"You need to do more with less!"You can’t bake a bigger cake with less flour…unless…you use more icing!
You can’t build a stronger house with less wood…unless…you use brick!
You can’t make a car run without gas…unless…it’s an electric car!
The point of these three metaphors is to emphasize that you really can't take away resources and expect that someone is going to be able to do more with what remains. That's simply illogical. However, by making better use of other resources (adding a pound of icing may make a cake appear bigger even though it really isn't), by reevaluating your strategy (perhaps brick is a better resource than wood for building a house, but you just hadn't considered it before) or by eliminating barriers (if a gas operated car isn't optimal, then switch to an electric car), you can still achieve success, even though a previous resource may be less available.
When my media budget was dramatically slashed a few years ago, I was forced to find a new way to communicate the value of shopping at Goodwill retail stores. I couldn't get more advertising for my limited spending. Most of the radio and TV stations we were using were angry that we made the cuts! They weren't about to go out of their way to give me more ads for less money. Therefore, we had to look at alternatives. We decided to invest more time and resources into social and earned media. That decision made a huge impact on how Goodwill stores were perceived and resulted in a significant amount of visibility worth far more than we could have purchased through a traditional media buy. So while we didn't get more paid media by spending less on it, we ultimately received a greater return on our investment by changing our strategy and placing more emphasis on another communications channel that cost less money. Our message didn't change. Only the way we communicated it did. Additionally, we removed a critical barrier by eliminating staff that simply weren't cutting the mustard. We had to create a fast moving, well oiled machine. If we didn't have people who were capable of keeping up with us, we found new people who could. Your biggest asset is the people around you. Don't let them slow you down.
So if anyone tells you that they need you to do more with less, what they really mean is you need to find new and innovative ways of marketing your product or service that don't require as much reliance on the resource/s being cut.
After all, you can't empty a pond of its fish and expect to keep bringing home dinner...unless....you start fishing in another pond.
