Break The Safety Net

Ask the messy questions. Ask the dangerous questions. Ask them boldly and without hesitation

If you want to grow your organization, start by breaking the safety net.

A safety net is easily recognized. When we start to get the same results…the same creative strategies…when we’re afraid to step outside of what is working to imagine a new iteration of a product or a new expression of the brand; we are living atop our safety net.

Safety nets only tell you what is, not what’s possible.

Redefine the way you look at safety. Don’t constrain yourself to hard and fast rules. Don’t confine your thoughts to only things that have worked before. These won’t get you to where you want to be, they will only tell you where you’ve already been.

Wipe the whiteboard clean, bust out the post-it notes, and start to ideate around the relationship you have with your audience. Be comfortable in the realm of uncertainty.

Once the safety net is removed and the constraints are gone, you can begin to sketch hypotheses around how you can iterate your brand approach. Start by asking yourself “what would happen if” or “what if” questions. “What if” our story could be communicated more concisely? “What would happen if” we changed the conversation we’re having with our customers? “What would happen if” we expanded into a different market?

When we are children, this question comes quite naturally to us. “What would happen if…I chew on this, I ate a whole mud pie, I stand on my head for a really long time.” But as we get older, this question becomes much more messy and much more dangerous.

Ask the messy questions. Ask the dangerous questions. Ask them boldly and without hesitation.

Asking questions that are messy and dangerous lead to real iteration and ultimately real breakthrough.

Maybe your hypothesis is a new channel. Maybe your hypothesis is a new customer insight. (Read more about what people really want). Maybe your hypothesis is a new type of relationship you’ve never had with your customers before.

Whatever your new hypotheses are, embrace them as tentative interpretations designed to draw out and test the logical, emotional or empirical consequences of iterating your brand. Then go out and find ways to test.

Hypothesizing and experimenting are at the center of breaking your safety net, and breaking your safety net is at the center of growing your organization.

Go out and break your safety net.

Jeremiah Gardner is the author of the upcoming book, The Lean Brand. He helps entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, and Fortune 500s reframe the way they think about brand development. He is an author, speaker, brand thinker and bulldog lover. Tweet him @JeremiahGardner.

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