Larry Cheng in “How Can We Double Down?”...
[During an MFG.com board meeting,] Jeff Bezos asked the question, “Is there anything big or small, that is working better than you expected? Is there any where we could double down?” Jeff’s point was that we spend a lot of time focusing on what’s not working in Board meetings (especially in times like these), and not enough time focusing on what is surpassing expectations and how we can “double down” on those areas. Often times the key levers in businesses are found in little things that are really outperforming whether by intention or not (often not, actually). Sometimes these are things that are either adjacent enough or small enough that they wouldn’t make a board presentation or be an obvious discussion point because they’re just seedlings that need to be watered. I appreciate how Jeff wanted to bring these seedlings to the forefront to see if they deserved some real investment.
Reminiscent of Jason’s recent post here about how failure is overrated. What’s working is where the gold is. Focus and learn from that instead of fixating on the negative.
FYI, if you’re not a big blackjack fan already, here’s “doubling down” explained.
Jeremy
on 01 Jun 09This sounds like Appreciative Inquiry to me. I learned a lot about it at a previous employer. It’s all about finding the things which ARE going right and leveraging those things to build a better business. There’s a whole “science” on the subject. It’s about finding the best in things rather than the worse, and approaching change accordingly. I rather like it! Failure is indeed overrated.
http://appreciativeinquiry.case.edu/intro/whatisai.cfm
Diwant Vaidya
on 01 Jun 09While I agree that we must understand what we are doing correctly, I don’t think ‘doubling down’ in the traditional sense works best. In fact I offer Seth Godin’s May 31st post (really recent! Coincidence?) as a better way of growing the best parts of your offering. http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/05/deeper-or-wider.html
This discussion is closed.