Some ideas just suck. There’s no way around it. But how do we decide whether to dig up an idea and throw it out as bad, or give it time to blossom?
Last fall a group of deer ate all the buds off the rose bush I planted for my wife on Mother’s Day. They bloomed beautifully the summer prior, but by the springtime the stalks were jet-black and looked dead. My wife wanted to dig it up and throw it away, but a childhood recollection of my grandmother’s hardy hedge row gave me this feeling that ours would surely come back. Despite that reassurance, I’ve been constantly second guessing whether I should relent and just plant a new on, until about two weeks ago.
Now look at it. It’s in full bloom, and I have the sense of satisfaction knowing I didn’t give up on that original Mother’s Day gift I had planted.
The creation of beauty requires a combination of patience and experience.
In business as in nature, to create something beautiful we’ve got to employ a lot more patience than often feels natural. How many blockbuster ideas, products or marketing campaigns have been abandoned too soon? Unfortunately, we’ll never truly know, but in a business environment driven by the philosophy of share value and short-term results, it’s more than we would like to admit. In the world of marketing, it is not uncommon to see executives abandon a campaign after 60 or 90 days just because they couldn’t attribute a direct and immediate ROI to it.
Too little data too soon can lead us to act rashly
You may want to reconsider that marketing investment you’re about to make if you’re telling yourself, “We’ll look at the results in 30 days and decide whether to continue from there.” It takes a lot longer than a month or two before you’ll realistically start observing the benefits from most marketing initiatives. If we’re going to rely on data to make decisions, we need to ensure we’ve got enough of it first.
Just like with our roses, ideas need time to take root and grow. If we pause a campaign shortly after launch because the data hasn’t begun to demonstrate an ROI, it would be like transplanting our tired rosebush to a bucket in a dark corner of the garage. “I’ll replant it later, if it makes sense,” would all but condemn it from ever reaching its full potential.
Let your ideas blossom
Do you have a business idea you want to share with the world? Worse yet, do you have a business idea you started to share with the world but retracted because it didn’t get the response you had hoped for?
Regardless where you’re at in your planning and execution, give yourself and your team permission to put your ideas out there and let them develop long term. You’ll be amazed at what can happen when you shift away from the start-and-stop mentality to an adapt-and-grow mindset.
Click here to join my email newsletter
