It was yet another intense and exciting week at office. We had our annual sales meet. It was exciting talking about the future and the "Big Hairy Audacious Goal"(BHAG) our Market leader Avinash (Avi) has set ourselves. The theme of our discussion was Orbit Shift. Yes as in rockets trying to conquer outer space. All the BU heads and the sales teams presented on how we are geared up for the journey, very passionately and with purpose.
The 3rd day of the meet was even more interesting. We had invited our clients for a talk show, they were sharing their views of the challenges and opportunities that lay in front of them and every perspective was interesting and reassuring to us that we are set in the right path for growth. There were lot of famous quotes form Apple's Tim cook, GE’s Jack Welch and many others. There was one person that I was reminded of and that one person also had a lot to do with Orbit shift and Rockets. A personality liked and hated by many. By now you would have realized I am not talking about our own rocket man Abdul Kalam, no one would ever hate him. The person am talking about is a Twitter sensation ...with one tweet stick, stock prices soar or fall. No he was not another president, so strike that name from the list. This person was behind 3 of the great modern innovations that push humans beyond limit. The man behind Tesla, spacex and hyper loop.
I used to read a lot about Elon Musk and what inspired me was one of his very early days interview around what went behind the making of Tesla. Everything within that machine was an out of the world experience. But all of it started from their approach and unique way of solving the problem. They built an entire ERP system in 6 months, while some of their bigger competitors were struggling to implement an off shelf packaged solution in twice that time. Very fundamental to their approach of problem solving was "First-principles thinking"
First-principles thinking is one of the best ways to reverse-engineer complicated problems and unleash creative possibility. Sometimes called “reasoning from first principles,” the idea is to break down complicated problems into basic elements and then reassemble them from the ground up.
For Musk, first principles thinking means boiling things down to "the most fundamental truths" and then reasoning up from there. Musk used the cost of batteries as an example. I started following this in my problem-solving techniques and it started yielding good results.
Continuing from my last week's blog on bringing about innovation and making this world a better place, this could be another tool that can help you put it to action. Pen down your problem, boil it down to the most fundamental element of truth. Now try to reassemble things back and don't have emotions attached to your ideas. Sometimes emotions towards your ideas could become the biggest deterrent to your innovations because as humans we don't let go of what we love, even if there are bigger and better things further up. Always have the courage to thrash your own idea, be open when someone comes with a new and better thought. No idea is stupid, it could only be in the wrong context or perspective of what we are looking to solve. As leaders don't kill ideas by stopping someone , encourage it and table it for future use, if not relevant in the current context. If you stop ideating, we will stop innovating and that's not good for a progressive organisation .
If you agree start innovating, if you have other better tools share it as comments, if you can be a change agent start blogging or communicating... Together we can achieve more and propel iOPEX into the next orbit shift.