The Tyranny of the Idea du jour

As creative entrepreneurs we will continually be attacked by brilliant ideas, from our own heads, and from the heads of our co-workers, customers, suppliers, etc. The quantity of these ideas will almost certainly exceed our ability to execute them.

However, it will be extremely rare to have an idea that will completely change your business model, or will cause you to put it at the top of the list of everything you need to do over the next few days/weeks/months.

If we respond immediately to these ideas, they will run us ragged...

Also, some of these ideas, brilliant as they are, over some period of time, will turn out to be not-so-brilliant, maybe even dumb, when inspected more carefully in the light of the overall plans and goals of the enterprise.

Such is the Tyranny of the Idea du jour.  

The approach I have found to effectively deal with these little gems that assail us in the middle of the night, or the middle of a meal, or whatever, is to simply write it down immediately, and then, later, to add it to the proper list (website improvements, salesrep recruiting procedure, marketing ideas, etc), but be sure to assign a priority at a later time, when it is the proper time to review priorities. This may be once a month, or every 3 or 6 months. It is essential to give our priorities enough time to be completed so that we can learn from our experiences.

The review of such ideas and priority setting would ideally be done in collaboration with others who are involved in the overall planning.

So, when the next brilliant idea attacks, take a deep breath, write it down, and go on with your already existing plans.

Execution is paramount.  Follow through is essential.

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Write It Down

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