I never guessed I’d be kicking-off a post about nurturing new ideas with a Kenny Rogers reference, but well – here we are. What a time to be alive.
The fundamental decision of when to stick, walk away, or run from a new initiative is one of the most difficult that any product leader or digital exec has to make.
I’ve been in that position many times throughout my career, getting it right on some occasions and wrong on others. These are decisions that can fundamentally impact the direction of a business, either setting it-up for long-term success or condemning it to a cycle of short-term tail-chasing.
It’s a problem that almost all companies wrestle-with, and for good reason. Results matter and nobody has the luxury to plant seeds and then wait around while they grow at the speed of a moderately drowsy bonsai tree. But in my experience companies tend to abandon good ideas way too soon. The product leaders who have the stomach to ride out periods of uncertainty and stagnation are often the ones who have the highest chance of success. But it’s not easy – especially in a culture where patience is often confused with inertia or inaction.
The dilemma is compounded by our ability to measure everything in real-time, which is perhaps the biggest blessing and the biggest curse in the digital space.
Content publishers and product managers are encouraged to check a myriad of charts and graphs minute-by-minute, because we’re living in an era where real-time metrics are readily available to us.
Executives are hungry for daily or weekly reports to find out exactly how things are performing. And new launches are sometimes condemned after a few months because the numbers aren’t moving up at light speed.
Sometimes, a watched pot just never boils.
On the flip-side, it’s easy to grasp at mildly improving numbers and attach too much importance to them. Metrics can help to justify the narrative we’ve already created in our mind, which is that we simply want to believe a new product will be a success.
The purity of numbers can easily be corrupted once they’re run through the filter of an optimist’s brain.
It’s quite the conundrum and one that’s difficult to figure out. But here are a few thoughts based on my experience, because I’ve seen this play out time-and-time again.
Why Companies Fold Too Early
Over the years I’ve found that companies tend to fold too quickly for three reasons.
The first is that Finance-driven organizations are rabidly obsessed with the next quarter’s results. So if a program isn’t delivering financial results quickly, it’s often condemned as a failure because it’s a drag on the numbers.
This is often a blinkered view that ignores the long-term strategic benefit at play, but is one that I’ve seen unfold many times. And some companies are under legitimate short-term pressure to demonstrate results. But the short-term thinking trap is a difficult one to escape.
It’s even harder if you operate in a culture that is slow and bureaucratic. Short-term expectations combined with a culture that isn’t set-up to experiment quickly can be a lethal combination. So if you’re being judged on short-term results, make sure you have the autonomy and freedom you need to quickly test and roll-out changes.
The second reason is down to human nature. When something new launches it gets plenty of attention because it’s new and exciting, and everybody feels very pleased with themselves. But after a few months the sheen wears-off and people turn their often limited attention span to what’s next.
The hunger for a constant stream of innovative toys means that what’s fresh today, quickly becomes stale tomorrow. Other priorities come-up and yesterday’s innovation becomes today’s dusty relic.
Part of the solution to this problem is communication. As a product leader, the onus is on you to make sure every new launch remains top-of-mind well after the initial fanfare has died down. You need to make sure you’re crafting a strong, consistent story around your product and continue to tell that story over and over again.
This becomes much easier when your ideas map to a clear product strategy, which connects to your company strategy. If neither of these are clear (or known), you’re left to simply defend a new idea that is lacking an anchor. So always map-back everything you launch to a vision. If your roadmap isn’t telling a story about where you’re going, it’s not doing its job.
And the third reason – which gets back to my earlier point – is the rather strange curse of measurement. Don’t get me wrong, measurement is a wonderful, vital thing. Without it we’d be grasping in the dark.
But many stakeholders operate with the mistaken belief that just because numbers are available in real-time, results should track against the same timeline. And for anybody who has spent their career working in the digital space, it’s understood that results take time through a lot of mundane blocking and tackling work.
In a similar vein, if a digital product – let’s say a Website or an app – experiences a downturn, it’s critically important to avoid convulsing into a knee-jerk reaction.
Sometimes you need to hold your nerve because the digital space is inherently unpredictable and at the whims of platform changes, algorithm tweaks, and consumption habits. The pendulum often can and does swing, but only if you give things the time and space they need.
I saw a glimpse of this during the early days of the Web. Several newspapers in the UK were early movers and began to launch content-rich websites. I worked for one such place in the late 1990s/early 2000s.
These brands had all the ingredients for success. Dedicated audiences, a team of well-drilled content creators, and high brand awareness. But when the dream of Internet riches didn’t materialize after a year or so, many of these players scaled back their aspirations allowing some of the digital-only content upstarts to fill the void and grow.
If the newspapers had stuck with their strategy for the long-term, they’d have had a legitimate shot in becoming dominant players. Instead, many of them struggled as they tried to re-enter the market at a point when it was almost too late (obviously there have been a few exceptions to this rule, but almost all newspapers have had a long and fraught journey).
And while it’s easy to say all of this with the benefit of hindsight, my point is that decisions made about how long to hold can create existential traps that are impossible to escape from.
Why Companies Hold For Too Long
And companies often stay on the highway to hell for a few different reasons.
Firstly, ego. People don’t like to admit they were wrong because we’re all somewhat convinced of our own brilliance. Others think that failure reflects badly on them and don’t want to be blamed, so do whatever they can to prolong and justify an initiative that’s clearly doomed.
That’s something that can be fixed by installing the right culture. People start to feel less precious about ideas when it’s accepted they won’t be blamed if they fail.
Secondly – and this one is slightly unnerving – staying with something way too long can be because even though Plan A is failing, there isn’t a Plan B. By putting all your eggs in one basket, if that basket starts to develop a soggy bottom (shout-out to Great British Bake Off Fans!) and there’s no alternative plan – well, you’re in trouble.
And thirdly, which is perhaps the most disturbing, we have muscle memory. Good leaders should never shy away from making the tough decisions needed to best-position their organization. But unwinding things can be difficult, especially if they’ve become well established.
As muscle memory develops and products and functions get institutionalized, some people may think it’s simply too difficult – or too much of a distraction – to unwind something. So it’s left to naturally float and atrophy, without ever actually going away. A desperate, almost willfully-ignorant mindset takes hold that things will miraculously just improve.
There are obviously a myriad of other reasons why companies get their folding and holding timing wrong, but these are just a few that I’ve seen play-out at different points in my career.
What Can You Do?
As with most things in life, there are no easy answers. But there are a few steps you can take to help guide how you approach this question.
As I mentioned earlier, I think most companies fold too early. It’s no secret that in the digital space a significant percentage of innovations are re-hashed ideas that others had tried (and failed) at some earlier point. Sometimes it’s just a case of right idea, wrong time – which is why one of the most frustrating things you can hear in an organization is “We tried this <insert number> years ago and it didn’t work.”
Product is equal parts art and equal parts science. The true visionaries in this space are the ones who are able to cut through the noise and understand what problems people have and an idea about how they can be solved. That should form the bedrock of a strategy which – I can’t emphasize enough – you have to be clear on. A roadmap without a strategy simply becomes a list of ideas and features.
So identify the need, set the vision and then iterate on what you launch to make sure you can experiment with the best way to deliver the vision.
Communicate with your leadership team often and with consistency. Help set expectations and dispel the myth that success in 2-3 months is expected. Believe in your vision but don’t come across as a used car sales person who’s married to an idea for all the wrong reasons. Many good ideas are jettisoned because decision makers feel that they’re too intertwined with the personal branding efforts of their sponsors. Honesty. self-reflection and authenticity go a long way in how you communicate.
Ultimately though – and this sounds like a broken record – the idea of holding and folding ties back to setting and following a strategy. Good ideas need strategic guardrails because it gives them another layer of justification beyond simple short-term performance metrics. If an idea is helping move a company to a place it wants to go, this should clearly be as important as hitting specific short-term goals.
The notion that ideas are easy, execution is hard has been bouncing around the digital product world for many years. And while I don’t fully agree with it, I do think that it’s the commitment to ideas that’s the hardest of all. But by understanding what problems you’re trying to solve for your audience, defining a clear vision, and communicating this vision clearly and consistently you might just be able to buy your ideas the time and patience they need to flourish.