UF Postings Past: Find a question to answer and you’ll keep your direction
January 13, 2008 – 4:43 pmDane Carlson posted an interesting quote from Paul Graham over on his Business Opportunities blog last week (many moons ago). The quote is from an essay on ideas for startups, and the essay itself is on seeing your original business idea as a business question that you want to answer, and letting the company grow into an answer to that question.
This is a great idea for startups, but it’s also a great idea for keeping direction in general examples include:
1) Finding direction in projects
At some point early in a project, you must decide what question your project is answering. It could be anything from “how can we share spreadsheets better?” to “How can we get orders to customers faster?”. This is the core of your project. Never lose sight of this question. You will write a scope to your project that defines what you intend to do in your project. When you develop that scope, it better answer your initial question. When you write requirements, they better trace back to that question. When you build the prototype, it better offer an answer to your question… you get the idea. If your project ever reaches a point at which you aren’t answering that original question anymore, then you’re off-track. You better fix it or start over.
2) Finding direction in product lines
“The question” can also drive the development of your product line over time. How many times have you seen this: you’re on a project, it completes successfully, everyone is happy, then a thousand ideas pop up for how to ‘improve’ the product. You have manpower to do maybe five of these things over the next year. How do you choose what to do? Simple. Look at the question you set out to answer. Which ideas support that? Which ideas move you away from it? Ditch the ones that move away; if you follow those, you may undo all the progress you made. Go with the ones that support your original goal. Repurposing a product is very practical, but if you change the purpose of the product in the process, you’ve lost the solution to your original question.
3) Maintaining and marketing your Brand
If you have a brand, it means something. It answers a question. When I think “How do I find what I need to know?” I think “Google it”. The google brand answers questions for users. When I think “Where do I get coffee?” I think Starbucks. See? Brands answer questions. They become associated with very specific ideas in a customer’s heads. A customer can usually associate and recall about as many things with a brand as they can keep in short term memory easily- that is, five to seven things. Get outside of this, and your customer has to stop and think about it before they can decide what your brand means to them, and you’ve diluted your brand too far. Therefore, you should develop a question that your brand answers, and stick with that question. When you decide how to expand your brand, stay close to that question. Starbucks would seem like they didn’t do this with putting music CDs in their stores, right? Ahh, but no. When I think of Starbucks, I think of drinking coffee, sitting in a coffee house, reading, relaxing, and listening to good music- which begs the question: why doesn’t Starbucks sell books? Probably because they locate some shops inside book stores, and that would be biting the hand that feeds them. Book stores need more space than a Starbuck’s does, anyway.
See the point? A single question drives so many things in business. It brings focus. Find your question to answer, and it will help you keep focus in what you do as interruptions, new ideas and distractions pop up in your day each day.
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