"The way to get started is to quit talking and start doing" - Walt Disney

I'm tired of PowerPoint slide decks...how about you?  I'm tired of drafting them for senior leaders who seemingly cannot comprehend a concept without an accompanying set of slides.  I'm tired of looking at slides that have graphs, showing the same thing that the previous slide of raw numbers explained.  I'm tired of mission statement slides.  I'm really tired of slides that contain so much information, they don't need further explanation, but somehow I am forced to listen along as someone reads them back to me.

What is it about corporate culture that requires us to over explain everything?  What if we found a better way of doing something and then, without explanation or a slide deck, just tried it out to see if it would work?  Would we be disciplined?  Fired?  I don't know, but I have resolved to find out. 

In today's highly regimented corporate cultures, we are taking all the fun out of ideation, discovery and experimentation.  Every time we discover a simple process shortcut, or a promising new customer service approach, or even a potentially breakthrough  product or service, we tend stop the ideation and discovery process and revert back to a critical analysis that seems ingrained in most corporate cultures.  Just when the new idea or concept needs more free thinking and idea incubation, instead we set up a project, notify the leadership chain of command, have a number of meetings over the course of months, require detailed financial analysis and, in essence, manage the idea to death.

So I call on each of you to join me in the "Start Doing" Revolution.  I propose that as we conceive of new ideas and concepts, or notice new ideas from others, we move them as far along as possible before engaging the corporate leadership structure.  In fact, if the concept experiment can simply be implemented on your own, then I say just do it.  We need more people trying things and getting the idea egg to hatch before we turn them over to the corporate analysis machine.  Rather than attempting to "projectize" each new idea as it comes forward, what if we just started giving people the time and freedom to try them out first?  There will be plenty of time later for analysis and process.

What would you rather show a senior leader...a slick slide deck explaining your idea or a prototyped model of the new product?  A fancy graph or actual customer compliments about that new customer service approach?  A bullet point summary of internal rate of return projections or a live testimonial from an internal business customer on how much time that process improvement allows them to focus on more important things?

Indeed...in most of our corporate cultures...it is time to quit talking and start doing.  Thanks again, Mr. Disney, for reminding us that customers don't care how many meetings we have, only what more we can give them.