Sometimes we make innovation seem so hard.
I was reminded recently of a GP in a tourist destination who often works “on call” for major hotels as part of their practice. As an example, for them, this inevitably means that they are never around for all of Christmas Day, as someone would always call them to come and see a guest. The call-out fee on such a day is at least double or treble their usual rates so they can make more money in an hour or two than a salaried GP will make in a day. An uninterrupted family day at Christmas would appeal to many, but to this Doctor, the ease of making a whole lot of money was compelling enough to have them choose to do things differently at Christmas.
I then made one of my (increasingly infrequent) visits to the Musk place “X”, seeing that Tom Goodwin mused: “It’s mad how many businesses don’t open at weekends. If I was a…doctor, I’d work 10 hours a day from Sat – Tuesday and make a pile of cash just by being the only one open.”
Imagine how much demand you could generate being a Doctor or Dentist who worked all weekend? Or, increasingly, a restaurant in the London suburbs that opened on a Monday evening? (Almost all suburban restaurants are closed on Mondays, despite Monday being the day of the week when most people work from home rather than commute into central London).
Now, years ago I was visiting Tobermory on the Isle of Mull in the middle of the summer tourist season and saw that numerous stores were closed at 5 pm, despite sunset not being until after 10 pm. From this (as I wrote about here) I came up with a definition of innovation as being simply:
“doing things differently and doing different things”
Sometimes we make innovation seem so hard (another post on potential “blockers” here), so try and do just a few things differently to practice working your innovation “muscle”.
To close, another tiny example. The average tradesperson in the UK tends to come to a job site (such as a project in a home, of which I’ve had many done in two houses in recent years) around 8:30, then take a few breaks, including leaving the site once or twice, then finish around 5pm. I recently had a decorator come in. Two of them on the team, arrived at 8 am sharp each day, done by 3 pm having done a full day of work in two hours less time. How do they manage that? First, they work straight through, having brought their food and drink with them and choosing to eat and drink as they go. Second, they are highly practised at ensuring they have all they need for the job with them at the start of each day, so there are none of the (all too common) “I just have to pop out to get something” breaks in the work. They simply chose to focus on a “WHY” of being more efficient to then work a shorter day, then found a few easy ways to “do things differently”.