Read Startup: An Insider's Guide to Launching and Running a Business Online
Authors: Kevin Ready
Speed Plus Quality
We need the iWidget by Christmas. This means we deliver no later than November 1. I know that is a short timeline, and we need to deliver a solid product so that we don’t get chewed up with support issues, so I want to focus on one or two core features.
The delivery date means less planning time before getting started on development. The limited scope of features, however, allows the team to focus on what really needs to be done, so quality can remain high. The same holds true for development and testing. There are few variables to deal with, so a high-quality product can be delivered in a relatively short period of time. We are also likely going to have a cheaper cost of production on the product itself because the complexity of the design will be lower. The downside is that when the product reaches the market, it will be very reliable but may not resonate with a demanding public who is hungry for the latest-and-greatest features.
Quality Plus Features
We are going to build the best iWidget the world has ever seen. I want to have ten new features in the product and I want it to be rock-solid. I don’t want to get any bad press about either system bugs or missing features. This is a lot to ask for, so we are going to plan carefully, build carefully, test carefully, and deliver when we are done. Not a minute before.
We are focusing on building a great-quality product here. We are going to get out there in front of our customers and research what they want in a product. This means we are going to have a higher chance of getting the feature set right. We are also going to test the heck out of this thing to make sure that when a customer buys one, she is going to be satisfied with how it performs. We are running a risk, however, that we will spend a lot of money developing this because our team will be engaged with iWidget for a long time. This means the end product will likely have to be priced high, or we will have to sell a massive number of them at a smaller margin to make our profit.
The opportunity cost is such that we might have been able to build two or three iterations of simpler products in the same period of time that it will take to execute this plan. Also, the gap between our research and our product delivery will be long. This means we face to the possibility of being out of touch with the market on our delivery date. There could well be massive changes in the market while we are heads-down developing. Particularly important here is that our rivals could introduce new products that change user expectations, or there could be macroeconomic changes such as a downturn in the economy that could jeopardize our product positioning.
Quality Plus Speed Plus Features
The iWidget is the cornerstone of this company’s survival. We are going to deliver ten new features by November 1, and we will have absolute quality control on this. Our company reputation is on the line with every product, and we are going to hit a home run with this one.
This is actually the most common type of project initiation statement. “We need everything—and on a tight timeline.” Especially in the United States, the business leader or CEO is supposed to be aggressive. “Always deliver more,”
he/she says. One result of this approach is that team morale can take a hit. When expectations are put forward that are not realistic, it saps the company’s mental resources, making your company not such a great place to work. In addition, you nearly guarantee failure in some aspect of your project. The odds of delivering on all three variables are very slim. The leader that pushes for too many features and quality with an absolute drop-dead delivery date runs a good chance of a complete project failure. In case you need me to remind you, this is the worst of all outcomes in a project!
The takeaway here is that as a leader, you should modulate your expectations and declared objectives in such a way as to maximize the odds of success. In my opinion, “asking for everything” is actually nothing more than a lack of planning or vision on behalf of the decision-maker. Don’t be that person. Instead, hone your talent for seeing into the process involved in delivering a project. Ask for more than your team will be comfortable with—that is to say, push your staff to perform—but understand the trade-offs that come with pushing too hard.
You may consider setting two separate goals: an unpublished realistic goal that is your best guess for your team’s capacity, and a motivational “stretch” goal that will serve to rally your team toward higher performance.
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The Positive Frame
Sometimes problems arise. It is a fact of life. It is a fact of business. Get used to it. And now I am going to tell you yet another thing that you already know:
The actual impact of problems is largely determined by how we choose to respond to them.
When something happens that feels like it is going to derail your business or cause you difficulty, I recommend taking a moment and reframing it into what I call the
positive frame
. As an entrepreneur, you should carry this with you in your back pocket. There are two things to do to see things in the positive frame:
Some people suffer greatly when they choose a problem-based worldview. It seems natural and correct to them that everything that happens should be looked at from the perspective that it is problematic in some way. This is a very accurate-feeling model, because everywhere you look you
will
find problems if you expect to see them. (I suggest to you that we are such active participants in the creation of our worlds that if you expect opportunity, discrimination, or even Communist conspiracies as you go through your life, you will find evidence to support those biases as well.) The problem-based worldview is a common one in which the observer will often end up end up physically manifesting the actively created problematic reality with symptoms such as knotted muscles, indigestion, headaches, and a pinched expression on the face. Ouch. (Fair disclosure: I used to be that person.) The irony is that if you take the same situations and
choose
to view them as opportunities, you are also right!
For instance, some years ago I was advising an Internet software-as-a-service startup that was in the process of acquiring funding. The founders were upset as they complained about how a competitor had appeared in their space, where there had been none before. They were really feeling bad about their prospects and the loss of their hoped-for first-mover advantage. My advice to them was to view it as a positive development:
Choosing an opportunity-based worldview feels oh-so-much more fun, engaging, and productive than choosing a problem-based one. It allows you to stay creative, engaged, and effective when those around you need it the most; particularly when the brown stuff hits the fan—and it will.
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Potential
As you read this, you are sitting somewhere, looking at this text (and enjoying it immensely, no doubt). As you lift your eyes from this paragraph, you can notice some of the details of the space around you. How much of that space could you see if you covered your eyes with your fingers? None of it, I would imagine. How about if you crack your fingers open a little bit so that you can see through slightly? How much could you see then? A big improvement over seeing nothing, but still very limited—probably a field of blackness with a single half-in-focus spot of light in the middle. There is a lot to see around you, but we can recognize that much of the space around you is invisible with your eyes covered in this way.
This is the kind of limited vision we often fall into without thinking about it. Beyond actual vision (photons hitting our retinas), other fields of information that are available to us get a similar treatment whereby they rest largely hidden from our understanding. When thinking about what possibilities the future could hold for you, and how you might take hold of some of those possibilities to change your life for the better, this kind of blindness can be very costly indeed.
Everyone in the world has this kind of blindness to some extent. Think about your own senses for a moment. Take a quick tally of all of the available stimuli that are coming at you, all the time. It would be unmanageable if we actually processed all of the information available to us at any given moment: sounds, kinesthetic sensations, light, smells, tastes. We only notice a narrow slice of these things at any given time. So we cope with this overload by having a narrow window of focus—like looking through a cardboard tube when viewing the Grand Canyon. We see only a slice of the rich and often overpowering streams of information that make up our environment.
In the midst of this real-time processing of stimuli, we will frequently pull back from the moment and reflect on the abstract field of
future possibility
. It is what could come; something not here now, but that could be arrived at with the proper actions. A problem with this exercise in imagination is that, as hard as it is to capture the true nuance of actual concrete occurrences around us, planning possible future outcomes is even less tangible and much less constrained. Recognizing this, it is fascinating to note that because it is less
concrete, it is inherently much more rich and variable.
Unlimited
is a good word to describe it.
There is literally an unlimited potential for us as human beings to make bold, unexpected choices and experience fantastic outcomes—should we want to do so. But we are blind to it most of the time because that field of possibility is hidden behind things like tending to our jobs, brushing our teeth, and watching reruns of
Seinfeld
. It is an eternal truism that
you see what you see—and don’t see what you don’t see
.
I am going to make up a new phrase here:
potential field
. This is like the magnetic field reaching into space around a magnet, but it is a field of possibility as it extends forward in time and space from where you are right now. This abstraction of a potential field extends out from each of us. The many variations of this potential field represent all that
could
be. All that you
could
do. This potential field can be shaped and explored, but only in a very shallow and limited way, unless you are willing to break the repetitious patterns that hold you in the place where you are right now.
What would happen if you decided that you could question anything? What would happen if you could entertain any dream regardless of how outlandish it seems?
There is a potential of freedom moving in any direction from the here and now, out into the direction of your passion—a place where your fire is lit up, and you light up the people around you. Think about it.
This optimistic, anything-is-possible mindset is where the entrepreneur finds the power to do what the entrepreneur does. It is a big part of what makes an entrepreneur an entrepreneur. It is also, incidentally, often a learned skill. It is something that you can learn to do just by … doing it.
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Think Big
You may be limiting yourself without realizing it. Do you believe you can be the biggest player in your market? If not, then why not? Your answer to this question probably has more psychological bias than actual provable fact behind it. There is, in fact, a way available to you to accomplish almost anything. Don’t doubt it for a second.
As big as you are thinking now, look two orders of magnitude larger. Seem unreasonable? Do not artificially limit yourself and your success because of preconceptions about what is not possible. Look out there, think big, and allow yourself to see it all working out. See your success reaching up to the highest levels and it just might.
With this one mental change you immediately and instantly increase the depth, reach, and variations of the potential field that is reaching out into your future. This potential field is the mechanism that in its essence becomes
your story
.
Here is an exercise that illustrates just how far the upper bounds of this concept can reach: if I told you that you could do something completely arbitrary and audacious, such as write the name of your favorite pet on the surface of the moon, what would your reaction be?
I am telling you that it is so.
If you were inclined to do so, you, dear reader, could start in the next moment to formulate and execute a plan (that has a palpable chance of success) to put your mark on the moon as described. The plan? Take your finances, such as they are. What would happen if over the next 40 years you were as successful as Warren Buffet has been? There are certainly investment strategies that would earn you in excess of $1 billion over the next 40 years. For the purposes of this exercise, you need not believe that you can do it, just recognize that it is possible. Continuing the story, we also know that technology is rapidly developing. Commercial space flight is almost commonplace now, with governments and private companies both providing pathways for rich individuals to do things in space. It is not much further beyond the confluence of wealth (which we understand is completely possible) and technology (which we know is lowering barriers to space every year) that you find your purpose-laden trip to our celestial neighbor.