Time to Have
That Conversation with Yourself
And
forget the regrets. This is the time of year when you need to step back for a
moment, get focused on the future, and figure out what your customers want.
Executive director, Ed Kaplan Family Institute for Innovation
and Tech Entrepreneurship, Illinois Institute of Technology
As the year draws to a close, it's a good
chance to catch your breath and spend a few hours just thinking--and not doing
anything but thinking--about the year ahead and where you want to take your
business. If you don't have a plan, or really care where you're headed,
then any path will get you there. In that case, just make sure that you're
walking down a path and not a plank.
But the smart entrepreneur knows that even the
most rapidly reactive organizations can't keep up with the rapid and
accelerating rate of change today - where each change shortens the interval
between changes - and the next abrupt shift is on top of you before you've even
dealt with the last. So, you've got to get ahead of the curve, anticipate the action,
and skate to where the puck is headed. Trying to catch the train after it's
left the station is a loser's game.
I'm not talking about some foolish New Year's
diet resolutions or your desire to definitely get in great shape this winter;
to read a book a week and clean out the attic; or simply to be a much better
person in 2019. I mean thinking strategically about how you can make the next
12 months a lot more valuable and productive for your company.
Not enough entrepreneurs do this simple
exercise. We've all got plenty of explanations and excuses for why this is and,
as a result, too many lose sight of the critical things they should be doing
and the most important questions they should be asking: Why did I get into this
business in the first place? Am I doing any good and/or making any difference
that matters in the long run? Does anyone outside of my friends, family,
investors, and employees care about what we're doing? Here
are a few hints to get that conversation with yourself going:
1) DON'T DWELL ON THE PAST
While you are thinking ahead, I wouldn't waste
much time reflecting on the past 12 months since: a) there's nothing you can
really do about them; b) you ought to already know what you did right and
wrong-- and hopefully have learned a lot from the experience; and c) fretting
over mistakes and missed opportunities doesn't really move anything forward.
You can't build your future on regrets and "shouldas, wouldas, and
couldas."
Besides, looking in the rear view mirror is
distracting. It makes it easy to run off the road or smack into something big
and ugly that could have been easily avoided if you had been looking ahead.
That involves paying attention to the outside world and, even more important,
to what your customers are doing and saying about their own pressing needs and
their current desires. Customer expectations are progressive. If you're
not on top of these needs,
you'll soon be at the bottom of your customers' lists.
And the most important reason that you don't
want to get all wrapped up in analyzing the past is that doing so is almost
always an invitation to spend your time navel gazing, making excuses, and
bemoaning the bad breaks. And that's not where you need to be focusing your
energy as you try to get your business set for the New Year.
2) FIND OUT WHAT CUSTOMERS ARE GOING TO WANT
You need to get out there and uncover what's
going on outside the four walls of your business, because that's where your
future will be found. Remember, you will never get straighter or more useful
answers to your questions than the ones you get directly from your customers.
The truth -- with all its wonders and warts -- comes from the consumers and the
users of your products and services. They don't have an agenda (apart from
always wanting a lot more for a lot less), and they're the real reason you got
into this business to begin with. Pleasing them and addressing their
needs seems like the obvious thing to do. But it doesn't happen if you don't do
it. When you take the time to look, think, and ask, you might just
discover that there's a bigger and better opportunity right under your nose that
you've been practically tripping over for months or years without ever
noticing.
3) FIVE QUESTIONS TO ASK YOURSELF
If you're ready to take the plunge, here are a
few of the main questions to ask yourself. It's a pretty simple process, but,
as you'll see, the results can be game-changing.
1. What's the problem you initially
set out to solve?
2. Are you trying to solve the same
problem today or doing something different?
3. Is the problem still important
to your customers and worth their paying you to solve?
4. Are others offering cheaper,
quicker, or easier solutions to the problem?
5. Are there new, more important,
or different problems to be solved?
You'll notice that all of these questions
address the customers' problem(s) and not your products or solutions. This
isn't just a question of semantics. If you don't understand the pressing
problems of your customers, you have no chance at all of building a successful
product or service to solve them. You can keep building the greatest software
never sold or discovering the cure for no known disease, but you won't be
building a business that will be here at the end of next year.
PUBLISHED
ON: DEC 11, 2018
