Minimum Awesome Product

Creating a new product or service can take years. More and more companies however move away from the “don’t launch it until it’s completely finished, retested and out of date” approach. They go for a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) approach where a working but ‘not ready for mass production’ product is launched towards a small group of customers in order to help further developing the product.

In that context, a new question arises:

“What about a kick-ass product”?

The risk with MVP’s is that what makes a product truly remarkable – more often than not – lies in the details, in how remarkable the elements of the products come together in a design, a use, a service experience,… With a MVP, you will only deliver the core of the new product or service, which is most of the time not enough for a real WOW experience. And by only offering this, you also tend to focus on getting the core better when working with the first customers. They evaluate what they get (the core capabilities) and by default they will give you feedback on how to make that core better by adapting it better to their needs. Only in rare cases, they will focus on the things that are not there or that they are not (yet) aware of (the details, the design, the packaging, the unclear element of a new kind of usage,…).

So how to tackle this issue without going again towards the old model of developing a product forever?

What about a parallel route? You push your MVP product in the process with customers to focus on shipping a real product as soon as possible. At the same time, use a small group (or even individual) to add some magic to the existing MVP product. Why not use a designer, an outside consultant, one of your top sales guys,…?

When you work on shipping your version 2 of the MVP product, just add the WOW elements (as they are not linked to the core of your product, this should be rather easy). Imagine how delighted your first customers will be if they see that both their requirements were met in your new release and a magical tough has been added.

Minimum Awesome Product (MAP): Delivered!

Habits of successful artists – Spark 10: Lead a tribe

Leading means taking risk, standing out from the crowd, do something for the first time, ship it and convince others to follow you. It takes a great deal of courage, a great idea and a risky execution.

Courage: doing something new is by definition an uncertain business: No benchmarks, no best practices telling you what to do. Just you, your brains & intuition.

A great idea: It all starts with this. Being able to have something that creates a new kind of value to at least one person or organisation.

Risky execution: As the idea itself never represents any real value. It’s only by putting it to use that you will create an impact. Going out into the real world and leaving your whiteboard is always risky: in the real world, you can actually brake things 🙂

Go out, be brave & lead!

Habits of successful people – Spark 8 : Write Daily

Ah, the art of writing! This should be an easy one to talk about, no? Well not for me, because writing is one thing, but doing it daily is another one. Actually, I am already glad when I get to Write Weekly (Note to self: one added value of writing: it visualizes things: Let’s call it the WW from now on ;-)).

Well, enough about the hard things of writing, let’s start with the benefits!

First of all, it helps you to learn. Not from books or classes, but from your experiences in real life (with others!): By looking back at your day and writing about it, you re-live the day and the learnings you had. As we all know that learning comes from repetition, it helps you in actually storing as many learnings of your day as possible.

Second reason is that — by forcing yourself to write something down — you create your own opinion, your own vision on things: Writing something down requires a structure of words, of paragraphs, of build up… This helps you in clarifying the ideas you have in your head. Also, by seeing your own writing, you will sometimes discover the stupid things that sounded very interesting while they were still in your head. For me, this is clearly the most important reason to write.

Writing also helps you think more in terms of the receiver of the information. It forces you to translate your idea in something another person can understand (without direct access to what’s in your head) and respond to. When it’s out into the world, people can react to it, in order to build a conversation. This helps in making your idea spread and actually have an impact.

And finally, it just can help you to calm down. Let it all go. Don’t you believe me? When you lie awake at night because the wheels in your head are turning on a splendid idea, just write it down in the book that always is next to your bed and have a good night sleep!

Habbits of succesful people – Spark 7: Teach others.

The first thing I learned from my very first manager ever (thanks Mark for that!) was to make sure you are never the only person that can do the job. It felt so contradictory to everything I expected (especially if that first job is in a high tier technology consultancy firm). I thought that being the only that could do a certain job meant power and a secure future. Thanks to Mark, it did not take me long to realise that keeping ‘knowledge’ from others is the most stupid thing anyone can do in today’s world.

Let’s explain by kicking in with the most interesting one:

You can enjoy holidays if others can do your job. If you are the only one who knows something, prepare yourself for a boss that will be reluctant to give you a holiday and lots of incoming text messages while you are sipping your cocktail at the beach.

When you want to be a leader, you are more ‘evaluated’ on your ability to teach others than to actually perform tasks yourself. Delegating means making sure your people can do what you do.

From organisational perspective, people having the monopoly to a certain tasks, process, knowledge,… are a single point of failure. You don’t want to be called that…

Sharing knowledge is fun: it gives you a good feeling: you should try it out!

Giving new ideas to others might spark their feedback… and eventually might even deepen your own knowledge.

And probably the most important: In today’s world, you need to be able toadapt yourself… which means learning new things. How you think you’re peers will share there knowledge with you if you are being a protective lone wolf?

Habits of successful artists – Spark 6: Make predictions.

It’s the time of the year for it: New Year’s resolutions. But making predictions is not about what you are about to do (or not to do, for what that matters).

Great leaders have the guts to stand out and describe how not only their future, but also that of their company, their industry, and even the future of the world… will look like tomorrow.

Why?

Most people don’t know where to go to.

If you can help them in picturing a vivid image of what the world might look like tomorrow, it will help them, their team, their organisation to start working on it, to guide their work (and, if necessary, to start the change).

It brings the sparks to others.

Yes! Others dream as well! By confronting them with how you see the change, they might be more willing to share their view. Confronting the dreams can only help in making them more realistic, more real,… and you already have at least 2 people who believe in a dream becoming reality.

Being able to picture the future is the first step in creating it.

If you are able to see, draw, explain, code,… what will be different tomorrow, it means you have something that already past the first test: it is not so high up in the clouds that we cannot grasp it with our current level of understanding of the world. Thus picturing the world is already half of the work!

How?

Dream big

When in doubt: dream a little bigger. There will be plenty of people, moments, committees, bosses, gatekeepers,… to make your ideas more ‘realistic’ afterwards, so you can better overcompensate that upfront.

Share it with others

Share your dream with others. First of all, this will force you to frame your ideas, make them just tangible enough,… Secondly, what is the use of your ideas if they will never become reality (aka the new normal). Lastly, it will show your commitment: it’s your idea and reputation on the line.

Be part of the dream

Take commitment in the steps towards the creation of the new reality you paint. Be the change that is necessary!

You should give it a try!

Habits of successful artists – Spark 5 — See the world as it is

Seeing the world as it is… it seems simple, but what is the world? Being able to see what really works, what does not work (and probably even more important: what will work in the future) is a key competency of a marketeer, an entrepreneur, a CEO,… With great power comes — as always — great responsibility: Some points of attention:

Point of view

The world is about perception. And perception is all about point of view. Just ask a customer who is on the road driving his car and calling a hotline for an urgent request but is transferred towards an online channel because the flawlessly designed process of the company he calls has noted that he prefers his communication via online over communication via phone.

Even within your organisation, the point of view can switch from one business unit to another. Take this into account when you try to change the world.

Empathy

Seeing the world as it is comes with both good and bad: As the world will not be perfect, you will also notice a lot of things that don’t work. Don’t over-emphasise them & if you do: pick your battles.

Timeframe

Seeing the world as it is might give you the false impression it’s about today, where I would argue you should be able to look at the way it will/should be tomorrow. When in doubt, go for the world of tomorrow!

Action-driven

What good is it to see when you cannot change the world? Not only do your observations only bring value when they initiate a change, it also proves to be the most effective way to bring in more believers to your vision.

Habits of successful artists – Spark 4: Fail often.

Failure

Lack of success.
The neglect or omission of expected or required action.
The action or state of not functioning.

Failure is apparently no longer an option. People and organisations are becoming more afraid to fail than of not to act.

Indulge me in making a case for some kind of failing…

First: people as a species are not good in risk estimates. We tend to overestimate the probability of events that in reality only have a very low chance of occurring (some scientific reading for a change). That should already make you more at ease with falling into analysis paralysis. There is probably always one more check you can do before you actually move over to action — in order to make sure you have covered every base — but in reality, the subject of your extra effort probably will never occur in the first place.

Second: there is failing and failing. I want to make the case for quick and controlled failing.
Quick as in: don’t waste 70% of your resources on analysis, because in the end you will not only have no resources left to actually make something happen, you will also have noticed that you lost that much time that reality (the basis of your initial assumptions) has changed in the meanwhile .
Controlled as in an environment with limited impact and monitored (to enable you to learn and tweak).

Third: To really create something extra-ordinary, to go where no man (m/f) has gone before, there is no guidebook, so the change you can either calculate the outcome upfront or — just by good luck — end up with something perfect the first time, is close to 0% (which shows some interesting light on point one of course).

So set up a controllable place that enables you to fail… often!

Extra: Now is the time to start failing. The last decade is failure open for some setback (just look at the use of the word in the image below ;-)).

Habits of successful artists: Spark 3 — Speak in Public.

(Part of a series based on inspiration from Seth Godin’s ‘The Icarus Deception’).

Speaking in public. Most of us don’t like it be default. You are out in the open, vulnerable and very open to criticism.

However, you should do it for multiple reasons.

It helps you in making your idea grow.

You might be the most creative person in the organisation, a good idea can always become better (more practical, more taken into account the limitations of the real world,…), and probably others in your organisation can you help identify the parts of your idea that need some tuning.

It gives other people drive.

People just love stories, we all want to feel the vibe of being part of something good. Even the most rigid people will feel a little (invisible to the outside world off course) chill if they witness the next big thing to be.

It helps you sell your idea.

A brilliant idea is useless until it is shipped. Chances are that you need other people to help you ship (get a budget, get access to a trade channel,…)

Somehow, the art of selling trough speaking is not as present in modern business life as it should be.

Personally, this is one of the modern business skills I need to work hard on, because getting the message through is the only way forward. It strikes me even more now how some people don’t see the importance of developing this skill. Even for sales people and marketeers, who be default are ‘selling’ on a daily base, this seems to be the case.

So a warm outreach: ‘selling your idea’ is not an objective, it’s a skill!Go get them!

Habits of successful artists: Spark 2 — Say thank you in writing.

(Part of a series based on inspiration from Seth Godin’s ‘The Icarus Deception’).

The art of saying thank you is probably both the most cheap and underestimated gifts (in both professional as personal environments).

Saying thank you shows:

you took the time to truly look at the outcome (which meant both the end result was good en the task meaningful);
that the person helped you as a person (an not just did a task within the organisation);
you care enough to show your appreciation out in the open: people can keep your feedback when you write it down;
that you are willing to make it personal: write it down in your handwriting and it shows it comes from you, not from a computer with always the same font.

A thank you makes It just makes you feel good.

Mission for self: write a thank you note this week.
Mission for you: write one today!

Habits of successful artists: Spark 1 — Learn to sell what you have made.

Reading the book ‘The Icarus deception’ from Seth Godin, I came upon this list:

“The habits of successful artists”

Learn to sell what you have made.
Say thank you in writing.
Speak in public.
Fail often.
See the world as it is.
Make predictions.
Teach others.
Write daily.
Connect others.
Lead a tribe.

It stroke me with that much inspiration, that I decided to write one article on each (or try at least, no sense in sharing nonsense also). Easy peasy: in the order they appear.

First up: Learn to sell what you have made.

I couldn’t agree more. I’m the first to take blame, but being able to ship is in my opinion the key differentiating element for companies big and small. For some reason, in small companies, it seems like the natural thing to do. Probably because shipping there is the only way to generate revenue to pay for the cost you made. Off course, this is not different in large companies, but apparently, there is moment where companies come at a stage where the direct impact of not generating revenue right away is not that visible anymore. If you are big enough, there is no risk that you will not be able to pay your cost at the end of the week (off course, also this is an illusion, but perception is everything off course).

Another element might be that the (perceived) risk of doing some wrong is bigger in a big company than in a small. Putting it this way: if you are a one man company and you screw up big time, you need to find another job and you need to work during the week end to pay of some debt, if you are a company with 1000 employees and you screw up as a company, 1000 people need to find a new job and millions are lost for shareholders. And off course, most shareholders don’t like risk…

The only way out of this is to start putting a risk premium on ‘not shipping’, on ‘not doing anything’ or ‘doing as last year and hoping that the outcome will not be too much different’. In economical terms: this is not only the opportunity cost, but also the cost of loosing your first mover advantage or even the cost of becoming obsolete.

Whenever you think: I will not present these figures to my boss this week because it’s not what he wants to hear and I want to check some extra figures, force yourself to not only put into the equation your fear (Seth would call it ‘your lizard brain’), but also the cost of loosing one week time in adapting if you prove to be right…

Shipping this article now!

Also available on Medium.