Successive Approximation Beats Postponed Perfection All Day Long.
It’s almost impossible these days to avoid articles or conversations about disruptive innovation. And these discussions almost always start out asking why it is that large established corporations – even when they see the disruptors bearing down on their products, services or businesses – can’t seem to react or at least to get out of the way before the new guys roll right over them. My answer is always the same: in these big, slow companies – “good enough simply isn’t good enough” – and, as a result, they simply can’t get anything started in time to make a difference. Whether it’s analysis paralysis or too many cooks or postponing things until they’re perfect or just the constant problem of resistance to changing things that worked for you in the past, it’s a foolproof formula for failure. The solution in every company (big or small – old or new) is (a) to start with what you have; (b) to iterate like crazy; and (c) to fail fast.
It’s absolutely clear that a good plan executed today beats a perfect plan that may never arrive. As Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook says: “Done is Better than Perfect”. And it’s equally obvious that nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must be overcome first. If these things were foolproof or easy, everyone could do them and would. One of these days turns out to be none of these days if you’re not careful and on the case.
If you’re going to try something new, you need to get the process started with the tools, people and resources that you have on hand and the crucial confidence that, as the project progresses, you will find and attract the right new people, the required resources, and the necessary tools. There’s no perfect time to start anything – the best time is always now. And you can’t rush it or wish these things into existence – it’s like pushing a rope or nine women trying to have a baby in one month. Doesn’t happen no matter how hard you try. But once you start trying and keep getting better every day, you discover that anything is possible.
Here’s a great recent example. Aviary.com makes photo editing software – basically simple tools to help your pictures look better or different. When they started their business, the end users were the millions of consumers taking zillions of digital photos every day and, using a freemium model with ad revenue to follow, they put some pretty respectable early numbers on the board – say (at their peak) about 50,000 photos were being edited using their tools on an average day.
But they weren’t growing fast enough in an increasingly crowded space and mobile was emerging around the same time as another game changing element in the marketplace. So they changed their model – just modestly – by targeting the large firms (think Walgreens for example) who were developing and digitizing photos for consumers and giving them the software tools for free to incorporate in their consumer service offerings. Turns out that there’s an identifiable and addressable population of these kinds of firms so you can market to a couple of thousand targets rather than tens of millions of consumers and that’s what they did.
Bottom line, they’re now working with about 1500 firms. And what about the 50,000 photos a day that were being edited…well that number is now 5,000,000 photos a day. They got started; they watched the market and the opportunities develop; and they changed their approach and their offerings just in time to catch the mobile wave.
Iteration is the singly most important business process in the world today. The smartest way to develop and grow any business is incrementally – you start small and you scale rapidly. I call this idea “successive approximation” rather than “postponed perfection” and it applies to everything you want to do. You test the water and the depth of the pool with a toe or two, not by jumping in with both feet. And you try to never lose sight of your overriding plan; you just constantly adjust your strategies and tactics to suit the changes in conditions and circumstances. As Jeff Bezos from Amazon likes to say: “We are stubborn on vision, but we’re flexible on details”.
The iteration process starts with the belief that anything and everything can always get better. There are four simple steps: (1) You Experiment; (2) You Measure; (3) You Analyze; and then (4) You React and Modify. Once that’s done, you start the entire cycle over again. The best businesses never stop the iterative process. As a result of the process, they may change directions, abandon a product line that isn’t working or meeting expectations, or decide that an entire venture should be shut down. But they make these decisions rationally and quickly based on the facts – and above all, they learn to fail fast.
Being willing to “fail fast” by the way doesn’t mean that you don’t plan to succeed; it doesn’t mean that you aren’t confident in your idea and the likelihood of your success; and it certainly doesn’t mean that you’re going to give up without giving it your best shot. What it means is that you understand the concept of opportunity costs (knowing when your scarce time and resources are better spent elsewhere) and that you’ve learned the First Rule of Holes: When You’re in a Hole; Stop Digging.
So don’t wait for an invitation. Don’t wait for a schedule. Don’t wait for all the data you need. And most of all, don’t wait until things are “just right” or perfect because you’ll be too late every time. Start with what you have, get better every day, and keep moving forward. After a while, it gets to be a habit and a way of life.
PP: “You Get What You Work for, Not What You Wish for”
