Why Not All Business Ideas Work

In any business, there is always something to be changed, improved, added or removed. Without any changes, the business will only back out, so there should always be new ideas. In some companies “specially trained people” are responsible for the new ideas, in some companies, it is the top management’s duty. In any case, whoever creates these ideas, the responsibility for their realization or refusal to put them into practice will be Director General’s that is why they must understand like no one else what criteria they make a decision to accept or deny the business idea by.

The first and the most important point is that an idea can be original, but it may be a copy too. A new idea always has a number of variants which are reviewed in its forming; copies are simply collected and the one that suits most or the one that is liked is chosen out of them. But a copy is someone else’s result, you can already see the consequences of its realization, however, you do not know how it was implemented neither any nuances and even if you investigate the technological chain, there is no guarantee you will be able to reiterate the original. And if you can achieve a similar result, you won’t be the first and only on the market. While working with variants, the easiest one is chosen, but at least 4-6 variants must be studied, ideally, there should be 8 of them.

The next step is to define the time limit for the realization of the idea. One time limit, for example, until September 1st is not enough; the period needs to be split into intermediate stages each of which must have an intermediate result. Firstly, in this case, you will physically see the result of your actions which will serve as an additional confirmation that you as the leader are doing everything right. Secondly, on running astray from the plan you can always turn back the process to the set course i.e. correct it. Thirdly, such a strict plan will discipline you as well as your subordinates and they won’t be able to tell you fairy-tales like “everything is okay, don’t worry” until the last moment when it turns out that nothing has been done. This is a kind of milestones that show the right direction. Every stage must have its own, physically visible result, all the rest are excuses and pretexts.

When you have chosen the variant of the idea, you have to keep to it during the whole process of realization. Mistakes are most common at this stage because the leader by themselves or based on someone’s beliefs start to deviate from the original concept to the closest and the easiest solution to their mind. For example, the choice of raw materials for the production switches in favour of cheaper ones or the priority of launching a line changes at the last moment. In this case, you do not control the process anymore and it begins to be chaotic. As a result, there will be neither one nor the other. Director-General, by virtue of their position, is responsible for the whole company including the realization of all ideas and innovation. If they are not ready to take the responsibility for the process of realization and instead try to spread it to the whole staff according to the principle “We are a team!”, they will not get the necessary result because money is a level of responsibility. If the leader is not ready to make individual decisions and take the full responsibility for them but longs for profits and prosperity of the business - there will be nothing more than slogans like “Someday we will surely beat everyone and become the leaders on the market!!! We are the best!!! We are a team!!!” How we are going to beat or when we are going to beat everyone is uncertain, but it sounds great.

If your idea works, you should analyse step by step how it has happened since it is your own victory as the leader and the person who has taken the whole responsibility and brought it to the logical endpoint. So this is your toolkit. If you don’t do this, this situation will go to your “experience bank” and when next time you will carelessly apply this “experience” in a seemingly similar case, you risk losing. Every case is different whatever outer similarities they have. When you classify the situation every time and apply suitable tools in each certain case, you create a new scenario leading to a victory, not to a failure. Then necessary business ideas will be realized and bring benefit instead of disappointments and losses.