Sep 06

What’s your problem?

2 Business Planning, Challenge, Creativity, Motivation, Thoughts, Tips, Tools, ideas No Comments »

As an entrepreneur using a Mac I’m always looking for solutions to problems. But before you can get to the solution, you have to correctly define the problem. Here’s a list of where you can go wrong in descending order of importance:

  1. Right Problem, Right Way
  2. Right Problem, Wrong Way
  3. Wrong Problem, Right Way
  4. Wrong Problem, Wrong Way

In my book, “How to Start a Business: Mac Version” I wrote on page 44 in chapter three, “Starting your quest with an accurate problem statement from your customer’s perspective is essential to keeping on track. Einstein is quoted as saying he would spend ‘fifty-five minutes defining the problem and only five minutes finding the solution’ if he had one hour to save the world.”

And another quote, “A problem well-stated is a problem half-solved. John Dewey.”

You first have to accurately and correctly identify the problem. Then, you have to have a right solution to fix it, i.e. the right way. The right way means not providing a bandaid to the solution, such as throwing money at the problem, because it still may not solve it.

Here’s another view of “getting stuff done” by entrepreneurs that includes HOW entrepreneurs problem solve:

  • Ready, ready, ready – never get out of the problem definition phase.
  • Ready, aim, aim, aim- defined the problem, but can’t find a target to hit.
  • Ready, aim, fire – just the right amount of effort to solve the problem
  • Ready, fire, aim – just blindly aims at something hoping to fix it, not necessarily a bad thing.
  • Fire, aim, ready – no thinking about the problem at all, blindly doing something.

There’s a reason why you follow the ready, aim, fire process:

  • Ready means you prepare for what you intend to do, define the problem correctly.
  • Aim means you find the right target it shoot at, select a process to fix the problem.
  • Fire means you execute your previous two steps with all alacrity, do it.

If you fail to “hit the target” you have to find out why in all three steps above.

Here’s a quick way of helping find the correct problem to fix: Ask Five Whys.

Ask “Why” five times to find the “Root Cause” of a problem.

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Aug 30

Entrepreneurial competitiveness: “The Will to…”

1 Business Idea, 2 Business Planning, 8 Operations, Business, Challenge, Entrepreneur, Motivation No Comments »

As an entrepreneur using a Mac there is a certain amount of competitiveness in all of us, some more than others. Others, much, much more. Still others add paranoia to their competitiveness, such as Al “Chainsaw Al” Dunlap who drove a number of companies down the drain and out of business. And still others cause human suffering, such as the documentary PBS special “A Dangerous Business” discussing the “McWane Way” showing their version of competitiveness. But if you read the TV shows transcripts (almost to the end of the transcript), you’ll see that there is a business, ACIPCO, that is similar to McWane’s that is doing the right thing by it’s workers and it’s business and is still profitable. So it can be done.

So, regarding entrepreneurial competitiveness, is it needed? In a word, yes! You can NOT get away from competition in the market place.

This means that educational institutions and schools need to have competition in order to prepare kids for the market place, not a competition-free schools. The question is: How much competition should be there be?

There is some truth to the matter that in order to learn competition is not essential.

So, what have we, we have various methods and motivations (see Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs) of “The Will to…”

  1. The Will to Survive – Basic human and business needs to stay alive
  2. The Will to Safety – Above survival, but comfortable with safety, but where most businesses “land” and don’t continue.
  3. The Will to Acceptance – Above safety, but accepted by others. This would be about branding.
  4. The Will to Win – Above Acceptance, but wants to win. Beyond branding in some cases.
  5. The Will to Monopolize – This is a take no prisoners attitude and to monopolize the market through whatever means possible.
  6. The Will to Kill – Above Monopolize and willing to do hurtful things to #1 and possibly #2 above.

Having just finished “The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt” he was one of the most “honorable” businessmen of his time. He wanted nothing better that to beat others in business, the honorable way. In his terms, he did not want to have the government protect his business as some do, even among some of today’s businesses who are failing want protection from our government.

If you want another viewpoint of competitiveness, read Dan Pink’s book “Drive” and see how competition can be less productive than other forms of motivation.

What are your thoughts about competitiveness?

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Jul 26

Creativity being killed in the US classroom?

1 Business Idea, 2 Business Planning, Creativity, Information, Thoughts, Tips, education, ideas No Comments »

As an entrepreneur you’re always looking out to solve problems, but where do we get this skill? Is creativity learned? Is it innate? How are our next generations going to solve some of our future problems?

There’s a new trend in the US school system that started in the 1990s: killing creativity. This Newsweek article “The Creativity Crisis” outlines where the US is diverging from the rest of the world in instilling kids with creativity.

Jul 23

Brainstorming and ideas: Do’s, Don’ts, and Maybes

1 Business Idea, 2 Business Planning, Creativity, Motivation, ideas No Comments »

The man with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds. Mark Twain

Here are two online articles that discuss some of the various ways of brainstorming, “Eight Rules to Brilliant Brainstorming” and “Forget Brainstorming” that might help you with getting your ideas out and into the market place.

I was having a coffee with an entreneurial friend of mine, Karl Dakin, at Espressole Cafe and we were discussing business ideas. He pulled out a package of seeds and told this story. “When I discuss business ideas with people I pull this package out and ask people what they would pay for them. Then I ask what they’d pay for the results of the seeds after they were harvested. That’s the price for ideas versus a well executed idea. You get more money from execution rather than ideas.”

So, ideas are a dime a dozen, or the price of a package of seeds, but it’s worth more when you apply action to your ideas, or do the work to get the seeds through to harvest time.

UPDATE 1: Here’s a link to a rebuttal by Alan Black that counters some of the above articles.

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Jul 17

IONFreshStart Guest Blog Post by Kevin Cullis

2 Business Planning, Business, Entrepreneur, Mac, Startups, Tools, software 1 Comment »

Hi all,

I’ve done a guest blog post on ION Fresh Start’s web site.

Click on the icon and you go to their web site, click here To Business Plan or not, that is the question to read my article.

Tell me what you think.

Jun 20

Unintended product development consequences: The Club

1 Business Idea, 2 Business Planning, Tips No Comments »

If you design a product or service be aware that there are both positive and negative consequences to your product design. Notice here the comments about “The Club” for preventing car theft. It actually ENHANCES the chances of being stolen. Why? Check out this article “What car thieves think about The Club” about engineering and auto theft prevention.

So, definitely have someone take a look at your product before you put it to market to see if you’re not helping the wrong persons.

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