Starting Your Business – The 5Q7P7D Framework

On 13th of January, 2012 at the Indira International Innovation Summit at Pune, India, I was conferred the “ENTREPRENEURIAL INNOVATION AND LEADERSHIP AWARD” chosen by advisory council for leadership and contribution to the field. The award described me as a thinker and doer and a role model and a believer in change. This was a humbling experience and definitely a moment of pride for me and my company that we started a few years back. It made me think as to what I should recommend to anyone who really wants to start on an idea. We built a company on Innovation consulting based on ideas and our experiences of many years – in the process I went through a set of questions and thinking dimensions that may be of value to anyone who really want to start on an idea. This led to this 3 planes framework which I call 5Q7P7D framework – please do not consider this to be the name of the latest Japanese robot to be featured in next Star Wars.

5Q – Five Questions that one should ask before starting

When we started Crafitti (www.crafitti.com) I asked myself 5 key questions. I dug in my old files and came out with the 5 questions and my answers. Reproducing below verbatim.

Creating and building a new organization is a statement of what I am to myself as well as may be to the world at large. It however requires a mind shift as I am not used to an unpredictable, unstructured and unknown economic, intellectual and social environment, and work conditions. To really take a decision I need to answer the following 5 questions:

Q1: How much willingness do I have to forego the position, pay-package, environment and brand name of a big company with its associated benefits in pursuit of building an organization that I want to build with like-minded people?

Answer: Building anything requires strong focus and perseverance that comes through passion and a craving for freedom. I think there is heavy dose of passion in me to build an organization that creates the difference in the world without the support and safety of big company environment. I think I have very strong belief and willingness to forego big company benefits.

Q2: How much willingness do I have to get down to working out the tasks, jobs, work items that in my existing environment I take it for granted to be done by others? This also ties to how willing I am to work in a non-hierarchical structure where no one reports to anyone i.e., a peer-peer, all equals, working together leaderless organization, or at least very close to leaderless based on trust, confidence and respect for each other.

Answer: I have failed miserably in pyramids. Hierarchical structures don’t go well with me at all. I believe in flat organizations and am extreme comfortable in leaderless scenarios.

Q3: How much patience, trust, confidence and respect do I have for my peers in a leaderless organization where decision happen through collective resonance? However, enough leeway is given for an individual to experiment, explore and encompass variety. Am I willing to experiment despite opposition from my team mates? When an individual is putting in effort am I willing to go-along with him/her path to the extent possible, despite knowing clearly why the idea will fail? Democratic decision making may lead to delays am I willing to suffer delays?

Answer: I can only work with people whom I trust. This is a weakness which I need to build into my strength. The new learning I have is to go along with people who I may think are going towards failure till the very end. This way who knows we may get a new path. Earlier I was also too black-hatted. Now I think I have become more and more exploratory collaborator. Yet many times my Ego comes in between. I have to retrain my mind. This was very difficult earlier, nowadays it is much less!

Q4: How much I am willing to put my 100% in a venture where sometimes I may get a feeling others are not putting in 100%?

Answer: The feeling that others are not putting 100% comes from a perception that continuous work engagement is the only way to grow. It is possible for some people to do in 2 hours the work I do in 8 hours; however, they may need 6 hours to do something else. So the effort is not the right measure to see 100%. Commitment and the results being produced also should be taken into account. Having said that, I think people will put in 100% in any activity that they enjoy. If I am not enjoying some work then anyway there is no point. I hope I will not have time to evaluate how much someone is putting in e.t.c, may be actually that doesn’t matter to me.

Q5: How much willing I am to let go of extremely lucrative opportunities in terms of package, position and profile that are bound to come to me during the pursuit of building the organization.

Answer: Freedom to do what I am doing along with like-minded people is what I seek. It will be available in an organization that I build from scratch I think. I don’t think lucrativeness of any offer will matter it will be a dedicated focus on building the organization that I want to build.

After answer these 5 Questions we need to ask what should we have to start a new venture or pursue a new idea?

7Ps of starting something new

What one should have, if one really wants to pursue an idea? If you want to start something new – you should have 7 P’s

1. Passion Long term sustainability will require passion – Passion creates a momentum in you that overcomes all possible naysayers and inertias of why something will not work.

2. Patience Take it that there will be delays, difficulties and outright demeaning people – with smiles that means mockery – however please also remember – each such smile – also hides a fear – fear of “if you succeed…” then those smiles have to become awe … To override all these smiles – build patience in your system

3. Perseverance King Bruce and the spider – the story will start making complete sense to you – there is no other method than learning from spider – on rebuilding your net – again and again even if you keep on failing.

4. Planning is actually an essential activity. The innovators understand it, pure idea guys do not. I suggest a minimum level of planning is essential – key list of activities and follow up on them over a period of time – makes sense

5. Pride is something that I learnt recently. I somehow never thought about pride in doing what you are starting – actually Pride in doing the change is so important that it can actually lead you to build on other Ps.
 
Originally I had 5Ps later I added two more Ps – Purpose and Planet

6. Purpose is the main starting point. It has to come from within, the purpose of what you want to create.

7. Planet is the key to defining your purpose. If the purpose is not aligned with the planet Earth – the Nature – it will not lead to a sustainable venture.

So if you want to create change in the world that you want to see – build on 7Ps!
 
After 5Qs and 7Ps, now comes the actual process of doing it, I propose the 7Ds of Doing.

7Ds of how to do something new

1. DISCOVER - Your business, your market, your social network, your customers or even yourself. This springs from your purpose within the constraints of the Planet in 7Ps.

2. DEFINE - What is your business and what is the key message of your business and for whom? What key problem of the world you will be solving?

3. DESCRIBE - Elaborate what you defined by describing in detail the customer value that your business is creating or will be creating.

4. DESIGN – This is the most crucial part of the process. Design need to balance multiple extremes – making your business system such that these extremes merge. Just to elaborate let us look at Toyota’s design philosophy of merging opposite extremes. They call it the J-factor – balancing extremes and working on AND as an operating word. The Toyota (The Toyota Motors) Design Philosophy is one of merging two extremes by producing Vibrant-Clarity, Seamless-Anticipation, Intriguing-Elegance, Incisive-Simplicity, Leading-Edge Finesse, Perfect-Imbalance, Freeform-Geometrics and Integrated Component Architecture.

5. DEVELOP – Once you have designed your business you need to develop it. Develop the messages/communications for all possible channels – print, TV, online, Email, social networks, micro blog, blog of your company, SMS, and online videos and all possible channels. Also the business model needs to be developed – by experimenting in real markets.

6. DEPLOY - Start deploying with an initial design in mind for creating Tipping Point by finding Mavens/salesmen/connectors in the networks of your choice, but before that make your product/service sticky. If you follow Duncan Watts of Small world fame, may be just start by telling the crowd.

7. DEDUCE - whatever is happening you need to find out how it’s happening. Develop and carry out a measurement metric for Word of Mouth Marketing (WOMM) – potentially a combo of Net Promoter Score and Tipping Point framework can be used as a starting point.
 
Use 5Q7P7D Model of starting on your idea! ~ Believe me it is doable – as I am doing it.

Navneet Bhushan (Navneet) is a founder director of CRAFITTI CONSULTING (www.crafitti.com) – an Innovation and Intellectual Property Consulting firm focused on co-crafting Innovation in global enterprises. He is the winner of Indira India Innovation award for Entrepreneurship and Innovation Leadership for 2012. He is the principal author of Strategic Decision Making- Applying the Analytic Hierarchy Process published by Springer-Verlag, UK, as part of the Decision Engineering Series. Read Navneet Bhushan Profile. Read Navneet Bhushan Columns.