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I know a person who comes very close to asking to sign a Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA) before he discusses any of his ideas.

He believes that

a. his ideas are very valuable – that they will make a lot of money.

b. Others may not get such good ideas – and, therefore, probably will steal his ideas.

To the saying “ideas are dime a dozen” he argues that every single venture starts with an idea.  He says his ideas are extraordinary.

Here is an example.  I tell you that I am going to produce an Opera and ask if you are interested in investing in the project. You say that you are not interested. Then I tell you that it is going to be written by Luciano Pavarotti and if he is going to star in it. Will you be interested? A relatively simple idea of producing Opera has become multi-million dollar idea now, he says. All we need to do now is to implement the idea. That’s why he says his ideas are very valuable.

I’ve a few issues with this:

1. Implementation is the hard part.

2. I’ve seen plenty of ‘idea man’. Almost everyone seems to think they are an idea person – I am one of them! But ideas are of no use unless they are implemented.  They say ‘An ordinary idea executed well is better than a brilliant idea executed poorly’.  The execution is the key. Remember, even if someone ‘steals’ the idea, they may not be able to execute.

3. I share my ideas without hesitation (not because they have no value J). This sharing helps me

a. come up with one or two ideas that I can implement – perhaps based on the feedback I get. Certainly I can’t implement all the ideas I get.

b. come up with more ideas. If I keep an idea and don’t want to share it, my mind seems to be stuck on just that idea (and create some variations of that idea) rather than creating more ideas laterally or horizontally.

c. increase my credibility.

As a person who gets 100 ideas a minute, I used to drive some of my staff crazy in the early days.  Now I believe in “Just Do It”

If you are an ‘idea man’, try becoming ‘implementation man’!

A while ago I wondered what is correct

-          Am I what I think

-          Am I what I eat

-          Am I what I intend

-          Am I what I focus on

-          Am I what I act on

Etc.

After some pondering, this is what I think.   My values determine what I think. What I think determine what I eat, What I eat determine what (and how) I act on.  So, in order to affect anything, we need to look at our values.

I like reading and listening– especially if the authors talk about new and different ideas. But I admire people who study rather than read. I realise that the authors write some things (insights or facts) in their books that the reader might take casually but a student wouldn’t.  BTW, I don’t read fiction. So I am talking about business related non-fiction.

When I read Peter Drucker’s statement that business is about finding out what the customer wants and giving it to them I didn’t really get what he was saying.  Only after several years did I understand what that really meant.  When we find out what the customer says they want, we interpret those statements in a way that is convenient or conducive to what we are doing in our business then we put our own bias on those statements. We then end up developing and delivering something they were not expecting.  Makes sense?

Business is about understanding truly what they want and giving it to them.  There are tools to understand what they say they want. But if we don’t delve deeper in to the statement ‘understand what they want and give it to them’, we will never look for the tools and keep carrying on with our own interpretation.

Guy Kawasaki once suggested ‘Eat like a bird and poop like an elephant’. Maybe he had different point in mind when he wrote that in his book but I think the statement it is relevant here. In this information era, a new information product or training comes out every other month claiming of a new and improved way to succeed in your business (whatever type of business you are running – whether it is an online business or an offline business). We open our wallets and buy them to read.  As we keep reading  (or listening) to the new or re-hashed ideas, we never get time to implement them.  Wouldn’t it be better to implement what a small proportion what we read? Wouldn’t it be better to study, maybe one or two ideas, and implement them?

Pooping like an elephant is implementing a lot of  ideas (small and big) we study, testing them, tweaking them. That is the way to make a difference.

You agree it is better to study than read?

Domino’s in the US had complaints from its customers about the pizza taste. They did focus groups to find out what the customers wanted and changed the recipe.  Further, they ran TV campaigns admitting  in a series of documentary-style spots that under its old recipe, customers complained its crust tasted like cardboard and its sauce was reminiscent of ketchup.

They then began promoting its new pie, which has a new sauce and cheese combination and herb- and garlic-flavored crust. In that quarter alone they increased their profits and increased the store traffic by 4%.

Being open and honest about our own shortcomings about the service/product and rectifying sincerely (and visibly) helps keep the customers.

On another point,  I read a report that 94% of university professors in the US think that they do their job better than their ‘average’ colleague (I don’t think the percentage will be much further away for Australians!).  Why then there are so many people in the US (and here, and everywhere) with self-esteem issues, I wonder J The moral of the story is we all think what we do/offer is better than others.. Some even think that their product/service is the ‘perfect’ one.  I suspect these are the people who wouldn’t buy Domino’s pizza because it is ‘imperfect’ (as Domino’s themselves admitted the fact).

So, when you

• consume your own product/service,
• find that it is NOT the best and
• start improving the product/service

how do you communicate to your customers and prospects without scaring them?    BTW, I’ve come across many organizations that do not want to ask/survey their customers what they think about the product/service for the fear of ‘waking up the sleeping tigers’!

Here are some thoughts:

1.  Develop a plan on what you will improve

2.  Start implementing the plan and

3.  When you see some tangible improvements, then let your customers and prospects know that  your dog food was not good and how you are improving.

This is more likely to be seen as being sincere and retain the customers.

Apart from the fact that we are lazy, we have a lot of reasons why we don’t want to learn something new (be it PR or IT or Accounting). So we outsource to this to professionals to do this for us. We are not asking them to teach us how to fish but asking them to get us the fish, every day, so that we can focus on our core activities.

The outsource provider that understands that what we are asking them is to make it easy for us to easily consume their service so that we don’t have to focus on how they make service works, wins. We don’t want the fishing rod or the hook or the net, we may also don’t want to know where they caught the fish. We just want the fish. Often the outsource providers give part of the service e.g. giving the customer a Google Analytics Report that don’t make sense unless the customer is technical. If the provider gives the customer a commentary on what they should look at, what they should be aware of, what the problems are and what should be done etc., the customer gets thrilled. Really, that is the fish they wanted.

There are many experts suggesting how long a visitor will “give” a website before pressing the Back button.

Some say 1 min and some say 8 seconds – and there are others between these two time lines.  If the site loads fast enough, the visitor sees the banner (or above the fold) and decides whether to stay and read the rest. So, do you think your banner says enough to make the visitor understand what you are offering and enough attraction on the banner to read the rest?

Malcolm Gladwell (of Tipping Point fame) says in his book Blink that we make most of our decisions in a blink. That is it. I see a person for a blink and my old brain decided if I like them or not!

Maybe we can use the same Blink test for our website and see if you like your site or not.

“You are what you think about”

“You are what you eat”

“You are defined by your biggest fear/enemy”

“You become what you don’t want to be, if you think about it frequently”

“You are your choices”

“You become the people you are surrounded by”.

I read all these. Who am I now?! Is there a single answer, seriously?