“One of the biggest strategic mistakes you can make is to fail to make the most of your victories. Yet even brilliant leaders sometimes make this mistake. One reason they fail is if they are obsessively searching for the Next Big Thing.
– Jim Collins
What’s not to like about the Next Big Thing, right? I mean, wouldn’t you just love to launch one?
One of the misconceptions about Big Things is that they would just appear and immediately take over the world.
That’s hardly how it works in real life. The iPhone was a niche product when it launched. Facebook was only available at a single university when it launched. Tesla (which is yet to become an actual Big Thing) launched with an expensive niche sports car.
Most Big Things have actually started small and grown big over time … by rigorously observing what worked and what didn’t and then amplifying what worked and fixing what doesn’t.
When you constantly chase the Next Big Thing, you constantly start fresh (read: small).
Instead of asking what else could work, it might pay to regularly ask what’s already working and then amplify that.
(And, of course, there’s a smart distinction to be made between consistency and stagnation.)
