Ice cream was invented in two thousand BC. Yet it was 3,900 years later before somebody worked out the ice cream cone. Meat was on the world before humans. Bread was baked in 2600 BC. Nevertheless, it took another 4,300 years for someone to put them together and create the sandwich. And the modern flush toilet was invented in 1775, but it wasn t until 1857 that someone thought up toilet paper.
Once these plain connections have been made, they appear so obvious. So evident. We will be able to t believe we didn t see them sooner. An endless number of these unmade connections exist to this day, particularly in the business world. You are encircled by simple, obvious solutions that can dramatically boost your earnings, power, influence and success. The problem is, you don t see them.
Before Henry Ford would hire anyone for a crucial position, he would have lunch with them. If the potential worker would salt the food before tasting it, Mr. Ford would not hire the person. The reason? Salting the food before tasting it indicated the person would implement a plan before testing it - ergo, no job. Was Henry Ford too acute with his hiring policy based on salting food before testing? Perhaps . But, then again, Henry Ford was America s first billionaire.
One company that reputedly didn t test enough is the maker of Excedrin. Several years ago they ran a multi-million dollar, national advertising campaign showing different, better than average headaches and alloting them numbers, like Excedrin headache nine, Excedrin headache twenty-three, etc, where Excedrin relieved the discomfort. The campaign created great name recognition and was outwardly awfully successful. But, in truth, sales went down. The company later learned that people were aware of the campaign and said that Excedrin was a brilliant, stronger-than-average agony reliever. And if they'd a serious headache they had a serious headache they would definitely take Excedrin. But if they headache, an average headache, Excedrin was a better medicine than they needed, so they might take a gentler agony reliever like aspirin. The company could have saved millions of bucks and not lost market had they done one simple thing. TEST.