I came across two blog posts by two different people that fit very well together and give some serious food for thought.

Seth Godin writes about his observations waiting in line at the airport. He points out the amazing inefficiencies in companies making the sale that are just accepted as fact… the long lines to the concession stands… the 10 minute hold on the phone to buy a $500 product.

Meanwhile Steve Pavlina points out the dangers of Silent Approval. This is the idea that you notice someone, particularly an underling, participating in an undesired behavior and not taking action. Your silence reinforces this behavior. As Steve’s blog is about personal development and not managerial practices, it’s no surprise that he turns this concept around to point at your own life. To quote: “Perhaps your relationship situation isn’t what you want it to be.  Maybe your career is a total shipwreck.  When you use silent approval on yourself, you tell your subconscious that your current standards of performance are acceptable.”

The moment I read Steve’s post it clicked back to Seth’s. Here Seth is pointing out these amazing dumbfounding problems that are possibly costing the companies large amounts of sales, and yet this is the standard that these businesses are operating under. It seems the managers and owners are victim of the kind of silent approval that Steve describes, except that instead of it applying to their life, it is applied to their business (arguably a major extension of their lives).

I certainly believe what Seth says about lost sales because I have witnessed myself giving up on purchasing products many times. Some stores I won’t shop at period because of the tedious and inefficient experience they provide. If I’m in a hurry I’m not going to buy an unnecessary product, but it’s not just about lines. Take Radio Shack (now “The Source”) as an example. I dread having to purchase anything there because I know it means being interrogated for my personal information, telling the clerk I’m not interested in providing it, watching the clerk skip through the personal information data mining, and finally getting the product purchased. Sure it’s a hassle, but the real problem is it creates a competitive “customer versus merchant” experience. Why would I buy from a place I dislike?

It’s a good idea to step back a bit from your business and question why you are doing things a certain way and how they can be fixed instead of worked around. I’ll definitely be doing this for my company. Afterall a leaky sales process is very expensive.

We all have thoughts floating within our head whenever we are idle. They can be anything from contemplating the state of your career to whether there’s milk in the fridge. Some of these thoughts are mundane and easily forgotten, while others are bursts of creativity or the formation of important steps for getting something done. These thoughts are a critical factor to your success and should be cultivated at all costs. Better still, these thoughts should be captured and turned into ideas.

Your Thoughts are Your Richest Resource 

We have been taught to value hard work, that “nothing good comes easily”, and to be wary of anything “too good to be true”. This is sound advice for picking out marketing scams, but it is very easy to misapply it against your own mind. Planning is an example of how a little brain work at the start will save you a great deal of pain and misery in the long run. You’ve probably heard this before from your shop teacher, and it applies to business and your life just as much as it does to building a birdhouse.

Update (March 30, 2006): The above ties directly into the 80/20 rule which Yaro on the excellent Entrepreneur’s Journey blog covers very well.

A couple days ago I wrote a lengthy article on the importance of planning to achieve your dreams. What I didn’t get a chance to touch on was how to get this planning done.

How I Get My Planning Done

For me planning is all about putting things into perspective, into a visual format that I can understand and manipulate to come up with a blueprint for achieving my goals. It’s also something that is very easy to neglect despite it’s importance. I have found the following to be key success factors in getting my own planning work done:

• Calm Environment
• Proper Tools
• Desire to Achieve a Result

Finding the Right Environment

Planning, brainstorming, and other forms of mental work require a great deal of focus and concentration to be effective. You want your mind to be concentrating soley on analyzing your business, your career, the event that you are putting together, or whatever your plans are about. This is why I refuse to do any serious planning work on a computer. With the overload of irrelevant information and communications coming at me the moment I sit down, it’s just too easy to get distracted and suddenly have spent hours on another task. Don’t even get me started on the concentration killer that is MSN.

I prefer to do my planning away from my computer and my work environment, at a coffee shop or library. It may seem disadvantageous to not have a machine that I can lookup everything and anything on, or all my business notes, but it’s actually quite freeing. I find it helps prevent little details from getting in the way on the big picture. I’m relaxed, work can’t get to me, and my brain is free to take a step back from the daily grind and really examine the bigger picture.

Paper and Pencil are Still Clear Winners

Despite a wealth of planning software, word processor templates, and numerous other efforts to introduce structure to the planning process, I still prefer to do things the old fashioned way. In fact my course notebook has become very thin over the term as I liberate pages from the sandwhich of differential equations and assembly language commands and put them to use in writing down the ideas that come flying at me.

All you really absolutely need for a great planning and/or brainstorming session is paper, a pencil, and your mind. My brain tends to drift into several areas at once, and I am sure to devote a sheet of paper for every unique “section” of my plans. Don’t confine and hinder your thought process by refusing yourself plenty of room to write your ideas. If you don’t have enough paper you may actually notice a resistance to putting things down.

Similiarily don’t worry about neatness or structure. The first time I tried to come up with a business plan for Tilted Pixel I wanted to do it right. I downloaded a very neat MS Word template from the Business Development Bank of Canada website. It really is a nice document with many helpful macros and sections. Nevertheless after 2 weeks I had about four sentences written in this fancy document that was going to be my key to success. Clearly it wasn’t working, so I dropped it in favor of another technique.

One evening after feeling particularly excited about making my business happen, I walked to Second Cup with clipboard and paper in hand. I sat there for 2 hours and my pen only really left the paper when I went to get a second coffee. It was an incredible rush to get all these thoughts and ideas out of my head, many of which I never realized I had. It was completely unstructured and flowed wherever my brain took it. At the end I had made several key decisions for my business and gained entirely new perspectives. Things were getting done, and not a single Word macro was involved.

I’m convinced these days that computers are there for the final draft, when you pretty things up and make it look like that’s how you had it all along. That’s where things like business plan templates come into play, but the real work gets done on paper.

Your Planning Must Have a Purpose

How often have you been told by someone else to plan? How many of your teachers felt it necessary to bring up planning? What about bosses, co-workers, books, speakers, and anyone else trying to advise? How often have you followed through on this advice?

Planning can’t be left as some abstract concept. You can’t tell yourself “oh I’ll do some planning today”. Your planning must have a defined purpose that you are trying to achieve. In the end you want measurable results - you want to make something happen. When I have a productive planning session it’s because there’s something specific that I want to do like “start a new blog to experiment with blogging technology see if I can turn it a into successful self-sustaining venture”, or “develop a marketing plan for the CustomBar 1.1  release”. I have parameters to go on that are general enough to allow my brain plenty of freedom, but which have an end purpose.

Decide what it is that you wish to achieve, find a quiet place, and fill up some looseleaf. You might just completely revolutionize your project.

I came across an interesting blog on unusual business ideas while finishing a COBOL project. It highlights profitable and unusual (should be pronounced in·no·va·tive and/or cre·a·tive) business ventures. Most importantly it shows that in a world of gigantic corporations, massive R&D departments, and millions of small businesses seemingly filling every niche too small for the big guys, there really is still room to make your mark and succeed.

The blog contains stories on businesses such as Goose Policing:

“David started Geese Police in 1986, as the solution to driving away unwanted geese from town parks, corporate properties, golf courses, or even front lawns. Using trained border collies, they drive away the geese without harming them. Today, Geese Police has considerably grown and expanded, earning just under $2 million in 2000. David has also begun to franchise his business to a highly selected group of individuals.”

Read them all here.