Building more ideas, part II - Foundation

Everyone's heard about building a house on the sand. It doesn't work. You've got to have a solid foundation to start from. In fact, a solid foundation is of paramount importance to a building. Construct a house on a weak foundation, and no matter how beautiful it is, it will eventually fall. So it is with ideas.

Your foundation in this case is lots of ideas. How do you get lets of ideas? Stop killing them. To start having more ideas, you have to let yourself have bad ones and acknowledge that it's ok. Bad ideas are a starting place, a learning experience. Start by letting all your ideas out - good and bad. Don't hold any back. Don't think about what won't work or what's too far fetched. And do the people around you the same favor. Encourage people to speak any and all ideas that are on their mind.

Ideas are a little like family reunion food. According to my grandma, too much is great, but not enough is a tragedy. That's because its always easier to cut things out than it is to add to what you have. So by taking all ideas, good and bad, you'll have many more to choose from. And often, the inspiration for good ideas comes from bad ones.

And ideas seem to multiply, just like tribbles. They increase exponentially.

It will take practice and courage to stop killing ideas, but keep at it. You have to lay the foundation to your idea building, and the more ideas you have to add to it, the more solid your foundation will be.

Building more ideas, part I

All of the elements you need to get more ideas can be structured like a parts of a building. And don't worry, one of them is not a high IQ. If you can take the parts, and start from the ground up, you'll have an excellent way to generate lots of ideas. But, just like building something, it will take time. You can't put it up overnight and you'll probably need some help.

Over the next few days, I'm going to give you the pieces of the building you need to get a lot of ideas. Your first building might not be perfect, so keep building more and more. Every time you practice this method, your buildings will be more beautiful.

More Customer Service Ideas

If you can't tell, I'm pretty enamored with excellence in customer service. And with Starbucks. Time after time, they exceed my expectations on service (and my expectations are pretty high). Needless to say, I visit Starbucks quite a bit. I'm not sure if it's just my Starbucks (yes, I go there often enough to consider it "mine"), but they are always ultra friendly. The one time they messed up my order, not only did they fix it right away, but they gave me a coupon for a free drink on my next visit. I didn't even ask for it!

When something goes wrong, it's such a great opportunity to exceed customer expectations. And by giving me a free coupon instead of just giving me that drink free, they increase the chances that I'll come back.

Yesterday, I noticed that they had a sign up advertising their new smoothies. As I was waiting at the window for my drink, I asked how the new smoothies were. Not only did she tell me all about them enthusiastically, but she handed me a coupon for a free one. Again, almost guaranteeing a return trip from me. And they didn't even need to do that, since they know me well enough to know I'll be back!

Of course I went and cashed in my free smoothie coupon this morning. When I handed the lady my coupon, she actually seemed excited.

"Oh! You have one of these!" "Look!" she said to the other staff members. And they all cheered. I have no idea why it was so wonderful that I was getting something free from them, but it made me feel great. Like I was really doing them a favor getting a free smoothie.

How can you take every mistake and turn it into an opportunity to generate customer loyalty?

What if you got excited every time a customer redeemed a coupon?

Oh, and the smoothie? Delicious. I'm sure I'll be back next week for another.

Conversation - a simple and big idea

Back in March, I wrote about my horrific customer service experience at the oral surgeon. To be fair, I thought I would share a contrasting experience at the dermatologist. Not to give you more personal information than you want, but a month ago I had 5 moles removed from my back (yuck). Two of them turned out to have "bad edges" which apparently means that, if left unchecked, they might later develop into skin cancer. Not good. So I had to go back in and get more of my skin removed to get rid of those nasty cells. If you read my previous post about my wisdom teeth, you understand my squeamishness about medical procedures (truthfully I'm a total weenie).

I went in yesterday to the dermatologist, where she explained that she would be making two incisions to remove the cells and would subsequently stitch them up. Unfortunately, they don't put you to sleep for such a procedure and you have to lie there awake with visions of great chunks of flesh being removed from your back. Ugh.

They get started, and as they do, they begin talking to me. Not about anything much. My kids, my siblings, their kids, their siblings, our shared fear of dentists... Before long, it was all over.
Not really so bad after all.

When I compare the two procedures (wisdom teeth versus back flesh removal), the dermatologist was actually much worse. After all, you're awake for heaven's sake. But my experiences were completely different. The dermatologist talked with me and put me at ease. This was such a simple thing for her. All she had to do was talk. And it made a night and day difference in my customer experience.

How can you take a simple idea, like a conversation, and turn it into something big?

The point of getting ideas

There is no end to the journey of getting ideas. There is no magical place you will reach where you will no longer have to have ideas. The point of getting ideas is to have more and more and more forever.

By the same token, if you come to a lull in your ideas, keep going. Keep brainstorming. Keep reading. Keep playing with toys. Keep doing all the things that inspire you because you'll get through it.

You have never reached a point in time where you will get no more ideas.

Think big

One of the things you can do when you’re looking for idea inspiration is to think bigger. When you’re reading something, don’t just think of the information in the context of that particular story. Think about the fundamentals of the information and how you can apply them to what you are doing.

For example, Dharmesh Shah over at Hubspot just put up a nice piece on product launches. He gives seven lessons on launching new software. You may take a glance at it and think, “I’m not launching any new software, now or ever. This doesn’t apply to me at all.” But look again. The underlying principles can apply to any idea.

Take the first lesson – It’s not too early to release. Dharmesh talks about how if you wait until everything is perfect, you’ll never go to market with your product. You’ll be making endless tweaks.

This applies to your ideas. If you wait to talk about an idea until it’s perfect, or until there is no risk that anyone will dislike it – you’ll never offer any ideas.

In fact, all of Dharmesh’s lessons fit perfectly with having new ideas. Here are the rest of Dharmesh’s lessons with my applications to ideas in parenthesis:

Lesson 2 – Be ready to iterate (Be ready to refine and tweak your ideas)
Lesson 3 – Provide a simple feedback mechanism (Let people respond to your ideas without getting defensive)
Lesson 4 – Respond to feedback (Be open to the ideas of others and use them to make your ideas better. Let go of idea ownership.)
Lesson 5 – Track as much data as you can (Take lots of notes - even if you don't use them now, they may come in handy for future ideas)
Lesson 6 – Don’t waste time coding reports (Keep your notes, but don’t obsess over them. Go back and review them later, but don’t catalog and alphabetize!)
Lesson 7 – Watch it spread, nudge it along (When you get a big idea, encourage others to talk about it and participate in it. Ask others for their opinions, and pay attention to who is embracing your idea or not)

You can repeat this exercise with any bit of information. Try pulling out the fundamentals and applying them to your world, even if at first it may seem a little out there. Innovation starts when we take information we have and combine it in unexpected ways.

Some good ideas have to die

I know you’re probably sick of hearing about Google. I am a little bit too. But I did enjoy this description of how they get ideas, provided by Social Media Influence. Apparently, Google gets so many good ideas from its employees that they have to kill a bunch of good ones. I think that’s an important point. Once you start having a lot of good ideas, you will not be able to take action on every single one. You will need to learn to let go or you’ll be spread too thin. When you’re working on too much at once, everything will get a crummy implementation – if it gets one at all. Believe me, I know this from experience.

It’s better to sacrifice a few good ideas than your reputation for getting things done.

Are you getting too many good ideas? Which ones should you let go of?