Bias for action and Feedboc!

There have been many a times when you believe that you have a great idea. Then you begin analyzing on the pros and cons of the same. Then you begin thinking on how you would go about monetizing it. You do a SWOT analysis. Then you start working on the math. The break-even targets seem to be very big. You are not very sure on how it will work out one year from now. So you think more. You analyze further.

By the time you have arrived at a decision, someone somewhere has already started on it and has release a beta of the product. The world has already started discussing this. You have a familiar feeling - It was my idea and I thought about this. Maybe the other person has somehow read my mind and copied this.

The above is not a very uncommon occurrence. It happens to a lot of us. My experience and advice from a lot of successful people is to have a firm bias for action. We should not get into a paralysis by analysis mode. The future is anyway hazy and quite unpredictable.

So if you have the confidence and the hunch that you have a good and workable idea, you should spend most of your time, energy and money trying to get the Alpha or beta of it working. Get it out. Invite your friends, acquaintances to come in review it and give a feedback. Blog about it. Twitter it. Go to all discussion boards and try to generate interest in the product. If you have a good product, you will automatically get the eyeballs and the visibility. People will talk about it. Listen carefully. Take the feedback very seriously and improve the offering. No amount of Business Plan document will give you this insight.

One such initiative that I personally undertook is the Feedboc project. The idea came up at the TiE Entrepreneurial Summit (TES) 2008. We were discussing the effectiveness of a Performance Appraisal process and were in general agreement that a year-end appraisal is not the best way to assess a person's year long performance. So there was a need for managers to have a mechanism to provide feedback to their team members. This feedback also had to result in a person knowing more about himself, his traits, his strengths and weaknesses. This was a universal requirement and would be needed by most organizations.

From this pressing need, we quickly drew out an idea for a product and aptly named it as FeedBOC - standing for Feedback is the (B)reakfast (o)f (C)hampions. After some initial amount of analysis (we did it!!), we started working on the product. We are happy to inform you that the Beta of the product is already released.

Whether the product gains acceptance, will be widely used or whether we make money is something that - as the cliche goes - only time will tell. But it was a great personal victory for us to break free from our traditional mode of thinking / working and orient ourselves to have a "Bias for action"!

Slowdown - What do "you" do?

I have been reading a lot of posts on the current slowdown and some advices / suggestions on how we cope with this.

A majority of Entrepreneurs / "wise guys" are of the opinion that this is as much an opportunity as a threat. An article in the Havard Business Review, lists six steps which can be followed in these times.

I personally view this as an opportunity and a challenge, which is not to de-emphasize the threat portion. But I believe that if you are offering a product / service that is of value to an end-user then you are going to have customers. People are definitely going to buy what is needed and what they perceive as value.

As organizations we need to recognize where this "value" lies. Trying to achieve this may also lead to disruptions of existing models / lines of business. Innovation is the key. Innovations can be at multiple levels - be it products, services, delivery, customer services, etc. Only those organizations that innovate consistently and rapidly will remain current and relevant.

To recognize the "value", it would be absolutely necessary to keep all your communication lines open. Talking to your customers is a very good step to discovering this.

Another HBR article goes on to say that the current environment that we are in is not a phase. This is a condition. And this is how it is going to be from now on. A product or a service will have a shelf life of a year-or so. It is quickly going to get cloned or get obsolete. So to remain current, you need to inculcate rapid innovation into the DNA of your organizations.

That is our best bet to ride thru 2009 and for a long time from thereon.