Please lose touch with “reality”!

Last week, I was accused of “losing touch with reality” in a post about my article on the Tesla Model 3. I was also called a “cynical hipster”. While the latter amused me, the former reminded me of a topic that I had long wanted to write about: Dealing with reality. And so that’s what I’m doing now. For real!

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Attention “reality”

If you work in a large company, you will probably be familiar with this: Someone has a slightly crazy idea. An idea that is both tempting and daring. He catches fire and develops it further and gets to the point where he presents it to his team or superior. So he gets a time slot and carries out the considerations and presents the idea.

Silence in the room at first. Then praise for the work. And praise for the initiative. After a while, one of the older students speaks up and explains why the idea would not work in reality.

The reality is one way or another. You can’t simply ignore that.

The rest of the group agrees and they say things like: “That’s a great idea, but unfortunately it’s not feasible in reality”.

And once the meeting is over, the initiative is buried. The great idea is not even examined in the slightest.

Yes, but

I’m sure you will now say, yes, there are very specific things that simply cannot be implemented. You don’t have to talk for long. And yes, of course there are nonsensical ideas. For example, the commercial transformation of stone into gold through the use of white magic.

“A lack of reference to reality is to a certain extent one of the basic prerequisites for the development of disruptive business models.”

I have not yet come across ideas like the one about white magic. Rather, these new ideas are concepts that challenge the status quo. They take us out of our comfort zone, have great potential and therefore involve a lot of risk. And that’s where the problems start.

Seniority

I often see older managers who are particularly brash and quick to assess such new initiatives. They usually remark that, after all, they know how the business works. What they fail to realize is that the business is constantly changing and will change much faster in the future. The only experience that really lasts is that of dealing with change.

Missing test

What bothers me most about these incidents is that these ideas are not examined any further. At first glance, the challenges that need to be overcome when implementing such an idea are usually huge. However, if you look at the issue in detail, you usually realize that there is definitely a chance of implementation.

But in most cases, this in-depth examination does not take place at all. And that is a cultural problem. “Reality” has to stand in for a lot of things:

Cultural barriers & effects

Protection of vested rights

A serious problem for today’s managers. New ideas that question or change one’s own position, but would move the company forward, are declared unfeasible. The correct response would be “I don’t want that”.

World champion Germany & Switzerland

The Swiss and Germans in particular are world champions when it comes to finding the flaws in new ideas. This sometimes releases incredible energy. I’m constantly pitching concepts and ideas to all kinds of people and it’s striking: while Americans, Dutch and French people talk a lot about the possibilities, I usually get an accurate list of things from the Germans and Swiss about why concept XY can’t be successful in reality. Now, all feedback is valuable. But if I only listened to it, I would never have started anything, never actually implemented anything.

Spiral of retreat

One effect that results from this behavior in the company is that those people who have pushed forward with such ideas and then been shot down will think very carefully next time about whether they want to do it again. This is fatal, as it fundamentally stifles the drive for innovation.

Please lose touch with reality

I therefore ask you to forget this “reality”! It simply does not exist. Anything we can imagine, we can also make a reality.

This does not mean that we can do it immediately and profitably and in the present time. But we will definitely be able to. So we need to find out what the “minimum viable business model” is that remains true to the core of the original idea.

So the next time you are presented with an idea or a concept that seems unfeasible at first glance, invest time in examining it more deeply. Try to break free from the fixed mindset that we all have in some way.

Because nothing, really nothing has to be the way it is today. We can do everything better. Solve it anew. The starting point for disruptive companies is always that entrepreneurs can solve customer problems in a better and cheaper way. This has nothing to do with what already exists and the supposed “reality”. On the contrary. It creates these new “realities” in the first place.

That’s why you would do well to lose touch with “reality” and get to the bottom of things, especially if you want to develop resounding business models. And then evaluate how much risk you want to take. Because that’s what it’s all about.