Importance of Time and Deadlines
“You cannot get 9 women pregnant in the hope to produce a baby in one month” -Warren Buffet said this and he has every reason to say so.
Everything takes time & if you wait until the last minute or expect things to happen suddenly, it’s being unreasonable. Having an understanding of the importance of time and knowing how long it takes to do certain things & plan effectively is extremely important.
Time is critical to attaining any success. Impatience & poor planning leads you to failure.
‘Rush it’ & ‘Crunch Deadlines’ are words we keep hearing about. The assumptions are that all deadlines are extended or someone gave a deadline without actually understanding what it entailed. Aggressive deadlines make you look good but looking good initially may result in an ‘egg on your face’
Steve Blank & Eric Ries, proponents of ‘Lean Start Up’ also talk about how start-ups are in a hurry to spend big & expect results immediately. They suggest that start-ups should experiment with their products, get feedback, tweak, refine…& repeat.
This is also applicable to marketing. Define your target audience properly & conduct campaigns, first small, experiment, refine & then take it to a larger scale. However many companies think that spending huge amounts guarantees getting the required amount of customers. Throwing more money to speed up market adoption very seldom produces results. Great products are being thrust at us in an attempt to go more quickly. Again everybody does not have an infinite supply of money either.
Innovative products are one of a kind, and often you have no idea how they will fare in the market. You operate on a hypothesis or a hunch. Testing helps us understand whether there is potential or not.
The market is not an easy one. It has various factors that result in adoption – like technology adoption, relevance to the customer, customer awareness, and very importantly luck!
Tipping Point
At the tipping point, when there is enough traction from customers and the product seems to satisfy customer requirements (product-market fit), that is when rapid acceleration happens. That is when you need to invest big amounts and give a boost to the acceleration.
Some of the best companies seem to stay lean with particular products. Google, Twitter, Quora, etc. are some examples. More often than not, Google will roll out products, give it some time, try all experiments, & if it flops, closes the chapter. Twitter took some time to tweak its final product.
Plant a tree before you need the shade.
