You need to look beyond the bright, shiny object 

12 Feb You need to look beyond the bright, shiny object 

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Smart and savvy, my friend was utterly taken aback when a business venture she had poured her passion and time into recently sputtered to an acrimonious end.

She’s far from alone. Statistics variously reveal 12-month failure rates for startups as anything up to a whopping 95%. Leaving aside what constitutes a failure or a startup for that matter, today I’m more interested in the beginnings not the end. Because there’s a good chunk of that percentage who get blinded to their demise from early on.

Like many ventures, this one started with a sense of adventure and bright-shiny optimism. “This is a transformative idea.” “People seem to love it.” “Let’s do this!”

Yet the bright and shiny is what obscures, causing sensible people who would advise others caution and discipline to abandon both.

Every embryonic organisation is sparked by someones what or how idea. And if you become too enamoured with that spark, you will miss answering the more mundane and unheroic questions. Questions such as:

How do we want to work together?

Who will do what?

What’s our tolerance for risk?

Do people want what we’re selling? 

Avoiding that work is another kind of ‘bright shiny object’ syndrome, which causes people to trip at the first hurdle, breaking promises they had no hope of keeping and often didn’t even know they made.

Promises you can keep require explicit agreements. Lots of them. Agreements about who will do what by when set on repeat. Back to my friend who observed, “there was a chasm-sized gap between our aspiration and intention and what and how we needed to do things.” 

Absent explicit agreements and clear promises, each person will fill the gap with what they expect. Which dooms failure because I won’t know it’s what I thought you would do until you don’t.  

If you’re lucky, the expectation will be something easy to accommodate. If you’re not, it can fast track you to game over. Or in this case organisation over.

I’ve amassed a list of things you need to think about before you promise. It’s a deliberate practise worth cultivating because achieving a brand result people want to stick with requires you consistently make promises you can keep (and keep them). 

This list can apply to promises of all shapes and sizes. And is relevant whether you’re trying to look beyond the glare of your new bright shiny idea or trying to avoid eroding a more mature brand result.

A starting checklist for making promises:

• What is the risk of breaking the promise (for promisor and promisee)?
• What is the reward for keeping the promise (for promisor and promisee)?
• How much time do we have to keep the promise?
• Do we have the resources we need (people, money, technology, processes, etc)?
• Will our culture support the promise?
• What is the environment around the promise (competition, regulations, geography, etc)?

And then, state in most basic terms who will do what, by when.

Each week, more organisations see their misfortunes laid bare to scrutiny. And while circumstances present different veneers, underneath too many is not a failure of ideas or endeavour, but of making the wrong promises to themselves and to others.

So, what questions have you failed to ask when blinded by a bright shiny object?

Thanks for reading