Stacking: A Brief Explanation
Let’s talk about stacking. Stacking, as we all know, can be definedas placing one item on top of another. We can often build something when we stack a few things together e.g. stacking bricks or stacking Jenga blocks at the start of the game. Therefore, with the same approach, we can use stacking to make habit formation and other means of growing a bit easier and more sustainable.
For example, Perhaps you want to exercise in the morning, however you are not a morning person. The best way to attain this habit would not be to push yourself to work out and wake up early, but to push yourself to wake up in the morning first (and no other new habit). Using one good habit and then building on it with the next can lead to more sustainable practices. If we continue with this example, once you are able to wake up early consistently it will be easier to convince yourself to exercise next and if exercising fails at least you shall still have the initial habit of being an early riser.
This logic can easily be applied to how you run and manage your company. Stack the feature list or services you provide. Stack the kinds of people you choose to hire. Stack the partners you intend to work with. Start with what shall give you a strong base and foundation and move upward slowly but surely. Do not attempt to build a mobile application with 20 features at once, you will end up with a mobile application with 20 sub-par features. Therefore, as you can already tell, the concept of stacking is all about quality over quantity and ensures that as you grow, the quality of your product or service does not diminish.
Additionally, it can help ensure that your growth is more sustainable. Let’s look at the feature list again, what happens when you have 20 sub-par features that no one asked for? Believe it or not your company has a core business. The feature list for the mobile application should align with its core business and developing the other 15 additional features is not as important and if you try to do it all at the same time the core features shall suffer. This means that your product may not perform it’s intended purpose at its maximum potential. Additionally, maintaining the 15 features shall take up time and resources which should have been allocated to the core 5. This in itself is not sustainable as eventually you will have to drop the 15 and circle back to the features that best support your core business.
Employees? Skillets can be stacked. The number of employees you are going to have can be stacked. Practically anything can be stacked if you stop and ask yourself: what allows for the other? What provides a solid foundation for the next? Yes, this may force you to progress in what seems to be a slow and linear fashion, but at least it is more sustainable in the long run and shall allow for quality as you grow.
