If you recall from my Exercise 6 reflection, the 7 key principles to the Initiative methodology are as follows, and this time I decided to include my thoughts regarding each one:
Personality matters less than skills you can learn. – Absolutely! I don’t think my thoughts on this one have changed much at all. “Personality” to me is kind of vague and hand-wavey…To me it is more the result of how you utilize people skills. Hence…Your skills matter a lot! Especially your people skills!
The idea of a lifetime comes once a month. – I used to be kind of iffy on this one. I understood that everyone has good ideas from time to time. But now I understand better that “the idea of a lifetime” is all just perception: it’s simply an idea that has been massaged, sharpened, and improved on until it has become useful to a lit of people who will pay you well for it!
Better than a great idea is an okay idea plus market feedback, flexibility, and iterations. – See reflection on Principle 2.
Start where you are with what you have. – No matter how good an idea, your project always starts with you and can be developed right now. Not once you have money. Not once you get good at something. You can start to take the next step. Right. Now.
Pitch and they’ll judge. Ask advice and they’ll help. – This is my favorite takeaway of this whole set of exercises. Whereas it used to feel terrifying to talk to people about an idea I had, now I recognize that most (NOT all) people love to give advice and when you ask, very often you receive.
The problem leads to the solution. – My first two runs through the Initiative methodology were forced: I wanted to do them on my solution that I had come up with and I tried to force a “problem” that made my solution valid. That CAN work, but it’s much easier to find a problem that already exists and try to solve it.
Almost nothing inspires like helping others so much that they reward you for it. – I learned this, not through the exercises necessarily, but by Josh personally challenging me to just try to do some trial runs of my project idea by myself, then with family. After doing it with my family, my wife and daughter both said they were surprised at how much they enjoyed the conversation and said “we should do things like this more often.” That was worth more than any money I could’ve received.
As far as he’s come, for many people, finishing one Initiative cycle just opens the door. Once you develop the skills and experience, the next step is to use them, then more and more. I’ve been going through that cycle over and over. I’m practicing the basics the way Serena practices her forehand. She may win Wimbledon, but she never gets too good that practicing the basics
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