The 1 in 60 rule
In a world where consumers, markets, and technologies are evolving as fast as they are, your only choice as a business is whether to innovate or deteriorate.
Productive, fruitful innovation comes from making the right bets.
And making the right bets ultimately comes down to 3 things:
1️⃣ Volume
2️⃣ Direction
3️⃣ Precision
In other words, pie, hockey, and aviation are your keys to success.
Let’s break it down.
1️⃣ 𝗣𝗶𝗲 & 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝟴𝟬/𝟮𝟬 𝗿𝘂𝗹𝗲: 80% of outputs (results) comes from 20% of inputs (e.g. options, efforts, projects, ideas).
How many homers you can hit is constrained by how many at bats you get.
💡In business, expanding the pie to explore, vet, size, etc. TEN ideas, potential opportunities or bets will take you further than being limited to just TWO (20% of 10 will always be >> than 20% of 2).
BUT, your results are as much a function of input volume as of input quality and caliber…
2️⃣ 𝗛𝗼𝗰𝗸𝗲𝘆 & 𝘀𝗸𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗼 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝘂𝗰𝗸 𝗶𝘀 𝗴𝗼𝗶𝗻𝗴: Get to where the opportunity actually is – ideally before everyone else.
Speed comes from how fast you can move (often dictated by your company culture) and the skates you’re wearing (the tech and tools at your disposal).
But knowing where to go in the first place – which 10 ideas or inputs to even bother with – comes from having:
good judgment (often powered by experience: you’re so keyed into the players on the ice and dynamics in the rink that you can anticipate what’s worth acting on) and
good information (on the size of the prize, etc.).
In 2024, Google is ubiquitous and GenAI is getting there. So your competitors are able to get answers that power their decisions faster than ever. That means:
The only way to beat them is on quality (knowing what’s worth chasing) and accuracy (getting exactly where you need to be to capitalize on the opportunity).
💡The more games you’ve played, the more experience you have, and the better information at hand, the more likely you are to know what’s worth pursuing.
3️⃣ 𝗔𝘃𝗶𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 & 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝟭 𝗶𝗻 𝟲𝟬 𝗿𝘂𝗹𝗲: A plane off course by 1° misses its target by 60 miles.
💡The longer you stick to the wrong bet, the farther off-base you’ll land (and the money you’ll waste along the way adds up).
SO:
If more inputs = more outputs…
And if higher quality inputs = higher quality outputs…
Why are you not optimizing for more, higher quality inputs?
Better bets come from better information, and better information comes from better questions.
Increase the size of your pie, the accuracy of your aim, and the quality of your focus, and you’ll go far.
What’s your weakest link right now?
Victoria
PS. Want to hear what we’ve learned about how today’s leading innovators and strategists are improving their volume, direction, and precision? Let’s chat!
PPS. To start getting better, faster, on-demand answers to important business questions, check out our latest research agent – 4x more accurate than other LLMs, fully-cited, and 3.3x more data rich than other chatbots. And totally free.