As I promised in my last WUP post, this step is where the magic happens. It’s the one thing that even the most ardent of note-takers and journalists rarely even think about:
Talk.
Talk about your observations and ideas with everyone in your life that matters. With your team, for example.
Here’s what I’m noticing; what are you seeing? That kind of thing. Just kick it around and see where the discussion takes you–see what happens over time.
Please understand, I’m not asking you to do this to waste time. I’m asking you to do this to create new ideas, new ways of serving your customers, and new ways of getting more business.
Make this WUP discussion (everyone on the team should be using one) part of your routine, and if you give it some time, eventually–and I’ll write you a personal guarantee on this–a fantastic, new idea is going to pop up and WUP you upside the head. There’s no way to know where it’s going to come from. There’s no way to predict which conversation will lead to what new idea. But…
It. Will. Happen.
Back in 1966, Herb Kelleher and Rollin King famously sketched out the idea for Southwest Airlines on the back of a cocktail napkin. They were sitting around, talking over drinks (Drinks?!? Kelleher?!?) and–WUP–the idea for SWA was born. (Okay, maybe the napkin part is folklore, but still…)
I’m asking you to have those kinds of talks deliberately, frequently, and with reckless abandon.
Picture this:
Can you imagine what it would be like for an entire company to have everybody–and by that I mean everybody from the CEO to the receptionist–keep his or her own Wake-Up Pad? And every so often–weekly, monthly, you decide–you have a meeting where all that happens is people compare notes and talk about what they’re seeing. And when the ideas start flying, you capture them and start trying things.
That would be a company entirely awake to what’s happening outside its own walls.
As Gary Hamel wrote in Leading The Revolution:
“Everyday, companies get blindsided by the future–yet the future never arrives as a surprise to everyone in the organization. Someone somewhere was paying attention.”
Imagine an entire company of people paying attention.
I don’t know about you, but that’s something I could stay awake for.
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