I know a lot of people who have tons of ideas how to improve their business. C-level executives, general managers, managing directors, business owners, all of our clients have in common that they don’t complain about a lack of good ideas. In fact, they have more ideas than they have arms to execute.

The trouble is, that success isn’t just about having good ideas. Success is about taking action. Success is about implementing. Strategies never fail in the conceptual phase. When strategies fail, they always fail in the implementation phase.

Ideas are intangible. The first step to success is to make ideas more tangible by writing them down. It is not important if you have an „idea booklet,“ if you have a file on your computer or if you have a box where you can collect all your notes with good ideas. The most important thing is to make them tangible by writing down what the idea is about.

People often ask me how they can deal with the remarkable number of ideas they collected over the time. My answer is always the same: „Pick one and play with it.“ That’s what I call „The Pick-One-Philosophy.“ Assuming that your ideas to improve your business, to grow profitably, are very important and that you just collected ideas of a certain caliber, it doesn’t matter which one you pick.

The time that you need to decide whether or not to follow-up on a particular idea can be used more effectively by thinking about this idea more intensively. You will soon figure out if it is a really good idea that has the potential to boost your business or if it is „Just an idea.“ If it is a good one, get your people at the table to make an execution plan. If the idea doesn’t seem to be good enough, pick another one.

The only thing you need to do: Pick one. Now.

Best,
Guido Quelle

(c) 2011, Prof. Dr. Guido Quelle, Mandat Consulting Group (Mandat Managementberatung GmbH)