What made Nirvana stand out when they first came on the music scene? Too young to remember? OK, I will ask the same about Lady Gaga. What about Cardi B?
You can actually consider any artist in history that forced people to reimagine what musical art is to understand my point.
The Beatles did it, so did the Grateful Dead, The Doors, Peter Tosh, Run DMC, Sublime, Tupac and a ton of others. They all took tradition, or at least standards, and considered them from a different point of view; a new perspective.
Now put this into the context of work. There are some awesome examples you can point to. The obvious ones, like JP Morgan, Henry Ford, Oprah Winfrey, Steve Jobs, Marissa Mayer, Mark Zuckerberg and then the not so obvious ones like me and you.
Yeah, I said it. Both of us have the ability to do the same sort of stuff those people did. Flat out, it just takes guts, the ability to think differently and a focus on executing a plan. Oh, and it often takes some capital–but we will get to that later :-).
Start here: take a step back and consider your industry and market. Make a list of what sucks and what is awesome. If you are anything like the Stoo, then you will have a longer list of stuff that sucks, and that is OK, cause it means you are looking at things critically instead of forming an opinion that is based on someone else’s perspective.
Next, take each one of those things that sucks and create a solution for each one–do not consider anyone’s feelings, history, legacy, business models or the competition, just create a perfect world scenario for how it could become awesome.
Now, start to consider what sort of brain, time, money and muscle work it would take to make it real. Further, start to think through the people equation–what skills do you need around the table–really consider this, you will be astonished at how few resources you actually need.
Got that figured out? Or at least have your mind buzzing a bit. Now, walk away from it for a day or two. Use this time to “stew” (
What will people hate about the concept? I know that sounds harsh, but it is an awesome place to start. Here is why: if you can figure out what someone will hate about the concept before they tell you, it gives you the ability to empathize with their point of view, instead of getting defensive. This is a big part of leading change and enabling other people to think differently with you, as opposed to them shutting you out.
Here is an example, @S2UI we are rethinking the entire media landscape for the B2B space. Flat out, we HATE the UI and UX of today’s media companies that are centric to a specific industry. So instead of bitching about it (well, we still sort of bitch about it), we are creating a new look, feel and functionality to engage today’s users in specific industries.
We started here:
1) The pop-up ads, interstitial video players and paywalls around today’s media platforms are ugly, annoying and piss us off.
2) The world is moving from “search and deliver” for the information they want to “choose and feed”
3) Content Management Systems have evolved to a point where data and information can be chronicled in a logical format and users can pick their areas of interest
4) Package that stuff together in a way that can drive revenue without being so reliant on banner and programmatic ads that are annoying as crap
So, guess who hates this the most? Yeah, it is all of those people who have made their living by creating traditional “publishing” platforms for the media companies. It is also all those media companies that need to change their business process, ad revenue models and more to accommodate for the change.
Guess who else? The investors, financial firms and publicly traded corporations that like the “predictability” of forecasting ad revenue and profitability through the traditional model.
So this is where it gets tough and it takes a lot of convincing–but if you empathize with those people and try to consider this shift from their point of view, the “sales process” of explaining what this can mean to their business starts to get easier. What they will start to realize is that they need to evolve their model because the current approach is becoming ireelevant.
Peace,
@realS2UI
