Stumped on a Startup Idea? Check Out These 4 Resources

If you're looking for your next startup idea, look at these 4 resources for not just the idea but an execution plan, a co-founder, funding and even a ready product.

BY RAHUL VARSHNEYA@RAHULVARSHNEYA

While the best way to discover startup ideas is to find a solution to a problem that you personally face or with a subject that interests you, sometimes you just don't have the luxury of waiting and need a startup idea now. Like when your existing startup fails to generate traction beyond a pivot.

Inspiration doesn't always then strike when you want it to. You can't necessarily force startup ideas and sometimes, they strike you in the unlikeliest time or place. But if you've got your heart and soul pining to start the next or your first startup, and you're starved for ideas, look no further.

These four resources don't just provide inspiration or food for thought, but some come with an execution plan and some with an investor backing it up.

1. Paul Graham's Startup Ideas. Paul Graham has been at the helm of the industry's most prominent accelerator. Inc, in an interview, describes him as, "As co-founder of Y Combinator, the Silicon Valley tech accelerator, Graham has made a career of turning half-cooked business ideas into fast-growing companies in a matter of months."

In one of his essays, he talks about some frighteningly ambitious startup ideas, and goes on to further state and anyone of these could make the entrepreneur a billionaire.

Now, you may not want to take a head-on battle with Google for your next venture, but the fact is that all startup ideas are frightening till they achieve product/market fit and grow exponentially. You don't necessarily need to make those tall claims on day one of launching your startup, but you can certainly work your way up to the point that it can challenge the norms.

From a new search engine to replacing email and universities, here are 7 of Paul Graham's most ambitious startup ideas that can make you a billionaire.

2. IdeaMarket. Bill Gross, the founder of the technology incubator Idealab and 100 companies in the last 30 years, also co-founded IdeaMarket. IdeaMarket is a curated crowd-sourced marketplace for ideas that solve everyday problems and uncover interesting new opportunities.

Ideas are matched with talent and money to launch companies. In simple terms, this is a place to find ideas that are already backed by investors, with over $4.2 million in funding available across 35 ideas, as of today.

All you need is a solid team and an execution plan to launch any of the ideas currently listed on their website. Choose the one you're most passionate about solving, present your team along with the business/execution plan and the winner takes home the funding mentioned alongside the idea. To get started, take a look at the current startup ideas.

3. Buy a website. Did you know that there exist something called website brokers; people or companies that buy and sell websites? This is a great place to look for not just inspiration, but buy into an existing product that is consistently generating revenues.

Neil Patel of KISSmetrics recommends buying only the assets and not the entire company (to stay away from any existing liabilities). He also mentions that people who want to sell their existing products usually have three common qualities: a) they don't update their site too often, b) they don't make too much money from it, and c) they don't care about the business anymore.

If you can spot these three qualities in a product listed, you can get a good bargain. But, the foremost reason for purchase should be an idea that you can grow into a much larger business, aka, something you're passionate about.

There are many brokers on the market, but here's one to get you started (also recommended by Neil Patel).

4. Leverage your skills. Many ways to do so, but here's the best way to forge ahead into building your startup even when you don't have an idea or a team. Many startup launchpads have come into existence that invite people from all walks of life, which have an idea or not but want to be part of a team building a product.

Typically, these events run into 2-3 days and over this course of time, you meet with several interesting people with different backgrounds, some of which have a startup idea. These events encourage people to team up with complimentary skills to build a prototype, a business model and eventually to launch the startup.

So if you're a marketer looking for a tech co-founder along with a startup idea or vice versa, register and head to these events to get started. Not only do you get a chance to discover a great idea to work on, you get a team or a co-founder and mentoring to take your idea forward. Here's one to get you started: Startup Weekend, powered by Google for Entrepreneurs (I mentor startups at Startup Weekend).

Technology groups in a war to dominate the world of work

November 18, 2014 5:46 pm

Richard Waters in San Francisco and Hannah Kuchler in New York

©Getty

The war between the giants of the technology industry for the attention of the world’s office workers looks like it is about to take an unexpected turn.

Fundamental changes in the daily lives of millions of so-called “information workers” have already triggered a corresponding upheaval in the technology tools on which they rely. Staples such as email and Microsoft’s Office suite of products still hold sway, but they are increasingly being supplemented by services like group chat, internal social networks and shared online document editing. 

Now, Facebook’s ambition to create a version of its social network for the office, first reported in the Financial Times this week, promises a new twist.

The prospect of a giant consumer internet company invading office life is not new. Google has already ridden the rise of the internet into the working world, with its Gmail service and a cloud-based equivalent to Microsoft’s Office suite of software tools. Yet for most white-collar workers, still tied to their PCs, Office still reigns supreme.

The spread of mobile devices is forcing deeper changes, particularly in the way groups of workers communicate and share information. The result has been a deeper challenge to Microsoft’s grip on the software of working life.

For seven years after the launch of Apple’s iPhone, Microsoft left its mobile flank exposed, holding Office back from devices made by other companies in a failed attempt to stimulate demand for its own Windows-based mobile gadgets. But even its decision to reverse course this month and make Office free on Apple devices may not be enough to give it the foothold in mobile it needs.

“The problem is not that Office is too expensive, it’s that Office isn’t relevant to the way people want to work,” says Phil Libin, chief executive of Evernote, a mobile-centric service for storing and organising personal information that claims 100m active users, 70 per cent of whom use it at work.

The needs of workers are changing fast, admits Julia White, general manager of marketing for Office. Mobile access is expected. Communication between groups of employees has become far more open, while collaboration around work happens instantly. The sheer volume of information, for many workers, has become overwhelming.

One result is that barriers are breaking down between, on the one hand, networking and collaboration tools, and, on the other, services for creating and editing documents, says Mr Libin.

Communication kings

The FT’s Hannah Kuchler takes a detailed look at the big groups in office communication and some of the leading newcomers

See below

“You don’t need different tools for communicating and for writing,” he says, describing the separation of these activities into different software applications as a relic of the days when visions of technology were dominated by the telephone and the typewriter.

As the pressure on workers mounts, the many tools for creating, storing, sharing and collaborating are starting to converge. It is “less about collision and more about integrating different services”, says Aaron Levie, chief executive of Box, which runs a cloud storage service for companies. “If Facebook at work takes off, they will want to get to your data in Box, and edit it with Office,” he says.

That reflects how new business software markets often start out, with “best of breed” suppliers dominating different technology niches. Once these markets mature, however, consolidation often leaves dominant suppliers in control, as happened with Office, says Mr Libin. “The centre of gravity will shift to platforms in a number of years,” he adds.

For now, with most new services in their infancy and dominant consumer companies such as Facebook and Google still to make an impact, that end-game seems a long way off.

As a result, new start-ups like Slack, whose service is used by groups of workers to communicate and share information from different sources, are growing like weeds between the paving stones of existing software products.

Many workers are also spending more of their time within online applications that are tailored to the needs of specific jobs. Some of these are “horizontal” services such as Salesforce’s customer relationship management service or Github’s platform for software developers.

Others are “vertical” ones that are geared to specific industries or professions, such as the Doximity service used by 40 per cent of US doctors, and Edmodo, used by 3.5m teachers.

“You can collaborate much more effectively when you join people who have done similar things,” says Manish Kothari, general manager of platform at Edmodo.

Slack’s rapid growth – it claimed 300,000 active users each day, double the number of three months ago – is partly an indication that workers need a new place to post and communicate about the data thrown up by many of these new applications, says co-founder Stewart Butterfield. This casts the company as the “news feed” of online working life, much the same role that Facebook plays in the consumer world.

The companies that become the hubs for this kind of activity are hoping to cast themselves as central platforms for working life.

LinkedIn, which styles itself as the world’s largest professional social network, could also be threatened if Facebook succeeds in connecting employees with people outside their company. However, the majority of LinkedIn’s revenue comes from recruiters, a market Facebook does not appear to be targeting. The site also does not offer collaboration tools or the ability to chat with colleagues.

If you look at the disruption that’s happened on the consumer [internet] side, you’d expect it to creep into the enterprise as well

- Brett Taylor of Quip

Meanwhile, Microsoft, under new chief executive Satya Nadella, who has made productivity tools for workers central to his strategy, is trying to make up for lost time. Much depends on converting users of Office on the PC into subscribers of Office 365, its new online service: once more of their data are held online, Microsoft will be better positioned to create new services around it.

A nascent “groups” feature in Office 365, for instance, makes it possible for teams of workers to join open conversations that sit alongside their familiar Outlook email inboxes.

Microsoft is also hoping to extract information from workers’ online documents, calendars and communications to create what it calls an “Office graph” of their most important interactions – an echo of the “social graph” that underpins Facebook’s network of personal connections.

The first applications that draw on this new trove of data have started to appear in recent weeks: they include Delve, which aims to show useful documents and information that is “trending” around fellow workers when their names are entered, and Clutter, a way to automatically suppress inessential email.

Services such as these are designed to keep workers from being drawn away from Microsoft by other new “social” services, says Ms White. “If your tools meet your needs, you don’t need new tools,” she says.

Facebook will face other challenges as it looks to break into the world of work. The demanding security requirements of customers, strict rules about how their data are managed and the need to integrate with companies’ existing IT systems will all impose a heavy burden, says Rob Koplowitz, analyst at Forrester Research. “I’m not sure if I had a billion and a quarter users turning to me in their personal lives and the massive consumer opportunity associated with that, that I would want to slug it out in the enterprise,” he says.

But it is hard to argue with demographics. A generation that came of age using social networks and mobile messaging apps, rather than the Word documents and email used by their parents, is likely to exert a powerful influence over working life.

“If you look at the disruption that’s happened on the consumer [internet] side, you’d expect it to creep into the enterprise as well,” says Brett Taylor, a former Facebook chief technology officer who now runs Quip, another new collaboration service for office workers.

If Facebook’s plans bear fruit, the world of work, for millions of people, may never be the same again.

Profiles of the established and the newcomers

The FT’s Hannah Kuchler in New York takes a look at the big groups in office communication and some of the leading lights in the new generation of enterprise companies.

Google

The Silicon Valley group’s email service has more than 500m monthly active users, with many companies preferring their easy-to-search webmail that can be used anywhere, as opposed to the somewhat old-fashioned Outlook-style services that lived on the desktop.

©Getty

Within Gmail, users can also use GChat as an internal and external office messaging service and Google Hangouts for video conferencing. Gmail is also integrated with Google Docs, which has 190m users, and offers more basic copies of the documents, spreadsheets and presentations programmes which make up Microsoft Office. Google charges for Gmail for business, which includes custom emails, more storage and round the clock support.

Microsoft

The original companion of the office worker, Microsoft’s Word, Excel and PowerPoint programmes in the Office suite are still used around the world by about 1.2bn users.

©Bloomberg

As many of the programmes are not sold as a subscription, it does not know how many people use them regularly. More than 400m people get their email through Microsoft Outlook.

The company bought Yammer, a corporate social network designed for collaborating with colleagues, for $1.2bn two years ago and has integrated it with Office 365 Enterprise, the Office subscription service. It has not reported Yammer’s user numbers since the acquisition.

LinkedIn

The 12-year-old professional networking site, has 90m monthly active users who visit it to make contacts with people who can help them do their job and – perhaps more significantly – help them get a new one.

©Shaun Curry

With users presenting a CV-like profile to the world, LinkedIn has become a home for recruiters prowling to find what they see as “passive job candidates”, who are not actively looking but might take an opportunity when it is presented.

The company’s talent solutions business generates the majority of the total revenue by selling subscriptions with extra features to recruiters. It also produces editorial content, focused on management that it is able to target to relevant users.

Facebook

The group has 1.35bn users logging on each month and 64 per cent of those use the site daily. More than 1bn use the Facebook app and the number of daily users on mobile has risen almost 40 per cent in the last year.

©AFP

If it can persuade even a small fraction of their userbase to try the work-focused product, it could have a sizeable userbase that could compete with the new generation of enterprise companies – and depending on exactly how the product turns out, even the larger companies such as Google and Microsoft.

Edmodo

One of the niche social networks, Edmodo is helping to lead the way in combining the social with the core of people’s work.

It enables teachers to collaborate with other teachers to share lesson plans with peers on the other side of the country, teachers with students to assess their work and students with other students to encourage working together.

Edmodo has 3.5m teachers in the US and 43m users worldwide, mainly in English-speaking countries. It has had to ensure a high level of security to keep student data private, an issue that Facebook might encounter with Facebook at Work.

Slack

The new kid on the enterprise block, Slack combines the ease of a chat app (think WhatsApp, not Snapchat) with integration with other software services such as Google Docs and Dropbox.

The start-up says it has 300,000 active users each day after officially launching in February 2014. The product has already been adopted by many technology companies as a preferred means of internal communication, but it is not designed to communicate with outside contacts.

Its basic product is free but it charges for most integrations, larger teams and more storage.

Doximity

Another vertical social network, Doximity focuses on doctors. Just four years after it was founded, Doximity boasts 40 per cent of all US doctors as users.

The verified medical practitioners flock to the platform as it is the only place that they can comply with strict regulations about sending patient data, without using a fax machine.

Doctors who have shared important information with each other on Doximity have then gone on to write medical papers together about their findings. More than 70 per cent of activity is on mobile phones, as doctors go about their working lives.

http://goo.gl/HXpTK0

Managing People on a Sinking Ship

by Amy Gallo

When your business is facing declining sales, a potential buy-out, or even certain closure, how do you manage people who are likely panicking about their future? Can you keep your team’s motivation and productivity up? The short answer is yes: Even when it’s clear that a company’s in trouble, there are ways to help team members stay focused, deliver results, and weather the storm.

What the Experts SayIn a crisis, you may think you need a whole new set of management approaches. But don’t throw out your Management 101 book quite yet. Kim Cameron, a professor at Michigan’s Stephen M. Ross School of Business and author of Positive Leadership: Strategies for Extraordinary Performance, has studied organizations that are downsizing or closing and he says that, instead of abandoning best common practices, the most skilled leaders reinforce them. “Good management is good management. Treating people well, helping them flourish, and unlocking potential are all good practices regardless of the environmental circumstances,” he says. Amy Edmondson, a professor at Harvard Business School and author of “Strategies for Learning from Failure,” says that of course it’s not easy to “keep people enthused, engaged, and working hard when they know the company may not be around.” But it’s not impossible either. Here are six principles to follow when your organization starts to feel like a sinking ship.

Look for opportunities to turn things aroundSometimes it’s clear that the end is near. Your manufacturing plant is slated to close. A larger company has bought your business unit. But in other situations, there may be a glimmer of hope. “There is often a short window of opportunity to do something differently,” Edmondson says. If there’s a chance of saving the company, focus your team on doing two things. First, seek input from customer-facing employees. Their front-line perspective could provide valuable insight into how your company needs to change. Second, do small experiments with alternative business models. Edmondson suggests you ask, “What kinds of products and services would customers welcome that we don’t offer?” The goal is to alter the organization’s course away from the one that got you into this mess.

Give your team a larger purposeTo keep people focused, give them something to work toward. “Identify a profound purpose that is more important than the individual benefit,” says Cameron. People want to believe their work matters in any situation. This can be tough when the company’s success is no longer the goal but you might select something that employees value personally — leaving a legacy or proving critics wrong. Cameron studied the manager leading a GM plant that was going to close in two years. To inspire employees who knew the end of their time with GM was near, he told them to do their very best so that senior leaders would be sorry when closing day came.

Provide reasonable incentivesFind ways to reward good work. After all, if the company is failing and employees are going to collect a paycheck anyway, why wouldn’t they spend their last three months on Facebook? “It’s the leader’s job to answer the question: What’s in it for me?” says Edmondson. Make clear what they will get if they do their best in this trying time. Will they learn a skill that will help them find their next job? Will the acquiring company be keeping some staff? How will the experience help them grow professionally? “If you can’t find a way to truthfully explain why they should help you get the job done, you’re out of luck,” says Edmondson.

Show people they matter as individualsDon’t just offer the same things to everyone, however. People want to still be seen as individuals. Tailor your message and the incentives to specific team members. Whenever possible, give them personal attention and care. When news of the crisis hits, meet with your employees one-on-one. Cameron suggests you say something like, “We want you to flourish and will do our best to take care of you even though we may not be here in the future.” Find out what matters most to them and do your best to meet those needs. There may be some people who can’t handle the uncertainty; in those cases, do what you can to help them find a position at another company.

Be honest and authentic — alwaysBoth Cameron and Edmondson are adamant that being transparent is crucial in these circumstances. “Whatever you know, share it with your employees,” says Cameron. Edmondson agrees: “Be as honest as you possibly can.” Don’t try to protect people from the truth or ignore what’s happening. “You can’t not talk about reality,” says Edmondson. And don’t say anything you don’t mean. In tough situations like these, people are on high alert for lies and inauthentic messages.

Don’t ignore emotionsPeople are going to be upset, afraid, and angry. Don’t pretend that these feelings don’t exist. Instead, make room for them. “You don’t want to dismiss emotions. It only drives them underground and makes them more deeply felt. It’s important to acknowledge feelings, especially negative ones,” says Edmondson. Tell people that you’re available to talk whenever they want. Encourage people to get together without you so that they can say things they might not want to express in front of a boss.  “The best practices I’ve seen are lots of huddles — people getting together and just having conversations about what’s going on,” says Cameron. Don’t play the role of psychologist though. If people need more specialized support to deal with what’s going on, refer them to outside help, such as trained outplacement counselors.

Principles to Remember

Do:

• Focus people on a meaningful goal
• Be 100% honest about what you know — share any information you can
• Encourage your team to get together without you to talk about what’s happening

Don’t:

• Expect that people will perform if you’re only giving them a paycheck — give them more meaningful incentives such as professional growth
• Treat people the same — remember they’re individuals with different needs and goals
• Pretend that something bad isn’t happening — be transparent and welcome expressions of emotion

Case study #1: Take care of your teamFor thirteen years, Michael Feeley worked as a recruiter at a staffing firm in New York City. He managed a small sales force and a temporary staffing division and he loved his job. “The company came first for me. I was a loyal and trusted employee,” he says. However, soon after the economic crisis in 2008, the company struggled to maintain its hiring fees and retain clients. Senior leaders decided to cut salaries in the hopes of keeping the operation afloat. They looked for a company that could possibly acquire them.

During this crisis, Michael took a transparent and supportive approach with his team. “Honesty was the only way to live and work through it,” he says. He told his team everything he knew and did his best to support them. He spent time listening to their fears and trying to give them confidence and comfort. “I wanted them to feel good about themselves and the work they had to do every day,” he says. To keep them motivated, he was clear that he was living through the same thing. “We were all in the same boat and the people I worked with wanted to know that I was right there with them — fears and all,” he says.

As a manager, Michael felt compelled to take care of his team. “I had a deep and sincere obligation to be useful and to know what they thought, felt, and wanted to do in this emergency,” he says. He focused on the facts that he thought would help them stay engaged: the company delivered a product that was well respected in the marketplace; the owner had always looked out for his employees; and the organization had survived difficult times in the past.

Despite all best efforts, however, the office did eventually close. Michael and his team members were lucky. “We were fortunate, even in a tough job market, to transition into work pretty quickly,” he says. And many, including Michael, were able to find jobs that better suited them. “That is one of the positive things that came out of the situation — people were clear about what they did and did not want to do,” he says.

Case study #2: Create an “us vs. the world” attitudeMarc Lawn was managing a global team of 100 people when sales at the company started declining. He says the business, which sold products to companies in the tech and media space, had lost touch with its customers and had ignored important changes in the way they made purchases. When it became clear that the company was in real trouble, Marc spent time with each person on his team explaining the situation and determining who might be incapable of handling the ambiguity. “Some people don’t cope well with uncertainty,” he says, so he helped those people — 12 total — find new roles outside the company.

For the people who stayed, Marc cultivated an “us vs. the world” attitude. He explained that this was an unprecedented challenge for the company and that they would not be able to succeed without all of them. “The objective of the group was to prove everyone wrong and show that we could save this thing,” he says. He focused his team’s attention on the near-term and encouraged them to accomplish specific tasks in small, manageable chunks. To ensure momentum, he celebrated successes and rewarded every job well done. When he spoke with members of his team, he conveyed a message: “Anything is possible, no matter how grim the situation, with the right skills, and with a team ready to fight for each other.”

The company was able to survive by getting rid of one part of the company and acquiring a new business unit. “Last year, the business had a record year, which shows that you can make it work with a ‘no regrets’ attitude,” he says.

10 brilliant quotes from Warren Buffett, America's second-richest person

Here are 10 of the best quotes from the second-richest person in the U.S.

The article below was originally published at Entrepreneur.com.

By Jason Fell, Entrepreneur.com

Whether it’s ketchup or ice cream or more recently batteries, Warren Buffett‘s Berkshire Hathaway is a powerhouse, managing a stable of more than 80 businesses. Its stock trades at more than $210,000 per share.

And if Berkshire Hathaway is legit, then Buffett — the company’s charismatic leader — is the real deal in business. At age 84, the man has a net worth of $66.8 billion, according to a recent report. Yes, you read that right. Billion. (Actually, it looks like he might be worth even more now…)

Buffett is the second wealthiest individual in the U.S., behind Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates ($81.5 billion) and ahead of Oracle’s Larry Ellison ($47.3 billion).

Buffett is as brilliant in business and investing as he is inspiring. Here are 10 of his best quotes, collected from his many letters to Berkshire shareholders and elsewhere around the web. Enjoy.

1. Give your mind some clarity.

“I insist on a lot of time being spent, almost every day, to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business. I read and think. So I do more reading and thinking, and make less impulse decisions than most people in business. I do it because I like this kind of life.”

2. Never forget thy business basics.

“Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.”

3. Know what you’re getting into, before you get into it.

“It’s far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.”

4. Be smart — and realistic.

“I try to buy stock in businesses that are so wonderful that an idiot can run them. Because sooner or later, one will.”

5. Don’t fake it till you make it.

“After all, you only find out who is swimming nakedwhen the tide goes out.”

6. Always know who you’re dealing with.

“You can’t make a good deal with a bad person.”

7. Act with honor and integrity.

“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.”

8. Value what’s most important.

“Too often, a vast collection of possessions ends up possessing its owner. The asset I most value, aside from health, is interesting, diverse, and long-standing friends.”

9. Hit the brakes when you need to.

“The most important thing to do if you find yourself in a hole is to stop digging.”

10. Be bold. Be confident.

“I always knew I was going to be rich. I don’t think I ever doubted it for a minute. ”

Решать не торопясь

Генеральный директор небольшой консалтинговой компании Петров мучается сомнениями – уволить или нет своего IT-директора Сидорова, который весь последний год работает практически «из-под палки», выполняя минимум того, что от него требуется.

Нет, Сидорова нельзя назвать человеком, обделенным талантами. Он умен, изобретателен и обладает удивительным даром придумывать «не бьющие по карману» решения технических проблем. Однако он совершенно безынициативен и позволяет себе на собраниях язвительную критику в адрес коллег, выдвигающих новые идеи. Если уволить Сидорова, то на какой-то период времени возникнут проблемы – он как никто другой понимает, как поддерживать базу данных клиентов. Что вы посоветуете Петрову? Уволить Сидорова или все же оставить?

Если вы проанализируете мысли, пришедшие вам в голову в течение нескольких секунд после прочтения вопроса, то удивитесь, насколько быстро в вашей голове начало формироваться решение. Скорее всего, кто-то из вас предложит уволить Сидорова, а кто-то посчитает, что надо дать IT-директору еще один шанс. Однако ни одно, ни другое решение может не быть верным, поскольку в описанной выше ситуации не учтены многие детали. Возможно, сотрудники любят прямолинейные высказывания Сидорова, и он слывет в компании этаким IT-доктором Хаусом. Возможно, у Петрова ужасный характер и он попросту придирается к подчиненному. Как только мы соберем больше фактов и станем расширять свое восприятие ситуации, она начинает выглядеть иначе, и наши решения меняются.

Мы часто принимаем неверные решения, потому что наша психика имеет особенность действовать в таких случаях быстро и интуитивно. «Для нас является нормальным иметь интуитивное суждение обо всем, с чем мы сталкиваемся. Мы знаем, нравится нам человек или нет, еще до того, как узнаем достаточно о нем; мы доверяем незнакомцам, не понимая, почему; мы решаем, что новый бизнес-проект будет успешным, не проанализировав все составляющие», – пишет Дэниэл Канеман (Daniel Kahneman), психолог, лауреат Нобелевской премии в области экономики, один из основоположников психологической экономической теории, объясняющей иррациональность отношения человека к риску в принятии решений и в управлении своим поведением. Канеман считает, что, решая, мы доверяем лишь информации, которая у нас перед носом. Он называет это эффектом прожектора. Нам, как в театре, кажется, что мы видим только то, что освещено.

Чип Хит (Chip Heath), профессор Стэнфордской школы бизнеса (Graduate School of Businessat Stanford University), и его брат Дэн Хит (Dan Heath), научный сотрудник Центра развития социального предпринимательства в Университете Дьюка (Duke University's Center for Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship)также исследовали механизм принятия решений. Они пришли к заключению о том, что наш мозг несовершенен в этом вопросе. В книге «Решения: как сделать лучший выбор в жизни и в работе» (Decisive: How to Make Better Choicesin Life and Work) ученые назвали четыре особенности, мешающие нам быть более рассудительными.

• Узость взглядов. Мы сосредотачиваем внимание на очевидных и видимых вещах и упускаем факты, которые не попали в зону нашего внимания, тем самым ограничивая количество рассматриваемых вариантов.
• Предвзятость. Мы быстро формируем мнение о чем-либо, а потом ищем информацию, которая его подтвердит.

• Краткосрочные эмоции (которые со временем исчезнут). Мы эмоционально привязываемся к нашему решению. Нам сложно посмотреть на ситуацию объективно, эмоционально отстранившись от нее.
• Чрезмерная самонадеянность. Нам кажется, что мы знаем больше, чем это есть на самом деле, и спешим с выводами и прогнозами на будущее.

Что делать?

Авторы книги предлагают использовать для улучшения процесса принятия решений стратегию борьбы со всеми этими негативными факторами. Она состоит из четырех шагов, которые необходимо выполнять в строгой последовательности, и называется WRAP («Сдерживание»). Это аббревиатура.

РАСШИРИТЬ ВЫБОР (Widenoptions).

ПРОТЕСТИРОВАТЬ РЕШЕНИЕ, СОБИРАЯ БОЛЬШЕ ФАКТОВ (Reality – test your assumptions).

ВЗГЛЯНУТЬ НА РЕШЕНИЕ СО СТОРОНЫ (Attain distance before deciding).

ПРИГОТОВИТЬСЯ К ТОМУ, ЧТО РЕШЕНИЕ МОЖЕТ БЫТЬ НЕПРАВИЛЬНЫМ (Prepare to be wrong).

Теперь более подробно о каждом шаге.

РАСШИРИТЬ ВЫБОР.

Чтобы успешно сделать первый шаг, авторы рекомендуют, во-первых, прорабатывать несколько вариантов одновременно, во-вторых, найти кого-то, кто уже решил подобную проблему и спросить, как он это сделал.

Использовать несколько вариантов одновременно. Психологи выяснили, что нашему мозгу удобно выбрать один вариант из двух, например, уволить или оставить сотрудника. В действительности, хорошо иметь одновременно две, а лучше три возможности.

В Силиконовой долине ученые Стэнфордского университета (Stanford University) проводили эксперимент. Компании ставили в ситуацию, когда им было необходимо быстро отреагировать на изменения. Быстрее справились фирмы, топ-менеджеры которых одновременно запускали в работу несколько вариантов выхода из ситуации. Если один не срабатывал, они переходили ко второму, если не срабатывал второй – к третьему и так далее. Авторы эксперимента утверждают: если мы одновременно действуем в нескольких направлениях, решая одну и ту же проблему, то не «застреваем» в ситуации, если дела вдруг пошли не так, а продолжаем двигаться, и выигрываем время. «Конечно, этот способ может быть затратным с точки зрения денег, но выигрышным с точки зрения времени», – полагают авторы книги, братья Хит.

Найти кого-то, кто уже решал подобную проблему. Авторы книги рекомендуют обращаться к опыту большего круга людей, чем мы обычно используем, и искать идеи для решения в самых разных местах. «Обычно мы ограничиваем себя определенным количеством людей, с которыми консультируемся, и идей, которые считаем полезными. Однако решение может прийти из источника, к которому мы обычно не обращаемся», – утверждают авторы. В качестве примера братья Хит приводят опыт управляющего всемирно известной сетью магазинов Walmart, постоянно державшего «нос по ветру». Узнав, что в магазине одного из провинциальных городков появилась новая система оформления покупок, он сел на автобус и за 12 часов совершил путешествие в 600 миль. То, что он увидел, позволило сделать революционное преобразование в магазинах Walmart, в результате которого количество касс и обслуживающих их сотрудников сократилось, а товарооборот и прибыль компании значительно увеличились.

ПРОТЕСТИРОВАТЬ РЕШЕНИЕ, СОБИРАЯ БОЛЬШЕ ФАКТОВ.

В психологии этот процесс называется тестированием реальности. Чтобы протестировать реальность, авторы рекомендуют подумать над решением, которое прямо противоположно тому, что мы приняли. Например, нам понравился профессионализм кандидата, с которым мы только что закончили интервью. Мы говорим себе: «Этот человек мне подходит, он прекрасно справится с работой», концентрируясь на позитивных аспектах принятого нами решения. Но если мы спросим себя: «Почему он может не подойти мне и не справиться с работой?», то поймем, что есть факты, которые мы не учли при принятии решения. Например, нам он показался несколько упрямым, однако мы не обратили на это должного внимания, очаровавшись его профессиональными качествами. Но, возможно, именно это качество может помешать ему вписаться в команду. Чтобы проверить свое предположение, нам надо будет пойти дальше, например, протестировать личностные качества кандидата, увеличивая количество фактов, на основе которых мы будем принимать решения.

«Для слияния компаний «Даймлер» (Daimler), традиционно делавшей упор на инженерных решениях, и «Крайслер» (Chrysler), ставивший во главу угла хитроумные решения в области маркетинга, принималось во внимание множество причин, по которым этот союз мог стать блестящим. Однако после объединения компаний стоимость акций «Даймлер-Крайслер» начала неуклонно падать, что поставило под вопрос успешность данного проекта. Если бы перед принятием окончательного решения акционеры спросили себя «Почему это слияние может не стать успешным?», возможно, на поверхность выплыло бы, что педантичные инженеры компании «Даймлер» с трудом поладят с креативными маркетологами «Крайслера». И тогда решение о слиянии, возможно, было бы подвергнуто сомнению», – делятся своими размышлениями братья Хит.

ВЗГЛЯНУТЬ НА РЕШЕНИЕ СО СТОРОНЫ.

Когда мы выбираем между двумя возможностями, лучшим советом будет переспать с этим. Дав себе возможность не принимать решение немедленно, мы позволяем нашему мозгу взять паузу и перестать метаться между «или – или». «Купить это или это?», «Выбрать эту профессию или эту?» Сьюзи Уэлч (Suzy Welch), известная телеведущая, журналист и автор бестселлеров, посвященных различным аспектам бизнеса, предлагает метод «10/10/10». Подумайте, что для вас будет означать ваше решение через 10 минут после того, как вы его приняли, через 10 месяцев и через 10 лет. Например, у вас есть сотрудник, который не справляется с работой, и с которым вы хотите расстаться. Через десять минут вы представите неприятный разговор с ним, через 10 месяцев вы скажете «Слава богу, что эта проблема решена. Возможно, этот человек нашел что-то более подходящее», а через 10 лет вас вряд ли будет волновать этот вопрос.»

ПРИГОТОВИТЬСЯ К ТОМУ, ЧТО РЕШЕНИЕ МОЖЕТ БЫТЬ НЕПРАВИЛЬНЫМ.

Этот шаг необходим, чтобы внутренне смириться с тем, что будущее может быть не таким прекрасным, как мы его себе рисуем. После принятого решения нам придется иметь дело с его результатом, а в силу нашей самонадеянности, он может оказаться не таким, как мы представляли. Довольно часто у нас есть четкая картинка будущего результата, в которую мы свято верим. Среди высокопрофессиональных врачей было проведено исследование, в результате которого выяснилось, что диагноз, в котором они были уверены, в 40% случаев оказывался неверным. Если говорить о бизнесе, то мы должны быть готовы к тому, например, что новый продукт, который, по нашему мнению, должен отвоевать 7% рынка, не принесет ожидаемых результатов, и тогда мы, возможно, будем вынуждены отказаться от принятого решения. Будет разумнее перестать делать ставку на этот продукт и выбрасывать деньги на ветер только от того, что будущее этого продукта нам представлялось таким прекрасным.

Для того чтобы избежать излишних потерь, авторы предлагают использовать следующие техники: проработать возможные сценарии развития событий; определить точку, в которой мы должны себе сказать «стоп», прекратить двигаться в выбранном направлении и поменять курс.

Проработать  возможные сценарии развития событий. Пихолог Гари Клейн предлагает метод, который используют в проектном менеджменте для анализа рисков, под названием «premortem» – предсмертный. Перед запуском проекта вы спрашиваете «Что может убить этот проект?» Например, вы можете собрать команду, участвующую в проекте, и попросить каждого спрогнозировать мрачный вариант развития событий. Например: «Прошло 12 месяцев, и наш проект потерпел полное фиаско. Почему?» Каждый член команды пишет все возможные версии провала. Варианты обсуждаются, затем принимается общее решение. Когда все возможные угрозы идентифицированы, бизнес-план адаптируется с учетом возможных неприятных вариантов.

Определить  точку, в которой мы должны себе сказать «стоп». Приняв решение, мы часто начинаем двигаться к цели по принципу «Вижу цель, не вижу препятствий», включив автопилот, не осматриваясь по сторонам и не принимая во внимание тот факт, что препятствия и в правду могут стать непреодолимыми. Такой подход может и привести к ненужным тратам времени, сил и финансовых ресурсов. Чтобы вовремя остановиться, авторы предлагают определить для себя «стопы» или тревожные звоночки, которые станут маркерами того, что надо действовать по-другому. В качестве примера братья Чип приводят печальную историю компании Kodak, просуществовавшей на рынке с конца XIX века и совсем недавно державшей 90% рынка фото- и кинопленок. В 2012 году компания Kodak объявила о своем банкротстве. И только потому, что топ-менеджеры не учли появления на рынке цифровых фотоаппаратов, вовремя не прореагировали на тревожные звоночки (с начала 2000 акции компании начали стремительно падать в цене) и не приняли мер для изменения стратегии компании.

В конце книги авторы выражают надежду, что технология WRAP поможет читателям стать немного мудрее в принятии решении. Также они в обязательном порядке рекомендуют выполнять все шаги технологии последовательно, не пропуская ни одного из шагов и не переставляя их местами. Желаем вам становиться более решительными!