Each of us carry within us shades of a dreamer, realist and spoiler. The dreamer has big ideas and feels and hopes everything will succeed
So, you have come up with the best business idea since sliced bread. But you have also seen very good ideas bite the dust and are aware that only 33 percent of all ideas meet with any degree of success. So how do you gauge your chance for success? Even before your idea leaves the drawing board and you invest any time or money into it, what can you do to ensure that you are among the 33 percent?
While nothing can guarantee you success, there are some simple ways that you can use to test out and to trim down your ideas. Each of us carry within us shades of a dreamer, realist and spoiler. The dreamer has big ideas and feels and hopes everything will succeed. The realist has his feet firmly on the ground and is often the one who puts together the actual people, numbers and gives the idea a more concrete shape. The spoiler is the one who shoots holes through the idea till it is threadbare and see if it still stands. Not everyone possesses all these alter egos in equal measure. This is often the reason why businesses fail
Often teams try to wear all three hats at the same time and miss the details. By compartmentalising these stages, the best ideas would emerge but one must go into action only if they stand the test of the fiercest critics and spoilers
The idea, largely credited to Walt Disney, the creator of some of the most popular and successful films and entertainment franchises, is that you keep all stages of your development separate. As a dreamer, the sky is your limit and you can come up with any and every idea. You need not put the brakes on your imagination. You let it soar. For Instance, your idea could be to provide joyrides to the moon.
Once you have all the ideas, you (and your team) don the realist hat and examine the same ideas. This will give you the ‘how’ of the idea. While you still cannot reject the ideas, you can put numbers, time limits and other parameters that would enable you to turn the idea from paper to reality. The idea of the joyride to the moon would be worked out and everything from the cost of fuel to the safety equipment to the time taken for each round trip would be listed out
The third and last step before you took in all the specific business considerations would be to run it in spoiler or critic mode. In this phase, you would try and examine each detail and find flaws in it to decide whether it was a viable idea or not. The cost of the moon rides, the number of people who could afford it, whether the environment could stand it and many such shots would be fired at the idea of joyrides to the moon, at the end of which if the idea survived, it would be deemed worth a try.
Often teams try to wear all three hats at the same time and miss the details. By compartmentalising these stages, the best ideas would emerge but go into action only if they stood the test of the fiercest critics and spoilers. Spoilers, in effect, would weed out any ideas that might be destined to fail.
While there are no guarantees in business or in life, having spoilers mitigates the risk. Who would have thought that Mickey, a simple little mouse would be the enduring symbol of fun, cartoons and a huge business empire for almost a century? Like Walt Disney said, “We allow no geniuses around our Studio.” Just dreamers, realists and spoilers who add up to success.
By Suchismita Pai
