Tom Peters Got Lucky
When Tom Peters co-wrote the famous "In Search of Excellence" that put him on the map in the 1980s, he had no idea it would be as successful as it was. Tom admits he got really lucky with his timing of the book.
While it's important to get your product right, your brand right and price right, timing is everything.
"...with the introduction of a new product, there are "three times": too early, too late, and lucky." - Tom Peters
When Tom Peters co-wrote the famous "In Search of Excellence" that put him on the map in the 1980s, he had no idea it would be as successful as it was. He and his co-author Bob Waterman observed and researched what was happening in the U.S. economy and how Japan was eating our lunch with their superior quality and execution, particularly with cars. Add to that an economy of high inflation and unemployment, and businesses took note. This book then spawned a whole roster of business leadership books.
Tom admits he got really lucky with his timing of the book. If it was a decade earlier when American businesses were fat and happy, it likely wouldn't have resonated as much.
You don't have total control over timing. Just as you can't time the market with investing, you can't ensure you have the perfect time for your product launch. But you can tune into trends and ensure you're relevant. The idea for the book came from what they were observing in American business.
Get everything right. Focus on great. Don't overcomplicate things. And then watch for the opportunity.
I want to highlight the importance of NOT making things too complicated. Simple gets short shrift in business because a plan that's perceived as too simple suggests you're not sophisticated enough. Or considering all the permutations. MBAs especially like to complicate things to make themselves appear smart. Thus planning cycles often take far too long on plans that bite off far more than a company can reasonably achieve in a quarter or a year, and usually don't create a bias for action. Rather, they're often a boulder that needs to be pushed uphill, injecting friction into everyone's work.
This is why I like this famous quote:
"We have a strategic plan. It's called doing things." Herb Kelleher
Doing things prevents overthink. It surfaces solutions you don't get from reading a book or just thinking.
Yet what do you do if you don't know what to do?
I've talked before about mining your life for ideas, looking for meaningful problems to solve (i.e. climate change anyone?) and differentiating yourself by being known for X. Finding the big idea that's going to scale or put you on the 'map' is incredibly hard. Often elusive.
CES, the world's largest technology show is known as the launch pad for hundreds of new products each year. Here's a look at this year's 216 launches. Add that to those launched the year before and so on. How many actually succeed? Especially from eager upstarts?
In the brutal food industry, 15,000 new products are launched annually with an estimated 90% failure rate. With 13,500 failures, those are some tough odds!
If you know what you're good at, what if you tried to make something average significantly better? What if you took a page or two from Tom Peters, focused on design, relevance and excellence, and improved something that sucks? There are a lot of people who don't try that hard. Which makes the mediocre middle a fertile land of opportunity.
And as our friend Tom Peters likes to say, "There's only one source of innovation and that's pissed off people."
What pisses you off the most that you can do something about if you applied yourself to the cause?