Are You the Most Likely to Succeed?

When I was in High School, every year the senior class chose a boy and girl who we thought would be the, 'Most Likely to Succeed'. We cast our votes for who we saw as having the magic combination of characteristics that would ensure career and life success. We were teenagers then and the science behind the voting was imperfect, of course. We selected candidates who were good looking and popular, more often than academically sound or ambitious. I never made the list.... ah, the tragedy!

So, what are the characteristics that make a change effort, Most Likely to Succeed?

When you're working on a project, solving a problem or loosing weight, there's nothing quite like the Big break-through. We're all looking for those dramatic surges of progress, those quantum leaps. We love the energy that comes with a major find, a timely innovation or the discovery of a brand new way of tackling an issue. Yeah...that's the key ingredient - right? Well, not exactly.

Oh, those mammoth advances happen sometimes, and we need to be looking for them and ready when they materialize. But the kind of change that lasts, is mostly the incremental kind. It comes by taking one well-considered step after another, again and again. This is especially true when you're introducing anything completely new to internal or external customers.

Here are some characteristics of innovative ideas most likely to succeed.

Stepped: These are ideas or processes that can be adopted in segments or phases. Users can ease into them, a step at a time. Even better adoption comes when customers or staff can use the new idea, product or process in parallel with what they are already doing.

Trial-able: This is when the idea, process or product can be test-driven on a pilot basis. Customers can see it in action first and incorporate it on a small scale before committing to full enchilada.

Minimal Risk: If it doesn't work, people can return to pre-innovation status. Eventually, of course, you want people to feel like they can't live without it, but in the beginning -at least in theory - it's possible to go back to zero.

Familiar: It looks and feels like things that people already understand and use, so it is not jarring to their systems. It's consistent with other experiences, especially successful ones.

Congruent: It's in line with the future direction of the team or company; it 'fits' with where other efforts are heading anyway. It doesn't require people to rethink their priorities or pathways, even though, of course, it changes things.

Ego Building; Simply put...it makes everyone look good. Enough said.

These key qualifiers leave plenty of room to promote revolutionary ideas under cover of evolutionary change. Remember, to find and grow a market for anything means tucking ideas in close to what users can adopt easily and then leading them to the next phase.

We work on crafting this type of approach in the Leaders Summit If you want to explore just how likely to succeed your change ideas are, give me a call. Maybe I can help you get voted in this year!