Are You Navel Gazing? Part 1

Let’s talk about that shiny new digital product that you are about to launch at a big Web 2.0 conference. Or the big marketing spin you are planning to put on your company and/or product. Don’t spend all that money to make that ‘thing’ just yet.

Whether you are building a product or even a campaign to sell it, read this article, consider its impact on how you have traditionally thought about things, and then ensure that your company is working responsibly (and hiring responsible designers). Pre-thought, planning and good judgement are your most powerful allies and secret weapons for survival in this increasingly complex, fast moving economy.

Lets’ assume you goal is to make a ‘good’ product. What will define this goodness? Is it:

• The feature list?
• Launching in time for (insert your choice of event here). Or
• Making your investors happy?

I can assure you, that if you answered yes to any or all of the above, you are not alone. Most businesses tend to start to stare at their belly buttons at one time or another. It’s natural and it’s a reaction to concentrating on the known instead of dealing with the unknown. While it is good to look inward at times, there is a danger off being blindsided by the real changes that are occuring in the marketplace everyday. Navel gazing is comfortable and offers an addictive sense of control. You can bully your developer into producing the feature list you desire, and working crazy hours will produce a broken alpha product ready for your targeted launch date. You can present a bouncy PowerPoint presentation to your investors and their eyes will glisten with the promise of what you put forth as a future release.

But the global market is littered with the ghosts of companies, big and small, that died from the effects of navel gazing. To stare at your collective navel as a company leads any one or all to the following phenomenon. (Consider the following to be the ‘what not to do’ part of the article’s title.)

1. Amnesia (Simple questions such as: What are we doing? Who are we? Why are we in business, remain unanswered)
2. Blindness (Our competition is way too far behind us for us to care)
3. Paranoia (Make our NDA longer, with more legal clauses than the next prenup Anna Nicole Smith would have to sign…they are out to steal our idea)
4. Temporal Megalomania (We control time. We lead the industry and have the best product. The market only changes when we are ready for that change)
5. Self-Inflating egos (We will always be better than them. We know best)
6. Manic Mood Swings (We have the world’s best product, we have the world’s worst red-tape, we have competent management, we have incompetent workers)
7. Self Mutilation (Fire, lay off and basically chop off limbs in an effort to fix the unknown problem)
8. Suicidal Tendencies (Work on the basis of a fixed burn rate. Spend the money today, we may not have a tomorrow to look forward to)
9. Prostitution (We are building a cool product because we want a company like Yahoo! Or Google to buy us. We don’t need to ship to market, we just need to build the bloody thing, so we don’t need to prove worth)
10. Inertia (The inability to react to anything due to all of the above)

So who’s thinking about your end-user? No one. The user is, for all intents and purposes, dead. They have been sacrificed for a quick turnaround and a bloated piece of technology. In next month article we will delve into the elements to focus on instead of that navel.

Companies that have thought about these elements have always prospered. Whether it is huge success such as that enjoyed by companies like Google or Apple, or the small resounding success of your neighborhood ‘no-brand’ coffee shop. They all share something in common.

Till next time…!