Meaningful: The Story of Ideas That Fly

by Bernadette Jiwa

I know you’re scared that your idea might not work. I know you worry about being wrong, far more than you celebrate the things you get right. I know you waste time being anxious that you won’t measure up to someone else’s metric of success.

The two most important things we can do are to allow ourselves to be seen AND to really see others. The greatest gift you can give a person is to see who she is and to reflect that back to her. When we help people to be who they want to be, to take back some of the permission they deny themselves, we are doing our best, most meaningful work.

Every successful business creates a new kind of customer. That customer’s story changes because the business exists. There is a before-the-product story and an after-the-product story.

Or as author Michael Schrage would say, ‘Who do you want your customer to become?’ Before [your product], people did. After [your product], people do.

We don’t need better marketing. We need better products, made by trustworthy companies, led by brave leaders, who can look us in the eye and say, hand on heart, ‘This really will make your life better because we put you first.’

The two parts of Sony’s business that could have collaborated to revolutionise the music industry didn’t, because each was operating and innovating in its own silo. They sacrificed the opportunity to reinvent the music industry of tomorrow, which would respond to how people and the world were changing, because they were trying as hard as they could to protect what was working for the company today.

Just because they take the same route to work each morning doesn’t mean that all twenty-nine-year-old men living in the suburbs share the same worldview.

Think of your product or service as the catalyst or enabler of something in the life of customers and users. Describe their lives before your product (café, software, app, yoga pants) became part of their stories and then their lives after it.