I am reading “Made To Stick” at the moment which has actually been a very interesting read. I will write a full summary of the key points in another post but there was one big idea that really stuck with me.
Find the core idea
Finding the core means stripping the idea down to its most critical essence and removing all the superfluous elements. The core is the main message and its power comes from its singularity, you cannot have five North stars. In order to get to the core you need to discard a lot of ideas to make sure the most important insight shines.
They explain how the US army used to have complex battles plans that were useless the minute combat started as the enemy response could never to be predicted. So in the 1980s the army developed a new concept called Commander’s Intent (CI) which is the core of any mission. There can only be one CI and it appears on the top of every order, for example: “To break the will of the enemy in the south region”. This core idea aligns everyone’s actions but leaves the tactical decision to relevant people in the field.
Communicate the core idea
Once you have found the core you need to communicate it and one of the key points is to make it simple.
The case study they use is that of Southwest Airlines who have the mantra “We are THE low-fare airline” which has guided the actions of the employees for more than thirty years. So if someone comes to the CEO and suggests that they introduce a new meal or extra drinks, they have to ask themselves will this action make us The low-fare airline.
I really like the idea that a simple message can provide high level guidance to lots of different people at different levels. Coming up with the core is not too difficult, communicating it simply is a lot harder.
Experimenting with these concepts
So it is not enough to merely read and understand these concepts the only way I learn is by actually using something.
At the moment I am developing a new hosting service targeted at Django developers, so I decided to apply these ideas. I sat down and tried to get to the core of the business idea and then try and communicate it in a simple way. The keywords I came up with for the service were: simple, easy to use, foolproof, aimed at the novice, allow multiple versions to be run; but none of these are the core.
So I asked myself two questions
- What really makes this new hosting service unique?
- Why did I decide to build it in the first place?
The answer to both of these questions is complexity, Django hosting is complicated and I wanted to bring it to a wider non-technical audience. So I came up with:
“The easiest Django hosting in the world”
This is the core and it is very simple. This message now guides our decisions on features, operations and design. For each decision that needs to be made we ask ourselves will this make us the easiest Django host in the world. So far it has been very powerful.
The Django hosting service will be launching in a few days and I have written a detailed post on how we went from idea through to launch in just three days over weekend and bank holiday Monday.