Saturday, May 23, 2009

Can't change your company? Zoom instead

"We have more priorities than that one, lets wait."

"Ya allah alek ya Hussein (Jesus Hussein!), what's wrong with you? Our system is efficient we just need to advertise it well."

"Sorry we can't implement that now, but hey, thanks for bringing it up."

"Lets keep it safe, don't want to take risk."

"Frankly, I don't see anything wrong with the system. Its good enough"

Those were actual CEOs' answers to an employee who want to introduce something new. Companies tend to stay safe and avoid change because change is pain. The inertia of the mediocre force is formidable, you have to suffer if you are a change junkie. That's why companies tend to stay safe, gradually become boring.

Customers hate boring.

In his book Small is the new Big, Seth suggests if you have so much pain changing, don't. Just zoom instead.

Zooming is the process of introducing new things that don't or have very minimal risk.

Examples of Zooming:
  • Trying a new restaurant.
  • Hanging with friends with different job scope and domain.
  • Sending a personal letter (hand written) to each customer of yours.
  • Take Spanish classes.

Seth have another checklist of Zooming that you may want to try.

2 comments:

  1. That's really true. CEOs tend to want to stay on the safe side. The bigger the company is, the more pronounced this mentality is. It is said that big elephants can't dance. And in the modern corporate world bound by the world wide Web, they must be able to dance. Small companies can do this well so, I guess small is indeed the new big. A nice remedy though, is this zooming thing. Great post Hussein!

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  2. @Cody
    I loved the way you link the concept to the big dancing elephants, that's exactly what Seth is talking about in his Book.

    Its just more easy for small businesses to change. Big ones can't change easily so they better zoom.

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