If you can’t work out your product, service, or offering to your customers on paper, how are you ever going to realize it in the real world?

Experience it manually is a term we use to describe the process we go through whenever we have a new product or service for our customers. We need to get in their heads. We need to understand the benefits and meaning the product will bring to them.

In the past we have made the mistake of jumping into implementation too quickly. We started building web pages, writing copy, and building software before we really understood what the product or service was doing for our customer.

If we had worked it out completely on paper, and experienced the process by acting through the various scenarios, we would have saved ourselves a lot of time and energy.

We are not afraid to failing fast, but before we try something we first work it out on paper.

We love Jack Welsh. You may not agree with all of Jack’s management philosophies, but one thing you can’t criticize him for is not telling you what he thinks. At GE Jack was responsible for bringing back intense candor to the company.

Practicing intense candor means telling it like it is. It means not holding back and withholding criticism. It means giving honest and sincere feedback and appreciation.

The price of not being candid with each other is speed and cost. We waste more time and money when we avoid making unpopular decisions, and go down paths we know we shouldn’t because we don’t have the courage to speak up.

Employing intense candor gives us a competitive advantage. By not being a consultancy, or the UN ,we can make mistakes, correct each other respectfully, grow, and move on to success faster then ever.

Intense candor doesn’t mean not respecting individuals. It means we are not respecting each other if we are not telling it like it is.