9 Strategies to Think Big and Work Small
Interested in learning strategies to think big and work small? You came to the right place.
Product teams don’t have the luxury of reactive work, and that’s why a think big work small mentality is often key to their success.
In doing so, the team follows a compelling mission linked to a well-established coherent strategy. The mission is almost always outcome-oriented, starting with risky operations while focusing on incremental value delivery.
Some companies focus on defining big things in a prescriptive sense while working small. However, it’s more efficient to start easing your focus on strategies and missions.
That said, the change in the vision and process starts with each individual team.
9 Think Big Work Small Strategies for Your Team
Letting your team work without thinking big often leads to strategic burnout. The team works small and minimizes any risks while improving delivery. However, you notice a decline in innovation, value starts to erode, and community growth stunts.
Alternatively, if you only focus on big things and making an impact on the world, you suffer from planning, overcompensation, and a cycle of disappointment.
The art of thinking big while working small is the successful link between both approaches. Here are nine strategies to help you as an individual reach that point.
1. Work with Other Small Businesses
Large businesses often work on a macro scale, with top management focusing on ways to increase market share. The leaders at such an organization seldom focus on local areas.
Your company needs to take advantage of the fact that you’re on better terms with the local community. There’s a good chance that you know much more about your specific niche market than a multimillion-dollar organization that has a more general approach.
While they spend their budgets on macro goals, you have to work with other small businesses in your niche for growth.
There’s always room to target individual customers when your competitors are massive businesses. There’s always room for improvement in providing a better user experience.
In fact, some people prefer, personalization over better products.
2. Think Big but Plan Small
When you work big, one of the best ways to be successful is to plan small. As your plan progresses, the scope expands at a glacial pace as the small pieces start coming together.
For example, if your competitor is a much larger business, don’t focus on their processes. Instead, share their vision and apply it to your own.
Large businesses have plenty of resources to spend, lots of available time, and room for experimentation.
At the same time, you have to plan each step for efficient resource utilization. Track each activity and figure out what experiments and innovations to introduce without excessive risk.
3. Send Promotions to People you Know
Large businesses have the budget to target massive target audiences to sell their products. The rest of us have to depend on our existing networks.
If you don’t have a large budget, it’s advisable to send promotions to people you know in your network. You understand the stories of these people, who they know, and how they work.
Based on these characteristics, you determine what you need and get insightful information.
A closed focus group of people you know is bound to provide quality, impartial results. It’s better than spending large amounts on a more generalized audience.
4. Blend Old Systems with New Ones
Thinking in terms of outcomes and impact means leaving room for lots of experimentation and validation.
It’s advisable to integrate older processes and systems with new ones instead of a complete overhaul. The things that change are your approach and how you strategize to achieve a big goal.
Your efforts start to transition toward a collective approach.
5. One Personalized Deal, Not Ten
Rather than targeting ten potential prospects, it’s better to identify one customer and create personalized messaging for them.
This point relates to the third one. Targeting a single point of contact that reverberates in your network is better than going for multiple points of contact.
Instead, create a personalized offering for them, ship it, and let them do the work for you.
6. Systemize and Prioritize Tasks
If you don’t already have a system, create one to log all your activities and tasks. Then, prioritize them according to urgency.
For every task that your team needs to complete, add it to your system. Even if that task doesn’t have a direct relation to your product.
This is most important when you have to post or send regular messages to customers.
7. Big Goals Need Smaller Milestones
Think of your career aspirations, you get an education, and then you work your way through smaller roles to achieve your big goal. Similar where to buy trenbolone online to that, all your big product goals require smaller milestones to keep your team in check.
A sense of completion and progress towards a big goal is crucial to maintaining motivation. If you’re having a hard time with this, think of where your team began and review your progress.
Develop future milestones based on that timeline.
8. Establish an Experimentation Culture
According to John Cutler, thinking big and working small is about an experiment-first culture. This experimentation turns into testing, and that leads to learning.
You start with the riskiest assumptions and work toward learning to fill any gaps in between.
9. Commit to Regular Agile Retrospectives
Agile retrospectives allow teams to reflect upon the work in a previous iteration and support future improvements.
When you join a retrospective, you share your progress while identifying improvement opportunities.
This ensures all team members are on the same page on the bigger picture while sharing ways to improve working small.
Think Big Work Small – Summary
The principles of this concept aim to bring an innovation-driven mindset to an efficient way of working.
Big projects are exciting, but high velocity leads to burnout. However, rapid progress under an experimentation and learning environment on big prescriptive projects is enticing.
The think big work small mentality welcomes uncertainty, but at the same time, it fosters creativity and plenty of new opportunities.
