It's all made up
When you think about the work you do you have preconceived expectations. You might assume those you work with know what they're doing. And if you're having eye surgery you more than hope they do.
But when it comes to business strategy, it's much less concrete. How a company goes to market and decides what features to put into their product as well as what business they're in are informed by experience, research and often pretty good hunches.
Sometimes, though, companies get it wrong. A recent example is Zillow Offers, the part of Zillow that was to take on Open Door buying and flipping houses. Turns out there was far more volatility to their business model than they forecast and the risk became too great. And so they shut it down, resulting in the need to layoff 25% of their employees. Ouch.
For anyone that reads Ben Thompson's newsletter "Stratechery" he has a solid analysis of this approach. For those that don't, you can listen to Zillow's CEO's on their earnings call.
The point is they got their strategy wrong. Acknowledged it and reversed course. This is the uncertainty part of business at play.
In the camera world,
Nikon, chose to be backwards compatible with all of their lenses and cameras which made interchangeability easy but limited what they could do with autofocus. Arch rival Canon chose to create an entirely new lens mount which made their old bodies incompatible with new lenses. But gave them freedom to design a better lens. The result was they ate Nikon's lunch. Many Nikon shooters switched to Canon at the time. Their lenses were faster and quieter. Nikon finally gave into a new lens mountwith their new full-frame mirrorless cameras.
Sony jumped into the full-frame camera market without the legacy baggage and ate both of their lunches. It took a few iterations to hit their sweet spot, but they're currently on fire.
Kodak, a company that created a pop cultural icon and has it’s own documentary, as I've mentioned before, invented the digital camera but given they were a 'film' company, didn't lead and lost. Bad. Unlike Zillow, they didn't recognize their folly until too late.
Zillow has an amazing core business and will stick with it rather than vertically integrate. What sounds good on paper doesn't always play out.
The thing is, all of this is made up. No, not the news of it, but the strategies each company chose.
You make up what you do too. Knowing this, what if you approached your work design more playfully? What if you made it up? Because that's what you and I do anyway even if we don't think of it that way.
It's really all made up. Justified by spreadsheets, astute analysis, expensive latte's and jelly-filled donuts, sure. But still made up. In your head. Their head. And other head's too.
Once you realize this, it's kind of freeing. You become unshackled. Limited only by where you take your mind.
But it won't work well if you flit from thing to thing. So make time for making things up. Find a corner and a comfy chair in your home. Or at the sea watching the waves roll in as they have for millennia. Or wherever you can escape the busy and just think. Wander. Jot down what comes up. But don't worry if you leave with a blank mind. You've started the process. Your mind will make connections when it's good and ready like an errant Schnauzer.
Rinse and repeat. And have fun. Because if you're not, this all becomes a major drag and you won't have the will to push through the hard parts. And there are always hard parts on the path to amazing.