Cory Zimmerman of Z2 Marketing + Design presented a session at BarCampMilwaukee titled “How to not think and succeed – Starting and running a firm.”
I thought the basic idea was somewhat similar to the 37Signals idea of "Getting Real", where you can’t let planning and over-thinking get in the way of actually doing something. I’ve been involved in businesses before where grand schemes were discussed over and over and never acted upon. It’s the whole “ideas are useless, execution matters” thing.
From what I’ve seen, Cory and his partner Deb have made Z2 successful by doing the right amount of planning, just enough to keep from flying by the seat of their pants, and then executing on their ideas. Yes, they’ve dealt with failure, but Cory didn’t think it was due to a lack of thinking or planning.
I’ve tried to adopt similar ideas for 2XL Networks, focusing more on doing and less on thinking, or over-thinking, as it were. Maybe a good deal of this is based on previous experience, but if that is the case, then people starting out might do well to focus on doing as well, to actually gain that experience…
