The power of big
Published by Nick Hall on 3 November 2009.There's been lots of talk lately about the power of small, which is great. Small is doable for most of us, and it's common knowledge that lots of little things can add up to something bigger in the end. There's even a book about it, which I read. Lot's of other people have too. It was a smallish book, as I recall. Not that that matters.
What's neat about small ideas is that they're fairly easy for just about everyone to get their head around. You don't need a PhD or MBA or much of anything with letters after it to cook up a small but persuasive idea or action. And usually when you come up with it, everyone nods and says, "OK. Make it happen before lunch. Thanks".
If we look at social media, it's really all about little connections and small pieces of information designed to capture little groups of people and have them share that with their slightly larger groups of people, until you end up with one BIG group of people. The best way to have that happen, incidentally, is to make sure your social media marketing is designed to communicate a big overarching idea in the first place.
Big is harder, no question. Big ideas take time to cook, and even more time to implement. Big ideas get your juices going because they're dangerous and hard. Sure they take more time and energy to get off the ground, but when they do, look out. The JobBox program we developed for 3M several years ago, for example, has gone from half a million to just over 12 million (and growing) in annual sales.
If a little idea is a can opener, a bigger idea is the can. If a little idea is a thimble, then a really big idea is a rocket engine. Thimbles are nice because they stop you from sticking a needle into your finger. Rocket engines are decidedly not nice, but they are big, and because they're big, they make other things possible; like space travel, and satellites.
Businesses and industry cannot survive on small ideas alone, any more than a person can survive on an appetizer menu. Change that materializes as small steps may be positive, but it is harder to notice and leverage. Perhaps there are fewer big ideas because it is becoming less and less acceptable to make mistakes in business, or life for that matter.
If we are so easily pleased with just little ideas, our companies will resemble nothing more than the Tetley Tea figurines on the shelf at my grandmother's house; small, dusty little things that all look the same from 5 feet away.