Decide and conquer
If you don’t choose you can’t ever win.
I worked with someone who once said “decide and conquer” and it stuck with me. He said it in a meeting, joking, but it’s true. Without a decision you don’t have the opportunity to conquer. If you don’t decide you can’t take action. You stay where you are.
When you decide, you might go out there and lose. But if you don’t decide, you certainly won’t win.
Deciding is hard. It means that you have chosen something and making a choice means that you are giving up other options. It means that you are putting yourself out there. It means that you are making a bet that you are right. And you might lose.
Emotionally, it is hard to lose. There’s a name for this. “Loss aversion.” It’s a part of almost everyone’s experience. It keeps us from putting ourselves out there and risking the loss of something we have today. We prefer avoiding losses to making gains.
“In general, loss aversion favors stability over change.”
- Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky
(Fear of) Bad is stronger than good.
I see this play out most with people who HAVE something good. They have something to lose. Their business is humming along. They’re making it. They’ve made it thus far by doing something very right. The hard decisions were made early — an opportunity was identified to do something. A bet was made, time and money invested. A win! Now…we don’t want to lose all of the earnings. People working at the organization are happy. They feel secure. They don’t want to risk losing their very good fortune.
…But what was right once, might not be right now.
Dr. Wesley G. Lowe (My Grandfather)
Consider Kodak — My grandfather worked for Kodak. He was an inventor, a chemist. He was good.
You can see all of the patented photographic emulsions he invented here in the 1940s and 1950s: http://bit.ly/2tplBrN
In 1962, Kodak employed 75,000 people and earned more than $1 billion in U.S. sales. Kodak monopolized the United States photography market, and made money on every step of the photographic process. Pretty good right?
Another inventor at Kodak invented the digital camera in the 1970’s. Turns out, his invention wasn’t seen as good.
“The first digital camera was patented in 1978. It was called the electronic still camera. But Mr. Sasson was not allowed to publicly talk about it or show his prototype to anyone outside Kodak.”
-NY Times
You may have heard this story before, but my point is that Sasson’s invention was seen as “bad” because it was scary. It meant risk and potential loss of all of the good that had arrived.
Kodak was innovative, respected and OWNED the photography industry in the US...at a certain time. Kodak didn’t want to try something new for fear of cannibalizing their existing business. They were afraid of loss! Due to this fear, they stayed the same — stayed safe. They kept their gains for a period of time but ultimately lost as digital technology advanced and they were slow to play.
What would have happened if they had instead embraced the potential in a new way to capture images? What if they had recognized that this might be a new chapter with even greater success?
Decide and Conquer
If you don’t decide to try new things, you stay where you are today. This may be safe for a period of time but not forever. Change is necessary. To change, you must decide, commit and act on that.
Decide to decide.
The first step is the hardest. You must admit that you are maintaining status quo and that it is a problem. Recognize that you have won in many ways but in order to keep winning you must decide to try new things. You must constantly push and grow and change to stay relevant.
Decide to decide to do things differently right now.
Make small decisions.
Commit to small changes if you aren’t comfortable with big choices right away. Pick something that has stagnated: a product feature, an operational process or a marketing tactic.
Come up with 3–5 ideas for how to do it differently.
Commit to taking one small change forward and see what the results are.
Be inspired by changes that are occurring all around you.
How are your customers interacting with the world in new ways today?
Don’t be blindsided by changes in your customers’ experience and expectations. Use new technology and tools. Talk to people who are younger than you are about what they are doing and what they expect.
Read something about technology and innovation: Tech Crunch, Wired, Inc., Fast Company — every week.
Reframe.
When you are considering something and it’s scary — notice and reframe.
Focus on the potential gains first. What are the pros of trying something
new vs. the pros of not trying and staying exactly where you are?
Kodak’s First Digital Moment — New York Times
Choices, Values and Frames: Daniel Kahneman Amos Tversky