“How do I turn an average idea into a winner?”
This is the question that business owners ask themselves all the time. They see one idea and think “that’s it.” But, as we know from experience, there are many different avenues to explore. Some are better than others. In this post, we’ll talk about how you can take an average idea and make it great thanks to cultivating persistence and picking the right strategy.
Persistence is key
Persistence is the key to turning an idea into a winner. Ideas don’t always come easy, but you have to keep at them until they’re developed. At least long enough to validate a concept, which we’ll be covering in the frameworks part. There’s no set of steps that will guarantee success every time, so it comes down to finding what works best in each and every case. The most common variables here are people, objectives, timelines, assets and resources. And, not surprisingly, in this order we should be assessing them. Note that we’ve detached people from the resources category, which for years wasn’t the case.
The best ideas are those from which many others stem – this can be anything from one new feature on a website or app, to how content is organized around different topics in a blog post. Sometimes these branches won’t work out as planned; sometimes they’ll lead us somewhere we never would’ve imagined based off our original thought process solely by looking at the input and anticipated outcomes. By embracing persistence as your key value, arranging yours and your team’s mindsets around it, you lay the the foundation for growth.
No major success can be achieved without long lasting commitment, so pursuing this is something you can’t afford to fail at. A good persistence practice can take many forms, as there are numerous factors that contribute to it. Here are some ideas to get you started:
No matter what you are up to, it has to serve your audience. Full stop. The greatest idea is only as good as it’s useful to someone. It’s easier if you are within your target group yourself – but still, it’s a step which importance can’t be stressed enough. What you need is a profile – a persona model that describes who your audience is, what matters for them and what are their challenges.
- keep collaborators engaged – gamification and challenges are great ways to boost morale while hitting most ambitious goals
- build a healthy culture – promote open feedback, transparent and clear communication; you want people to enjoy the time together
- invest in mindfulness and purpose – it’s a marathon not a sprint, so you need to manage energy accordingly; re-charging is as important as the time spent on the job
- focus on small but powerful habits – when compounded over time, these will define who you are and how you deal with people and situations.
Truly understand your target audience and their needs
This exercise comes in many variations, as it can serve many purposes – from marketing to product development or even entire business concept. The goal is to organize the information you gather in a meaningful way by assessing it from multiple perspectives. Think about this in terms of roles each persona plays in achieving your objective. Are they the end user? A buyer? Maybe a decision maker or an influencer?
You may ask, “Okay but how do I gather all this?”. There’s no simple answer to this, as it depends on your situation, budget and type of venture you are on. In many businesses this is a knowledge that builds up over time which then becomes company’s intellectual property. In other cases you might want to use a market research company or a surveying platform. You can also just talk to people and gather information on your own – by networking, interviews, polls on social media and so forth.
The following questions can be helpful for this exercise:
- Who is my customer? (sociographic profile)
- What problems or needs does my business solve for them?
- What makes one product or service better over another for them?
- What matters for them, what values resonate with them?
Create strategic framework to support your idea’s execution
This is a process that you should initiate early on in order to maximize your chance of success. First, you have to define what that success looks like. You want a single metric or indicator that is objectively trackable. It can be more than one, in which case you’d either look at achieving certain levels for each KPI or assign varying percentage weight to them. So for three parameters such split could be 50-30-20.
Now take a look at the framework itself. Why do you need it at all? Can’t you just get going and simply use project management practices? Short answer is, yes, you should, and your success depends heavily on long term project management discipline. But you need something else – a set of constraints that would act as guardrails for your venture. You need to set the scene, create that environment for success.
Think of your idea as a living entity and you are simply the caretaker. You take on responsibility for it, but without allocating any limitations – it would keep growing in all directions. The more focused you can be, the greater chance of reaching your goals fast. And while there is no right or wrong way to set up this framework, the following tenets should serve as guidelines:
- What is the one thing I could focus on now to move the needle?
- How will this help us reach our goals?
- Is there anything else coming up in the next few weeks that might distract us from this?
- What are the major long-term risks and how we can minimize these?
- How much time can we put in every week for at least six months?
- Is there anything outside of our control that might interfere with this idea/project’s success, and how will we deal with those issues if they arise?
Turning an average idea into a winner doesn’t come easy. The key is to cultivate persistence, understand what your audience needs and go after it strategically. If you’re having trouble coming up with the perfect plan for executing that great idea, don’t fret! We’ve outlined three steps in this post that are sure to get you started on the right foot so you can make something amazing happen sooner than later. Now grab your whiteboard and sketch out your action plan – good luck!