- Mobility. Or the ability to move quickly – to create quickly, to ship quickly, to improve quickly. There is no such thing as a “finished” product or service. You are always creating, shipping, and improving, in a constant cycle.
- Fluidity. Or the ability to let go of old assumptions or ideas and adapt new ones. You have to face the fact that you are going to be wrong about a lot – wrong about your customer or what your customer wants to be able to do. Wrong about how to do business. Wrong about what’s a good idea or bad idea. The quicker you can get over how wrong you are and not take it personally, the better you can adapt.
- Long-term thinking. Or the ability to know the position you want to end up in. Despite the fact that you should be mobile and fluid, adapting to your customers’ needs and wants, you still want to have a vision for the kind of relationship you have with them. Old companies were focused on market share; today, your focus should be on how well connected you are to your base of followers. Make decisions based on how you can increase that connection – not on the new trend or shiny object.
Developing these skills requires asking yourself the following questions:
- Do I have a regular daily, weekly, monthly schedule for creating, shipping, and improving my products and services?
- What assumptions am I making about what my customer wants to be able to do? Are those assumptions supported by evidence? If not, how can I support them?
- Does this decision in front of me (to create a new product, move into a new market, adopt a new process) help me connect better with my base, or is it primarily for short-term gain (e.g. more money, more recognition, more customers, etc.)?
Ask (and answer) these questions continuously, and you’ll be impressed with the results.