{"id":64076,"date":"2016-09-21T15:40:24","date_gmt":"2016-09-21T04:40:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.booktopia.com.au\/?p=64076"},"modified":"2016-09-22T17:23:45","modified_gmt":"2016-09-22T06:23:45","slug":"nigel-collin-giving-people-want-isnt-product-service-can","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/2016\/09\/21\/nigel-collin-giving-people-want-isnt-product-service-can\/","title":{"rendered":"Nigel Collin: Giving people what they want isn\u2019t about the product or service itself, but what it can do for them."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"the-game-of-inches-hr\"<\/a>Nigel\u2019s message is simple. <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Business is a \u2018Game of Inches\u2019 and not a one off event. 99% of successes come from many small, practical steps rather than the single \u2018Eureka\u2019 idea. The big idea makes a good story in a speech, but it\u2019s hard for delegates to incorporate into their everyday working lives. <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Nigel Collin, author of The Game of Inches<\/em> <\/a>writes about how we too can achieve business success, one small achievement at a time.
\n<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Start from where you are:<\/strong><\/h3>\n

An old Zen koan tells the story of a wealthy merchant who decided to build a new, grander house. He wanted a three-storey dwelling so he could look out over his land and marvel at the beautiful landscape for many miles around – and, more importantly, because it was understood that the higher one lived the higher one\u2019s social status.<\/p>\n

So he contracted highly skilled craftsmen to build his beautiful new home, but being a busy man he soon left them to it and set off on his business travels. Returning several weeks later to see how the work had progressed, he was horrified to find the builders working on the ground floor. \u2018Why have you not begun work on the top floor?\u2019 he cried. There could be no status, and indeed there was much loss of face, in living on the ground floor. The builders explained carefully that it was necessary to start at the bottom before they could begin to move up to the higher levels. But he had no need of the other floors, he protested. He desired only the top floor.<\/p>\n

One of the biggest hurdles in the way of business growth is that owners and leaders aim to get to the third floor too soon. They want it on the market now, to hit their yearly budget by the third quarter, to make a return before the product is ready. They want new employees up and running from day one. They want to skip the first part and get straight to the endgame, or when they start they want to start big, further down the track. Starting is part of the game<\/p>\n

Too often the temptation is to seek an advantage by jumping further along the timeline and creating a new starting point. To do that you might conduct more detailed research, do more due diligence, invest more in product development, test more, try to raise more funding, contract more consultants, enlist more mentors and then, when all that is done, repeat the process to confirm everything and perhaps sneak the starting point further down the timeline. By pushing the start line further and further down the track you\u2019re hoping that when you do launch you will have instant success. That\u2019s an illusion, because it doesn\u2019t matter where you are on the timeline, you still need to do something, to take action, or nothing will happen. You may have more experience and more resources than others, or you may have no experience and no resources. Either way, you will still need to start.<\/p>\n

Starting close to the finish line means risking a huge investment of time, money and resources without the assurance that it will work. Beware of the over-ambitious idea that is too big before you even start.<\/p>\n

Had our disillusioned businessman in the Zen koan owned a two-storey home in the first place, then he could have started from there and had his builders begin straight away on the third floor he craved. Since he didn\u2019t, his builders needed to start where they were, on the ground floor.<\/p>\n