Here’s two interesting questions to think about:
Could I?
And Should I?
Usually answered:
Quite often yes
Sometimes no
Here’s a case in point:
I had a call recently with a client who contracted my team for advice in his current large online event.
(If you didn’t know, that’s what my team do: They’re one of the best and most experienced in the world at right now at large events, and our role was to work with his tech team, to help them figure out what was going wrong.)
His tech lead was listing all the very clever things he’d done for the client, because they “could”
Don’t get me wrong, clever is cool.
But when the clever ideas, that looked cool, actually caused the main website to crash for almost an hour in the busiest time of their online event, was it something they should have done, or just could have done?
What’s the ultimate outcome this client wanted?
“A smooth launch, zero outages, and a great user experience for his visitors”
(And that will usually translate into a healthy level of sales and revenue)
But they were sat there with lots of problems – everything looked like it should work, but a lot of the extra clever things added we’re sinking the ship
So for you, I offer you this way to look at it:
Every great idea should have been checked against that:
!. Will it put the main outcome at risk?
Should we do it?
If we don’t know the answers to safely do this, who has experience we can learn from, to save us making mistakes?
In this instance, and because we’ve designed/setup/supported in some way more than 60 large events, we knew what they’d done wrong, and how it could be quickly fixed,
Though in general, the list of what you should do to be successful is much smaller than what you can do
Much more focused
So you can achieve everything you’re after AND sleep really well at night
^^ that’s what our clients pay us for
And so I offer you this:
Just because you can do it, don’t jump straight in
Ask yourself first SHOULD I do it?
Will it help me achieve what I’m actually aiming for?
If yes, then great, keep going
But if not…
Pause before you act.
Sometimes slowing down will help you achieve so much more, more quickly than you ever thought possible.
And if you don’t know, because you’ve not done it before, then ask for help.
…mixing Should with Could makes Scould – don’t hurt yourself…
You can start with me, and if I don’t have the experience in what you’re working through, I’ll know someone who does
Jamie
