"No" and "Stop"

One of my all-time favorite ads is a recent BMW ad that simply said, "No" in very large letters next to a photo of a beautiful BMW car. I thought that was rather odd since companies generally want customers to say, "Yes." Then I read the small print below the photo. In essence, it said that BMW says no to a lot of good ideas so that it can say yes to a few great ideas.

That is tremendous advice!

Look around your business. How many good ideas are you pursuing? Notice I didn't say, "How many good ideas are you considering?" It's healthy to consider a lot of ideas. It's like sifting through sand to find gold. You do have to go through a lot of sand to find the gold, but you don't run to the marketplace with sand in your hand and get all excited. You keep sifting until you find the gold. Keep generating ideas and keep sifting through them until you find the gold. Then when you identify one to three great ideas move on them. Don't try to do more than three great ideas because before you know it you've turned gold into sand. Trying to do too many ideas at once is a sure-fire way to generate mediocre results. It's like working with Aladdin's Genie. You get three wishes, but that's it. Consider a ton of ideas, but once you make three wishes you're done.

Here's a quote from Apple's Jonathan Ive, the leader of the design team for the iPod, that was in the Fortune magazine September 2006 issue:

"We don't make very much stuff. That's a very important part of our approach to what we do, which is to not do a lot of unnecessary stuff but just to focus and really try very sincerely to care so much about the few things that we do. I think one of the things we are good at as a team is gently moving these fragile ideas along a bit so they become just a little more robust and you can actually start to see what they are."

Earlier this year I did a speech for Toyota Financial Services. In preparation for that speech I studied Toyota, truly one of the world's greatest companies. Toyota was ranked as the second most respected company in the world by Fortune magazine earlier this year. For 90 days I immersed myself into the Toyota culture. I came away admiring so many things about Toyota.

In the end, I can summarize the key to Toyota's greatness in a single word, "Stop."

On the manufacturing floor, any Toyota employee can simply see something that is wrong with an automobile and say, "Stop." Then the assembly process comes to a halt until the problem is fixed. That is in essence the key to making the highest-quality automobiles in the world.

You might argue that this could never work at your business because it would slow things down too much. However, Toyota is on the verge of becoming the world's largest automaker. Maintaining a maniacal focus on quality has allowed them to make the most automobiles of almost any company in the industry.

One more secret to Toyota's success.

It's not that they are just saying, "Stop." With each step in everything they do, they are sincerely trying to get better. They call this "kaizen," which basically means, "How can we make today better than yesterday, and tomorrow better than today?" If that means stopping the manufacturing process in order to make it better, than so be it.

Look around your business. When do you need to say "no" and "stop"? Instead of doing a lot of good ideas, focus on doing a few great ideas.

Republishing Articles

Each month my e-newsletter gets republished in approximately 20 blogs, on-line publications, and internal publications for businesses, universities, and not-for-profit organizations. If you would like to republish all or part of my monthly articles, please send me an e-mail at dan@thecoughlincompany.com with "Republishing Article" in the subject heading. I will send you the article in a word document. All I ask is that you include my name as the author of the article and a short paragraph at the end of the article about me with a link to my website.

Take care and have a great month!

Dan Coughlin

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