View from the sidelines by Venkatesh Krishnamoorthy
Entrepreneurs jump into their own driven by an idea whose time has come. “Change the world” ideas die a quiet death if they are not backed up by a great execution. Ram Charan and Larry Bossidy, in their book Execution, lay out a blue print on how to realize your vision through execution by treating it as a discipline. Execution is easier if you have the focus to cut out distractions and dwell upon on what is essential. It would be heart warming to stick to an idea emotionally stating the breakthrough will happen eventually, but if your objective thinking can overcome such attachments, success is not far away.
The difference between good and great lies not in how big, hairy, audacious your vision is, but how you could take that vision in small steps, investing in it in increments. These increments accumulate to shore up your vision into a big creation. Good to Great by Jim Collins precisely emphasizes the point that great companies that consistently achieved success over the years did not do anything dramatic but took small steps in the right direction every day till the flywheel effect took over. A giant flywheel is difficult to move in the first attempt. But as you make many attempts at rotating it, there comes a time when flywheel rotates at an unimaginable speed without you doing anything to push it.
The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki treats entrepreneurship at its fittest best. Guy Kawasaki tells entrepreneurs that instead of getting enamoured by such things as vision, mission, or anything, just start doing. Ship your product and refine it based on customer feedback. Don’t try to perfect everything before you could deliver it to the customer. The secret lies in finding a customer who would pay for your product and consistently keeping that customer happy delighting him with what he wants and what would make him choose you again and again.
You should remember that success can never be achieved overnight. Small successes do come but it is very important to build on them and not lose focus or get complacent about success. Success is very positive as a motivator but if it gets into your head too much, it would be difficult to sustain it at the same rate.
1. Wait for the tipping point. Don’t expect results instantaneously. Remember everything has to evolve. It takes time for an egg to become a butterfly. As you accumulate goodwill and great customer experience, the tipping point for your business would happen after customers get excited about your business and tell others, virally growing your business without much of your own effort.
2. Keep yourself grounded. In a spontaneous moment, things could get out of hand. I read about a great shirt maker. Their shirts were so good that the small shop grew famous overnight. Orders began to pour in. Unable to reject orders, the company messed up by not delivering on time and not keeping its promise. It is important to know what you can do and how much you can, instead of getting drowned in “success of the moment.”
3. Explore options. If an idea does not work, explore other options. Getting to Plan B sums up businesses that have exploded after slighting altering their business plans when the initial idea did not work.
