A recent commenter on my blog asked me if I subscribed to Colonel Boyd's OODA Loop Theory. I must admit that I had to look up that term to see if I subscribed to it or not, but what I found was that there is a name for how I view the world around me: OODA Loop!
For an interesting read, see the article at Wikipedia
Friday, January 09, 2009
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
Yes it IS Your Problem
As an entrepreneur you will find, as I mentioned in a previous blog entry, that you are operating within a flawed world. This means that people and organizations that you deal with- vendors, customers, partners, employees, investors- often do not do what they say they will do or achieve the goals that you expect them to achieve.
Of course there are many reasons that others do not perform. Very often it is because the issue lacks sufficient importance to them. They therefore do not go to the considerable effort to figure out exactly what is wrong, then develop a plan, acquire the resources, and carry out the activities to fix it, then finally monitor the situation to be sure no backsliding occurs.
If you are dealing with a well-established organization, such as a vendor company or strategic partner, you should realize that their priorities are probably not the same as yours. Their personnel have many other issues to deal with in their day regarding their own key suppliers, customers, employees, etc.
As a start-up, you simply may not be that important to them, no matter what they tell you. This can cause a lack of commitment to and effort in solving problems that they are creating for you. In short, they do not have that much to lose, although you may have everything to lose.
Other times they do not have the ability to solve the problem for one reason or another, one key reason being that they are average or below-average performers in general.
You must not let the mediocrity of others stand in the way of your excellence!
This means that you must solve problems for others. Problem solving is the number one defining activity of an entrepreneur.
If they won't figure it out, then you figure it out. Define exactly what the problem is, what is causing the problem, what resources are necessary to solve it, how to acquire the resources, how best to deploy those resources, and then bird-dog it to make it happen.
Again, realize that if the problem affecting you goes unsolved, you may go out of business, but that is a very unlikely consequence to your well-established vendor, customer, strategic partner, etc..
Who has the most to lose? That's the key question here.
Of course there are many reasons that others do not perform. Very often it is because the issue lacks sufficient importance to them. They therefore do not go to the considerable effort to figure out exactly what is wrong, then develop a plan, acquire the resources, and carry out the activities to fix it, then finally monitor the situation to be sure no backsliding occurs.
If you are dealing with a well-established organization, such as a vendor company or strategic partner, you should realize that their priorities are probably not the same as yours. Their personnel have many other issues to deal with in their day regarding their own key suppliers, customers, employees, etc.
As a start-up, you simply may not be that important to them, no matter what they tell you. This can cause a lack of commitment to and effort in solving problems that they are creating for you. In short, they do not have that much to lose, although you may have everything to lose.
Other times they do not have the ability to solve the problem for one reason or another, one key reason being that they are average or below-average performers in general.
You must not let the mediocrity of others stand in the way of your excellence!
This means that you must solve problems for others. Problem solving is the number one defining activity of an entrepreneur.
If they won't figure it out, then you figure it out. Define exactly what the problem is, what is causing the problem, what resources are necessary to solve it, how to acquire the resources, how best to deploy those resources, and then bird-dog it to make it happen.
Again, realize that if the problem affecting you goes unsolved, you may go out of business, but that is a very unlikely consequence to your well-established vendor, customer, strategic partner, etc..
Who has the most to lose? That's the key question here.
Monday, October 27, 2008
How? How Long? How Much?
Many entrepreneurs, when they write their business plan, do a great job of elaborating what they want to do. They have a dream. Some of their business plans have a vision statement nearly as long as the marketing section. (This is not due to an overly long vision statement!)
If you've ever heard someone call someone else a "dreamer," you know that this is usually not a compliment.
If you want to succeed, you must have a plan. The difference between a dream and a plan hangs on determining the answer to one question: How?
For everything you say you want to accomplish, you must lay out, in great detail, how you will do it.
Then you must execute that plan. The difference between planning and execution hangs on determining the answers two questions: How long? and How much?
How long will it take? How much will it cost? How much revenue will it bring in?
Often the problem is not that entrepreneurs ignore these critical questions. It is that they answer them literally on a whim.
You surely know that being an entrepreneur will be hard work. But you should realize that the hard work starts with properly determing the actual answers to these questions by conducting proper research. This research must go beyond the typical "market research." It must be far more all-encompassing "business research."
More on this later...
If you've ever heard someone call someone else a "dreamer," you know that this is usually not a compliment.
If you want to succeed, you must have a plan. The difference between a dream and a plan hangs on determining the answer to one question: How?
For everything you say you want to accomplish, you must lay out, in great detail, how you will do it.
Then you must execute that plan. The difference between planning and execution hangs on determining the answers two questions: How long? and How much?
How long will it take? How much will it cost? How much revenue will it bring in?
Often the problem is not that entrepreneurs ignore these critical questions. It is that they answer them literally on a whim.
You surely know that being an entrepreneur will be hard work. But you should realize that the hard work starts with properly determing the actual answers to these questions by conducting proper research. This research must go beyond the typical "market research." It must be far more all-encompassing "business research."
More on this later...
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