“Innovate or die” is an expression you hear tossed around a lot. It
tells me quickly that the people using it are not really all that
innovative and in most cases do not know what it takes to build a
fast-growth company. When the fast growth starts to fade, as it always
does, the problem is rarely innovation. More often, it’s an inability to
do the things that have to follow innovation. It’s really about getting
stuff done.
Getting stuff done means packaging, selling, delivering and
collecting the money to increase revenue and profits. If you are best in
class at getting stuff done and use creativity to reduce complexity and
chaos, you just may have yourself a fast-growth business. But if you
do, you will quickly learn that the biggest risk to your business is not
that it will die because you stop innovating — it’s that it will die
because you fail to rein in your innovating and start executing.
Here’s what often happens: Right in the middle of the selling part,
someone comes up with an idea to expand the market, add a new product,
add more features or offer a new service — in short, an innovation. Not
only is innovation more fun than selling, it is what made you a
successful start-up when you disrupted the market and created a new
fast-growth niche. The organization cheers and rewards the innovators
and soon enough you have innovation everywhere – but very little stuff
getting done. What happens next is chaos and eventually you realize that
you have very little revenue to show for your innovation, which is not
good when you are in growth mode.
I remember one summer in high school I worked for my Uncle Buddy
laying carpet. On the job, I wanted to talk to customers — basically
about anything other than laying carpet. My uncle would look up and say,
“Cliff, put tacks in the floor and lay the carpet.” The fast-growth
winners are companies that have employees that step up and put tacks in
the floor. The fast-growth losers talk about things like “innovate or
die.”
Most successful fast-growth entrepreneurs can recall the day when
they told their employees to stop innovating and start doing. No talking
– just action. I remember a late-night staff meeting where we were long
on excuses and short on results, and I simply could not take it
anymore. I stood up and said, “Nobody else in this company can create
unless it is approved by me. I want everybody to go and do what we
already said we were going to do. You either do it or eliminate it. Your
decision.”
I know I sound like a bureaucratic dictator, but I was running one of the fastest-growing companies
in America, according to Inc. magazine, and I was totally frustrated
that I could not get our product out the door. We had innovation
everywhere — engineering had a new platform, programming had new
features, marketing had new campaigns and the sales people wanted to
hire new representatives to sell our “old” stuff so they could sell the
new stuff. What helped me to say no was learning that Steve Jobs had
once said, “I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the
things we have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.” But
saying no is hard. You are saying no to inspired people and potential
revenue.
But the winners do it, like Jeff Platt, chief executive of Sky Zone,
which builds indoor trampoline parks. Here is a guy who has built a
business with a highly successful revenue model and has pre-sold more
than 100 high-end franchises. When I heard him speak recently, he spoke
with the confidence and knowledge of someone older than his 28 years.
“In our world, at Sky Zone, we strive for operational excellence and to
create ‘wow’ guest experiences,” he said. “At this stage of the company,
we choose not to focus on bringing in new product offerings and new
experiences for guests because we currently need to direct our attention
on being brilliant at our core business.”
This is a guy who invented and patented the cable to tie trampolines
together into an amusement park. In fact, he created a whole new
industry by combining fitness and fun. Now, instead of focusing on
innovation, Jeff is focused on training. One of the ways he is doing
this is by investing money in e-training modules to make material
available instantly to every employee across the country. He is also
investing significant time in creating training courses for part-time,
full-time and management positions. “We are focusing on getting stuff
done,” he told me.
With an average of 10,000 to 15,000 attendees per park each month, it
might be tempting for Mr. Platt to think about how to drive more
revenue from each guest through new product innovations. If Sky Zone
could figure out how to get $1 more out of each guest, it would be
looking at more than $4 million in additional revenue each year. Or he
could go back to the basics and focus on creating such a “wow”
experience that those guests leave the park compelled to go out and tell
everyone how great Sky Zone is.
That’s what I call getting stuff done — and that’s what I call a winner.
Cliff Oxford is the founder of the Oxford Center for Entrepreneurs. You can follow him on Twitter.
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