What if we blew off all of our internal meetings this week and only talked to customers?
What if we didn’t refactor our roadmap…again?
What if we didn’t spend time fighting for headcount from HR, phones from IT, or travel from Finance?
What if we ignored all of the built up processes and built something awesome anyway?
What if instead of 20 hours of meetings, you spent 20 hours blogging, tweeting, and talking with potential customers online?
What if we stopped trying to connect our internal projects and started connecting with customer needs?
What if we never used another quantitative report again?
What if all of the analysts disappeared from the Earth tomorrow?
What if we became a brand?
What if we became THE brand?
What if employees sought us out?
What if customers sought us out?
What if we created a product category?
What if we scaled 10, 100, or 1000x next week?
What if we built a Billion dollar business?
What if?
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
“What if?”
Short answer: we wouldn’t be here. We’d be doing something else.
The catch is that the word “if” sweeps our feet from the present ground and allows us a illusionary shortcut to the future. We lose context and focus on the moment in exchange for a hint of the future, as cleverly explored/exposed above.
The result, we Product/Project/Risk Mgmt professionals might recognize, is often headaches and heartburns over little/nothing.
Lesson Learned: favor factual, pragmatic data or even true insight over someone else’s concerns / criticism or even venting impulsive thoughts.
Paul,
I’m curious as to what inspired this post?
It’s an interesting one and I have to admit I’ve thought of a few of these questions myself on occasion but never too a bigger picture view of numerous what ifs as you did.
So, did some external event trigger this thought stream?
Saeed
paul,
i have been there. keep keep fighting the good fight and things will turn out (one way or another).
josh
I replied to Saeed directly in email, but for the record: this came from a combination of frustration and hope. Frustration with all of the distractions that come with the job, and hope that we can overcome them to achieve a sizable business opportunity.
Here, here. These are the voices I hear in my head when the sauce doesn’t taste the same, there’s too many cooks in the kitchen … or when you just want to get up and start a small cafe on the beach.