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How to not kill a good idea

When you are starting an initiative don’t expect people to jump into the boat with you. Even the best ideas can fail because of this.

Example
For example if you want to start a learning program you should think twice about how you can convince people to join the program and participate to it. In the first moment everyone will say that it is a great idea, this is something that was missing and it will add extra value to the group. But in the moment when you send a ‘mass’ invitation to people, to see who would like to join the program you will have 0 people that would like to join the program.

Cause
In my personal opinion, the way how you recut people to a new program is wrong. Don’t expect people to jump into a new boat, to a PoC. They have a lot of things to do and even if the idea sounds good, you are still in the PoC phase.
You cannot guaranty to them that there is a real value for them. This is why in you ask the ‘mass’ nobody will be interested directly. The way how you try to gather the first group of people is not very good.
You may find some people that has stamina and are open to do different things, but is pretty hard to find this kind of people.

Solution
A better approach may be to go directly to a small group of people, which you know that have stamina and would like to join the program. Invite them to a private group. In this way you will be able to ‘spark’ the interest to people and form the first group of people that can be used to run the PILOT.
Once the PILOT was run, it will be more easily for you to attract people. Based on this approach, people from the private group can start to invite other people and so on. You can end up with groups of people that were formed only based on private invitation.

Conclusion
Ideas and initiatives are very good, but a good idea is not everything. We should be very caution at the way how we implement and put in practice an idea. A bad approach can kill even the best ideas before they are born.

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