why excellent companies were excellent. Chapter 10 was entitled “Stick to the Knitting” where they wrote on p. 293:

Our principal finding is clear and simple. Organizations that do branch out (whether by acquisition or internal diversification) but stick very close to their knitting outperform the others.

There were a lot of criticisms of the book in later years, particularly since so very many of the companies said to be excellent then did not turn out to be so in the long term, but its influence was huge.

But What Is a Company’s Knitting?

Peters and Waterman were clear in writing that the problem was diversifying into different “fields” or markets, and concluded (p. 305) “that “any ‘back to basics’ move is, according to the studies we have reviewed and the excellent companies’ message, good news indeed”.

And what I’m suggesting that GLP-1 manufacturers should do (among so many other companies that manufacture goods, deliver services, or stage experiences that aspirants – consumers, businesses, organizations, or communities – use to transform) is not diversification but extension. They should extend their offerings up the Progression of Economic Value to create greater economic value by guiding customers to achieve the aspirations for which their current offerings are merely the means. This is in fact a major theme throughout the book!

What I’m suggesting is not diversification but extension up the Progression of Economic Value

Consider other such extensions:

• What if Starbucks had decided to stay a packaged coffee manufacturer and not go into the business of physical experiences?

• What if Apple had decided to stay a computer manufacturer and not gotten into physical stores or services such as being an app platform?

• What if Disney had decided to stay a movie producer rather than get into theme parks?

In each case, the company was in fact sticking to its heritage. That heritage in goods, services, and/or experiences grants the business the opportunity to extend their offerings to higher levels.

Sticking to your heritage grants the opportunity to extend offerings to higher levels