Ideas Come to Life with Action

One of my heroes, Spencer W. Kimball, was fond of saying "Do it."

I liked framing those words within "Don't Quit."

Improvement ideas create value only when action bears some fruit of value. To ever get anywhere on anything, one must act. That's the simple cycle of the improvement process: think--act->result--think--act->result--think--act->result. My father's version was "plan your work and work your plan." Just keep it up with an eye for overall improvement.

Action makes something of ideas. Results may be desirable or undesirable, sufficient or insufficient. Keep up the "think, then act" cycle to continue learning and improving. You will get one item polished well enough, but what more in the bigger picture can be improved? Move on to more.

Look for situations where "obviously" needed action has not been taken to produce improvement, think it through, especially why action has not been taken, then determine what action can and should be taken, and do it, and don't quit until its done. Learn fast, fail fast, change course in your direction as needed for overall betterment.

Most of the time, only real action has any possibility of producing positive results. But there are certainly times when "no action" is either called for or is at least the best choice for now. Making that wise discernment carefully, but also plain old luck, can often make all the difference. Since you most often never know unless you try, there is a reasonable bias for action, all things considered.

Where many ways can be tried (many ways to skin a cat), but none are assured of success, get on with it. You may have to try all the ways to get something to work anyway. It may be you just plain have wear out (overcome) the resistance with pleasant persistence.

One chronically unprofitable manufacturer supplied 60% of its product to one large OEM through a multi-year contract for pricing that was simply not profitable. It took the action of 11 different, separate, creatively unique, and pleasantly orchestrated tries over several months asking for a higher price in spite of a supposedly fixed contract before the OEM finally agreed to a 20% price increase which immediately made the manufacturer acceptably profitable. Simple minded determined, but pleasant persistence made all the difference.

Another severely unprofitable manufacturer had spread its existing resources over 14 product lines as a result of prior mergers in an attempt to provide a complete family of products and diversify risk. Acting upon the idea to focus on 3 of those products produced a 20% pre-tax profit.

We all know stories like these. It takes courage to act. Risk of loss assessments are not to be overlooked, but fear of failure is a familiar beast to be beaten.