Project management is among a top skill to master in any business; especially one wanting to grow.
Why?
Because without project management, business owners will unnecessarily run into common issues:
You often get derailed by "the unexpected.”
It’s inevitable.
You get interrupted an unexpected number of times daily. Those interruptions come at unexpected times. They each take an unexpected amount of time with which to deal.
That’s why it’s "the unexpected."
These interruptions kill your flow, destroy your focus, and force you to work on the urgent instead of the important.
So how do you deter, prevent, and deal with the problems these unexpected interruptions incur?
I was shocked, hurt, and felt like my idea had been stolen. Though I had the idea first, Nintendo would be the star. Nintendo would make $millions. It took years before I was old enough to recognize the important lesson in this experience...
Are you second-guessing your next great idea? Are you downplaying the value you could provide to others? Are you upset that you found a competitor in the market who seems to be offering everything you want to (and seems to be finding great success doing it)?
It might be time to step back and realize a few important things.
Thank you for showing everyone a poor way to lay off 1,400 people.
Sorry, did I say lay off? I meant, "transition".
But every one of your employees knew what you really meant by "transition". This intentional misdirection seemed to be a theme of your speech.
Guess what? Your employees caught on before you delivered the punch line. That's why someone started recording the show after all.
Deep down you’re excited.
You’re excited that your new idea is going to sell. You’re excited that your new product will be met with fanfare, enthusiasm, and will win the hearts and minds (and wallets) of an entire market.
I know this feeling. I’ve had this feeling many times before. Not just the first time I developed a new product idea. But the second, third, fourth, twentieth time and beyond.
Despite having my early product development activities fail many times, I rarely considered that my next would share the same fate.
Blinded by excitement over each great idea, I kept trying. And so will you. As entrepreneurs and business owners, we have to keep trying. Innovate or die… or so they say.
But stop and think for a moment.
How can we innovate so blindly with so much at stake? How can we thoughtlessly build that “next great product” when so many businesses around us create products that fail? How can we justify the cost and time it takes to build a new idea into reality based solely on our excitement?
You can’t. Or at least, you shouldn’t.
What I discovered in my early years is that, without justifying your new idea, the new product you develop will be a shot in the dark. An unjustified product bases its success on pure luck.
I’m not talking about the flip-a-coin-fifty-fifty kind of luck. I’m talking about the astronomical-lottery-ticket-never-gonna-win kind of luck.
If you’re in the middle of a product development cycle and this comes as discouraging to you, it shouldn’t. For one, consider this:
Your customers have a myriad of problems they deal with on a daily basis. Personal problems, productivity problems, technology problems, manager problems, teamwork problems, etc.
For each and every one of these problems, your customers have either:
Your new product idea will take off like a rocket... right?
You may think your new idea is so exciting that your customers will not only jump in line to buy it, but will also share it in a viral social-media frenzy. The reality is that your customers either already have a solution, won’t know about your solution, or won’t be willing to pay for your solution.
So is all lost?
Not at all. New products enter the market every day. Most fail. But many don’t. Some even go on to be massively successful, taking small companies public or generating enormous amounts of revenue.
What is the key differentiator between these highly successful products and the rest?
Years ago I stood in front of my peers and executives at a company strategy meeting, pitching a new product idea in an attempt to land a paltry $300,000 in internal product development funding (our company had over $1 billion in yearly revenue).
My pitch showed the wonder of this new product idea. Generated by the smartest brains in our division, this product would be sure to sell, so the story was told.
Unfortunately, my story unraveled…
My boss: “Why would we go build a new product when the last one didn’t sell?”
Executives and colleagues: [Eyes on me]
Me: “???”
Despite my silence, I could have flipped my chair in a fit of rage. I was angry and embarrassed to be confronted, to stand dumbfounded, to not have an answer.
My boss wasn’t trying to anger me. He merely delivered the truth in the form of a question. His question was a valid one, and deep down, it raised an issue that had worried me for some time.
My boss wanted product justification, and I didn’t have it. But I would the next time around…
Tail tucked between my legs, I left our company strategy meeting motivated more than ever. I would study, review past product successes and failures, learn from experienced product managers, and develop a set of questions and guidelines that mattered.
The next time anyone asked why we should develop a product, I would have an answer based on data and reasoning instead of ignorance and excitement.
I experimented with long-form statements of work, marketing requirement documents, and multi-day meetings to get to the root of what matters. Through all of it, I can share some good news:
You don’t need to have that feeling of despair wrapped in wonder and frustration.
You don’t need to ask yourself “Why isn’t my product selling?”
You don’t need to lie to yourself and say, “Maybe if I just build that cool new idea or add that one new feature, sales will take off.”
And you don’t need to worry about spending days or weeks filling out a 14-page marketing requirements document that will collect dust as soon as it’s finished (yes, our marketing requirements document template was 14 pages long without a single section filled in).
Having now developed or led the development of nearly 20 distinct products between five companies, I can say there are only a handful of things that matter to a product’s success, and we’ve boiled it down to this:
Before I dive in and share with you a simple list of 8 questions that can significantly reduce your chances of building a product that fails, let’s discuss what this guide is not:
This guide is not a procrastinating device. We’re trying to bring a new product to market, not generate a document for your customers to read.
This guide is not a lengthy marketing requirements document meant to analyze every angle of every feature of your product.
This guide is not a user experience, support and testing, compatibility, schedule, or detailed requirements document. You may need those down the road, but not now.
So what is it?
This guide is a set of questions that you can answer to help you quickly ascertain whether your product has a chance for success. Those initial product ideas can be exciting, I know. But product ideas need time to mature. Not too long (time to market is crucial if your idea is a good one). But with the right set of questions, you can feel confident about the return on investment in a short amount of time.
With these thoughts and your product idea in mind, here are the 8 questions your new product should answer or risk being doomed to fail miserably:
Before considering anything else, you need to consider how this product fits into your company mission. Anyone can weave baskets, but if your business’s mission is to build productivity apps, you’re just wasting your time, energy, and will likely introduce a mediocre product into the market.
Worst of all, if your product doesn’t fit your company mission, you’re wasting your potential and leaving opportunity on the table.
So how do you know if your new product idea is a good fit for your mission? Ask yourself, how does this product better fulfill your company purpose? Does your product support or disregard your mission statement? Do you need to expand your existing team or hire new employees with unfamiliar skills? Would an existing customer be surprised with your new product, or excited and eager to purchase it? When you explain the product idea to your staff, do you have to educate them on new technologies, markets, or concepts first?
It’s easy to come up with an exciting new idea and dive straight into development. But if your product isn’t helping your customer solve an important problem in their life or work, your new idea won’t sell.
Ask yourself, exactly who is my customer? What are their problems, desires, needs? How does my product help them? How many people face similar problems? Is your product one they would be willing to buy (with their own money) for a friend or coworker? How does this new product fit into the unmet needs of your existing customers (you have been listening before innovating, right [LINK])?
If your market is well-defined, ask yourself what specific submarkets is your product intended to serve? What specific applications will the proposed product fulfill? Who are the likely initial leading adopters?
This is also a great place to think about your product’s total addressable market (TAM), serviceable addressable market (SAM), and serviceable obtainable market (SOM).
For the purposes of this document, you don’t need an in-depth analysis. Your TAM can be a simple guesstimate of the total revenue available in your market if it was completely dominated by your product and no competition existed. Similarly, for your SAM, make some quick estimates of the market you can actually obtain based on your products reach, geography, etc. Finally, your SOM should be your most realistic estimate of the revenue you will actually be able to capture given your competition, product limitations, sales reach, etc.
(This analysis is critical to understanding how successful your product could be in your market. For more detail on TAM/SAM/SOM analysis, contact us at www.moderndavinci.net/work-with-us or subscribe at www.moderndavinci.net/subscribe)
“Not Invented Here” is a terrible company disease. It’s a close-minded way of getting a new product up and running which usually leads to longer development cycles and higher costs.
Ask yourself, does all the technology exist to field your new product? If not, what is needed? What alternative technology is likely to be a threat or disruptor? What are the key technology obstacles to release?
Remember from above, if your customer has a problem, it’s possible that they already have a solution (possibly a terrible one). If you’re not clear on how your customer is solving the problem you are trying to solve, you’ll be fighting a competitive uphill battle.
Ask yourself, who currently produces the same or similar product? How will your product be different from the competition? Will your customer care about those differences? If so, what is the value of that differentiation?
Additionally, it’s important to keep in mind that your competitive advantages can be copied by your competition! Ask yourself, how sustainable is your differentiation? Have you created a technological, legal, or other such barrier-to-entry?
This has to do with your differentiation, your technology, your mission fit, everything. List those essential features which you believe will be selling points for your customers. Not from your perspective, but from theirs.
What features are going to make your customer say “I have to have that”? What features are going to save their time, put a smile on their face, and solve one of their most pressing problems?
With each feature listed, take a moment to write down the impact if you fail to deliver that feature. This will help clarify your feature priorities quickly.
If you don’t know how much your product will cost to build, now is the best time to figure that out. Consider all elements of creating your product once it’s developed (we’ll figure out development costs next): tools, manufacturing, overhead costs. If you are making a physical widget, predict your average production cost based on volume, and start low and conservatively. If your sales go through the roof, you can always negotiate a better deal as your volume increases.
Of course, your customer won’t care about cost, they only care about price. You likely already have a price-point in mind; one based on your competition and some desired profitability. With your cost in mind and your desired gross margin, you can quickly uncover whether the price you have in mind is going to make you as profitable as you hope.
Development costs can be some of the most expensive costs to incur. Consider total engineering hours and labor rates. What engineering tools and materials will be required? Are there other expenditures your staff will need to build your new product?
This is usually the time to predict expected calendar time for the project and align that with your market needs. Don’t be overly aggressive here, especially if the product is a complex one or you are treading into unfamiliar waters. Development schedules can quickly balloon when trouble strikes. Try to build those risks into your schedule so you’re ready for surprises when they inevitably occur.
Here is where it all comes together. ROI, or return on investment, is the ultimate calculation to make when thinking about building a new product. Unless you are in the business to spend a lot of money and break even (i.e., not be profitable), you need to ensure your product has an ROI that matches your expected gross margins.
Based on your development, manufacturing set-up and tooling, marketing, sales, and release costs, chart out your expected top-line revenue over time. I like to predict three years.
From there, compare that to your expected sales price and calculate gross margin. If you’ve done your homework accurately, your answer here will tell you whether your new product is good for business, or just a good idea.
The Product Justification Cheat Sheet Infographic.
You started out excited.
Excited by your new product idea and the potential for massive success. But perhaps as you read this post you grew worried.
Worried that your great idea won’t sell. Worried that your new product will be met with no fanfare, no enthusiasm, and fail miserably with little sympathy from your customers.
I know this feeling. I’ve had this feeling many times before. Not the first time I started developing a product. Or even the second or third time. But my early product development activities failed so many times I began to worry that my next one would share the same fate.
It’s this combination of excitement and anxiety that makes product development so exhilarating and, if done right, rewarding. Of course, to “do it right”, we need to replace that excitement and worry with reason and data.
Use this product justification guide to do that.
As I said earlier, an unjustified product is a shot in the dark. An unjustified product bases its success and revenue stream on pure luck. But if you work through this product justification guide, in a short amount of time you can feel more confident in your idea and regain that excitement, or kill your product idea and look for a better one.
Wishing you massive growth and success!
Michael Mehlberg helps small businesses owners achieve their goals and live their passion. His approach to technology, corporate strategy, product development, marketing, and sales is both practical and highly effective, and has helped multiple small businesses grow into the company their owners envisioned. Reach out by emailing him at mike@moderndavinci.net or learn more on our About page.
As a leader, you are expected to have answers. Whether it’s a team member asking how to get a project back on track, a customer asking for more service, or a boss demanding better results, there is pressure to provide quick, definitive responses.
The drive to find the “right answer” and to do so expeditiously may be well intentioned but comes with considerable risk. What if your response fails to address the issue you are trying to solve? Or more importantly, what if you are spending all of your time and energy finding an answer to the wrong question?
Taking a step back from a problem and further assessing it through questioning can provide powerful insight. In addition to helping re-frame a problem and sharpen focus, asking powerful questions can foster breakthrough thinking and yield many critical benefits.
If there was ever a book I wanted to rip the cover off and leave home while out in public, Seducing Strangers by Josh Weltman was it. The title, though it appropriately reflects the central theme and adheres to one of Weltman's fundamental principles of persuasion, is a bit risque and was hard to explain to the few passersby who asked.
Even so, the lessons learned far outweighed the slight discomfort I felt in public. This book stands out as one of few books whose principles, stories, and experiences are a mandatory read for any modern business owner or entrepreneur, let alone advertising professional at who this book seems to be aimed
Listening is the foundation for developing lasting relationships, building trust, preventing conflict, and influencing others. When you really listen, you show the other person that you care what they think and that they are worthy of your full attention.
No one is going to be a perfect listener 100% of the time and shedding old listening habits isn’t always easy. However, it’s entirely possible to improve your listening skills using the approach outlined herein.
I'm going to do something that scares the hell out of me. I'm going to share something very personal. Something that took me hours of reflection to create. Something I hesitate to share with friends and family. I'm going to share my new year’s resolution.
To be clear, you shouldn't care about my new year’s resolution. Sure, it's deeply personal so may be interesting in much the same way secrets and rumors are interesting. But beyond that, it's not the resolution that's important; it's the process by which this resolution is created that will affect your year for the better.
Every successful entrepreneur I know is out there working hard, working long, and trying to work smart. They are thinking and creating and building. They are searching for a meaningful solution to their customer’s problems and purpose in their lives. Every entrepreneur I know has goals, lists, objectives, and to-do’s. But not many have created a yearly resolution for their business. Not one like this at least.
The new year’s resolution I'm recommending isn't your typical one. It's less of a goal and more of a statement... a guide of sorts. A word or two to live by. Something that, if you get it right, will change yourself and your business for the better in the coming 365 days.
There is no one perfect script or style for leadership. However, research has shown that there are distinct leadership styles, each of which has a unique impact on an organization’s climate and results. This makes it worthwhile to assess various leadership styles to determine their situational effectiveness and what conditions must be in place for success.
In this post, we explore a coaching approach to leadership - one that focuses on investing in the long-term development of others.
It’s about this time of year when you realize, as I usually do, that you haven’t yet figured out what you are getting your colleagues for Christmas. Worse yet, your staff is about to go on vacation, and you’ve got a boss that is nearly impossible to shop for. And customers. Oh, what should you get your most loyal customers?
With this gift buying guide, we’re going to break down some overarching gift-buying principles. Principles that apply to your boss, your customers, your staff, and your colleagues. Principles that will prevent you from making an embarrassing mistake or sending the wrong impression.
With those principles in mind, we’ll give you some ideas to kick off your shopping with a dash, giving everyone you work with a token of appreciation and a bit of holiday cheer.
Becoming a better team member, manager, or leader is a learning process. Through continuous learning we grow our knowledge and skills, build our capacity to take on new challenges, and push closer to achieving our potential. If you are curious about how you can improve or how to foster growth in others, it is important to understand how learning works, specifically for adults.
The truth is that learning is a journey. Reflecting on where you are in the learning process will help you prioritize what is important, more accurately gauge your progress, and shed light on the struggles that often accompany personal growth and professional development.
Fortunately, we have a simple four-stage model to help illustrate this.
So many of our ideas are built on the thoughts and insights of others. But no matter where they come from, not all ideas stick. Not all ideas generate revenue or increase market share. The ones that do succeed are the ones that solve specific customer problems.
If you’re spending all your time innovating and not listening, it’s just a matter of time before you’re no longer relevant. In fact, if you haven't asked yourself with the last six months what has changed about your customers, your markets, and your industry, you’ve taken your first step towards innovating solutions that nobody needs.
Don’t get caught in the innovation trap. Listen first. Create and innovate later.
Feedback is one of the most helpful and important things we all need to learn, grow, and improve. Furthermore, delivering skillful feedback can serve you well in all aspects of life. And yet in working with businesses and coaching clients, I hear time and time again how uncomfortable people are with the idea of giving feedback. I see the negative consequences of organizations and teams who avoid feedback – conflict, frustration, and stagnation.
If giving great feedback is an important skill for business leadership and performance, what is it that makes people so apprehensive about it? Let’s break it down and then look at some simple strategies for delivering effective feedback.
"Take the controls," she said. She didn't blink, didn't smirk, and didn't waiver. I glanced at her quickly, then again as her words sunk in. Two thoughts flew through my mind:
Our Cessna 172 engine drowned what once was an otherwise quiet airfield. After cranking the engine, the propeller came to life with such force it felt as if the entire aircraft would shake itself apart. The plane rattled uncomfortably on the runway, wanting desperately to fly.
My instructor chattered instructions through the headset for the next 45 minutes, all of which she left me in control of the airplane. From taxi to takeoff, flying to the landing approach, I was in full control (she didn't let me land, it was my first flight after all).
And through the sweat of this first-time, hands-on experience, I learned more practical information about flying than all the previous books I'd read on the subject combined
Today is the day... the day before elections when you realize you'll need to exercise your right as a free citizen in a representative democracy. Have you researched your candidates? Have you aligned your businesses needs with the values, record, and public statements of your choice representative?
Watch this video before you head to the ballot box.
We'll take a focused look at voting and how it applies to your business. We'll review some things to look for in a candidate that could affect your company and provide an excellent resource for researching candidates in your district.
We're not supposed to read/believe/like/tweet/forward nonsense, but we do anyways. Why? Because it sounds good and gets a reaction. Because, on the Internet, nobody stops you. Nobody will think about what you've written... they will just "like" your post. You get a warm fuzzy while spreading the nonsense further before they move on with their lives.
Of course, we can't fight every snippet of misinformation or uninformed opinion. There's not enough willpower or time to go around. What we can do is cultivate a challenging, questioning attitude while we peruse the Internet. By challenging our worldview, we will learn more. By questioning what we read, we will start to get a sense for quality information vs. the nonsense.
Here are a few things to keep in mind while reading to maintain that questioning attitude:
What goals drive your behavior? Which challenges excite your passions? Can you name a few activities that renew and revive you?
With a little thought, these answers will come. We all have driving goals, exciting challenges, and reviving activities. Whether we consciously know what these goals, challenges, and activities are, they motivate us. But until we make them conscious, they are nothing more than motivators. By forcing them to be a part of our daily routine, we can turn them into a personal renaissance.
With Brendan McCaughey from 27th Renaissance, we discuss our own renaissance and aim to inspire you to create yours as well.
This post is for anyone who wants to get ahead; who wants to stop reacting to life; who wants to stop floating through life day by day, hoping for the best. It's for anyone with much to accomplish and little time to do it. This post is for anyone who wants to focus and thrive, yet finds himself distracted and unsure of what to do next.
The most successful people in the world have a plan. Not just a plan for big projects, but a plan for the little periods of time that they know will add up in the long run. When you are done reading this post, you will know how to develop a plan tonight that will guide you tomorrow. You will be able extract maximum value out of each and every hour of your day. Your plan will guide you when distracted and, in the early hours of the morning when your willpower is low and it’s difficult to think, it will provide you with a goal to kickstart your day and accomplish something while the rest of the world is still waking up. Creating your plan will not be complicated... it is as simple as filling out an index card.
Looking back on shelves full of hundreds, if not thousands of books read provides a certain satisfaction for the intellectually inclined. Yet, while looking at the shelves, I realized that any effect these books had on me was fleeting. Some books were long forgotten, others a vague memory. My problem? I wasn't reading to remember. And for what other purpose do we read than to remember!?
Ask yourself, do you really remember what you read? Do you remember more than the overarching concepts of any book? Can you recite the inspirational quotes, the dozens of tidbits of knowledge that were supposed to change the way you think about life and work? If you're like me, your answer is probably "no".
Since birth, we have been constantly learning. Though it is not something we "feel", we assimilate knowledge and build habits from new experiences daily. In the beginning, learning was effortless. As we grew into adulthood, the roots of our knowledge spread deeper becoming ingrained in us and making it more difficult to pick up new concepts.
This has nothing to do with our intelligence, we are simply creatures of habit... and not just those hard-to-break habits like nail biting. We unknowingly create habits for nearly everything. It's a matter of efficiency.
Of course, we all wish to break ourselves of those unappealing habits. We design clever tricks to catch ourselves in the act--strings around fingers, random chimes every few minutes, etc. But building a better self is more than eliminating bad habits; it's about creating new, positive, fulfilling ones.
Focus is that state of being we desire when solving challenging problems. Focus is the awareness we need when cramming for a final exam. Focus is the differentiator between the most successful entrepreneurs and those that struggle on. As important as it is and try as we might, achieving focus can be one of the most demanding and frustrating areas in our lives.
