Have You Ever Heard of FLOP?
…and why you should…
I mentioned the The Right It book. IT is a book from which I have learned something incredible powerful. From first chapter I learned a lot about failure.
In my work on building projects for companies I am always working towards executing an idea that the customer(internal or external) believe will improve their current state. Failure is not an option for my customers.
Is that realistic?
Failure for most projects are a reality. If one judges projects based on cost, schedule, operability, etc. then most projects are failures to meet the initial goal.
Outside of the project world, products enter the marketplace and often fail. The book used the number of 80% failure. That simply mean that 4 out of 5 new products will fail. The number of failures that some of the most successful companies have compared to their successes are about 4 to 1. The book even mentions that if one does a search for Microsoft and Google failures vs. successes that will show the proof that 4:1 failure to success.
Incredible!!!
What types of failures are observed?
First type of failure is failure to Launch. The idea never gets passed the internal screens of the company. Most established companies are very risk averse. They have come to believe that they are masters of how capital should be spent and with fancy financial models convince themselves whether something is a good or bad idea. There is very little intuition being used in the quantitative world most companies thrive in.
But it gets worse… suppose you win and launch.
As an example of a great company with incredible success is Coke. They thought that they would replace the original formula with an update and call it New Coke. The product passed all of the internal screens and it launch. It was a big flop.
As a personal example of a failure, I launched the time management course last year. This series of time management was to be the introduction to my time and energy management course. A few hundred people that viewed each video for the four levels I went through. The course failed to attract committed people to the beta group. A part of the failure was that only a few hundreds of people knew about it.
Launch= KNOW of your product
Second type of failure is Operational. This is when people know about your product and maybe even have put their money down to solve their problem BUT your product fails to meet their minimum threshold level of need. It might barely be good enough BUT in reality it is not good enough. Your customers are frustrated and they give up on you.
Coke launched BUT the perception of the New Coke was such as that mopst people decided that they did not like it. So KNOW is good to have BUT Like or even LOVE your product is a must.
For my course, people gave it a few thumbs up and likes BUT no one fell in love with it to throw down their cash.
Operate= Like/Love your product
The last reason for failures that the author identified is one of Premise. This is why we design product in the first place. Our premise is that we believe that there is a need that the marketplace is needing to be filled. BUT that is our perception. The market could decide that the pain of the need is not great enough to invest in your product. They might like a competitors product better or they might simply not need your product. We are always competing against doing nothing or no product.
As an example, consider Google glasses. Great idea BUT the market saw no need for it yet. It failed.
For my course, even though 60% of people said that they have never had a course on time management AND most people’s lives are very hectic, they did not see the need for my course. SO they did not invest.
Premise= NEED for your product
As a summary, in order to reduce the probability of failure your offer of service or product or project must satisfy the KNOW, LOVE and NEED pieces or as the author calls them LAUNCH, OPERATE, and PREMISE and have a chance to be one that succeeds.
My four cents…
