A Sunday "Coffee with Colm" We must be open to new ideas (but beware the Magpie Effect!)
The world is changing at a rate of knots! The speed at which ideas come and go, take root or die is at one level exciting beyond belief and at another level deathly frightening - remember the iPod? Hello! Tape recorders became the walkman, became the mp3 player, became the iPod, became your smartphone, is becoming your wearable and possibly an implant... we have no idea where it is headed 100, 50, 20, even 10 years from now!
However, if you were employed making cassette tapes or tape recorders you had to reinvent or face the dole queue. The cassette maker went through the painful process of reinvention only to find that the next iteration of listening technologies was cannibalizing itself almost immediately and so his/her world became very uncomfortable. And that trend can be applied to almost everything we see around us.
So, what can you and I do?
We must be open to new ideas. We must be willing to rethink how we are going to make crust into the future. I've had to, you've probably had to, the people around you are having to, our kids and grand-kids must learn to reinvent or die - fact of life.
Read on below or watch this short video for more...
I am blessed to get the opportunity through the day job to talk to groups of kids and I always tell them they are in school for two reasons and two reasons only:
- They are in school to LEARN HOW TO LEARN
- They are in school to LEARN HOW TO WORK WITH OTHER PEOPLE
That's it!
I tell them the education system uses Maths, Irish, English, Geography, History etc to teach them these basic skills but I reinforce that if they master both skills they can go anywhere and do anything, fail to master one or the other and life will be even tougher than it need be. You see if they learn how to learn, they can learn anything and therefore regular reinvention will not be as scary a prospect.
I am reminded of the anecdote that 'A' students, report to 'B' students, who report to 'C' students, who report to the 'D' student who owns the company! Why is that? Perhaps because the 'D' student learned enough to learn how to learn but learned even more about working with other people than the often purely academically focused 'A' student?
This further reminds me of the saying that 15% of our future success will come through our technical ability, 85% from our people skills!
So, in order to survive and thrive in this brave new world we must be open to new ideas and we must be able to inspire confidence in others that we can follow through.
Entrepreneurs are a particular breed of people that embrace this and are always coming up with new products, services, concepts that they believe will be the 'next big thing' and do you know what? some of them do become the next big thing but most (the vast, vast majority) either bump along or fade into obscurity and do you know another thing? that's ok.
Everything is a numbers game. Everything.
My dad, happily and healthily retired now aged 79, was a super salesman during his active career and used say "The more calls you make, the more orders you take. Simple." But coming up with new ideas is the same. Writing books or songs is the same - I met and spoke with legendary 'voice of his generation in my opinion) Irish singer/songwriter, Damien Dempsey and he said that for him he'll write one hundred songs to find ten that he might record to find the one that becomes a hit. Sound familiar? Of course it does. Why then do we expect to hit a home run every time we go to bat with a new prospect, client, business, investment, invention? No idea - what I do know is we must play the numbers game - we can never alter universal laws.
So. We're all agreed? We will be open to new ideas from here on? And stop defending old paradigms? Steam trains are NOT coming back. Great!
HOWEVER beware! New ideas are at once both alluring and dangerous!
New ideas are exciting. Who do you know that is addicted to the excitement of new ideas?
They come up with one - best thing since sliced bread - and become evangelistic about it and dive headlong into it with a fervor rarely seen.
You meet them six months later and ask "How's that thingamajig?"
"Oh that? Naw. Didn't light my fire. Not for me. But do you know what I'm doing now? blah, blah, blah..."
Twelve months later, you bump into them and ask, "How's blah, blah, blah?"
"Naw. Market was swamped, punters didn't actually want the quality I was offering, I'm in x, y,z now - HUGE opportunity!"
These people are magpies! Magpies LOVE shiny things. And as soon as the going gets tough (and it does every time), they get disillusioned and their inner magpie makes them open to new and easy and they spot something shiny in the distance, drop the current flavor of the month like a hot potato and flit off in search of the golden ticket, the get rich quick scheme that'll have them living the life of Reilly in no time.
Yeah right... as Del Trotter used say, "Rodney, this time next year, we'll be millionaires!"
So, my friend, it is crucial to your peace of mind, your prosperity, your health and your wealth that you remain open to new ideas so that you can enjoy fruitful years ahead, but it is equally important that you tame your inner magpie.
If you find something worth pursuing, extrapolate it out on paper to a future date and if you are happy with the picture it offers, pursue it with everything you've got and stick at it.
"For how long, Colm?" I hear you ask.
"For as long as it takes." is my reply. "And don't be a magpie! Do not get distracted by shiny things!"
In conclusion, I offer a snippet from my book, Feeding Johnny - How to Build a Business Despite the Roadblocks (written in 2013 and I notice the Magpie wasn't in the equation - a hedgehog was! Might I be a magpie? *shudders* - naw, don't think so!)
"Lesson 3. Be open to new ideas.
“You’d make a fortune if you had your own little coffee shop,” was the advice my dad used give me. From his perspective, his way of looking at the world the advice was sound; it was just wrong for me. Thankfully I resisted.
But because of my training in the café industry for several decades, opening coffee shops, not running my own little one, was the most obvious choice of business when I decided in 2003 to attempt to ‘build something significant’. At the time of writing however I am not in the coffee shop business. Over the years my thinking has broadened, mainly as a result of reading books and listening to cd’s to get other people’s views of the world, and I have become open to new ideas.
One of the great ideas I came across was the Hedgehog Concept of Business* (link provided below) in ‘Good to Great’ by Jim Collins, discussed earlier in this book. The concept asks you to ask yourself, “What can you be the best in the world at?” and suggests that it may not be what you are currently engaged in. I find this very liberating.
I believe that my business, Carambola Kidz IS the best in the world at feeding children in school. We are brilliant at it. We are on a mission to promote healthy lifestyle awareness in all children. We have changed the way children in disadvantaged schools in Ireland eat forever. Competitors in the industry set themselves up to be ‘just like Carambola, only better.’
Imagine if I hadn’t been open to new ideas? Please be open to new ideas; the next one might spark something in you that will change the world."
END.
MORE: If you enjoyed that and would like to read my blog/watch my vlog discussing the Hedgehog Concept of Business, click here
FREE BOOK: If would like a complimentary audio copy of my business book "Feeding Johnny - How to Build a Buisiness Despite the Roadblocks", narrated by yours truly so you get all the nuances, feel free to grab one here
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As I say at the end of Feeding Johnny, I'll sign off as always; thanks for thinking with me.
I wish you well.
Yours truly,
Colm