Companies are always looking for the next big thing.
How do they balance that search with their inherent fear of failure?
Maybe they should be encouraging people to look for the next small thing.
What’s the least I can do today to make a positive impact?
Try it.
If it works great.
Keep going.
If it fails, well at least you tried.
Try again.
Keep going.
Progress matters.
Encourage others.
Fail small.
Kudos to Neil Morrison for an inspiring conversation which led to this post. Follow Neil on Twitter and read his blog, or else 🙂
The smaller the failure, the easier it is to get it under the radar without too many people noticing. The smaller the failure the smaller impact on others. The smaller the failure the reduced likelihood you will be apprehended 😉
He he – sneakin’ about. Like it dude.
Your point resonates loudly in this simple post: Don’t build the titanic in one go.
The irony is that startups need to fail to find that sweet stop, otherwise, they will never come of age — at the same time they need beta clients and real-life users to validate their product. It’s a bitter pill for startups but your advice makes it easier (and a whole lot less harmful) to swallow.
Thank you Rob, less harmful certainly gets a vote from me. As you can see from other comments though – this approach seems to polarise opinion. In bigger well established companies I see lots of people gripped by irrational fear and unwilling to try stuff, so in part my call was to them. Gareth responded nicely to that I think 🙂 Cheers – Doug
I’m really sorry Doug, but no.
Try this, do that, stop doing something else, do it a little bit, do it a lot, do nothing but this, do anything but this. What’s the worst that can happen, and you get to pat yourself on the back for deviating ever so slightly from an otherwise repetitive and mundane existence.
I’ve had it up to here with bit-sized life suggestions. It’s like the Little Book of “give-it-a go”.
Sorry for grumping up your blog, Doug.
Thank you for your feedback and I’m sure glad I don’t work for you 🙂
Vive la difference!
People don’t work for me Doug, they work with me.
And they’d string me up, if I gave them an uplifting thought for the day – everyday. Don’t get me wrong, my default setting is chipper. That’s why I object to enforced positivity. 😉
Thank you Stephen. I’m sorry you feel that words like try, maybe and encourage feel like something is being enforced. Your responses are a powerful reminder of how differently, different people interpret things.
I apologise for being negative Doug. You just caught me on a frazzled day.
Thank you Stephen, frazzled is not so good. Frazzles on the other hand, well they are simply delicious 🙂
Small and big are relative.
Small in a big organisation is actually BIG … Otherwise it doesn’t make a ripple and doesn’t get the share of voice needed to develop. One voice cannot make a difference in a big organisation … Sorry, I wish that was not the case but it is. Small in a big company (so smaller than BIG) can make a difference to the individual but not the wider organisation.
Small in a small organisation can create a ripple and make a difference to the organisation as well as the individual.
Thank you Chris
We have different view on this one. My experience in BT showed me that many small things can make a big difference. You’ve got to want to do it and for sure, the organisation might not make it easy (not out of malice, more likely out of ignorance). But persistence and encouragement can go a long way.
I recall being asked to try and rescue a £30m per annum contract which was going down the tubes because our service was crap. Long story short – we saved it and did much more besides, all down to a series of small steps. They didn’t all work out but the customer saw we were sincere and we got enough right to regain their trust.
You might like to have a listen to ‘Delivering Happiness’ the audiobook by Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos. Among many interesting things, he talks about the power of small steps. I would have included a link in this blog post but I’m right in the middle of reading it myself and only discovered the small steps piece yesterday 🙂
Cheers – Doug