Positioning's emotional challenge

Should we really get all touchy feely talking about business strategy?

Yep.

One of the biggest hurdles to overcome when changing a project, product or company’s positioning is emotional. Improving your positioning is not actually that hard, especially if you work with someone like me to help you follow a process and get enough distance to see what’s working and what isn’t. Implementing that positioning is just a series of tasks that take time, but aren’t fundamentally challenging.

But positioning is the very identity of your project. People get attached to those identities — it would be illogical if they didn’t. Most maintainers and founders have a strong emotional attachment to however they’ve originally positioned the project/company. This is even true when they’ve positioned the project in a way that doesn’t make sense to anyone else — it makes sense to them, as maintainers, so the fact that others don’t get it doesn’t really matter.

The first step to improving positioning is letting go of your emotional attachment to however the project/product/company is positioned at the moment. It’s not a 100% rational process. Acknowledging that is the first step to conquering the emotional hurdles that stand in the way of improved positioning.