The next little thing

Posted on July 29th, 2009 by Spike and currently 1 commenting.

Why are we all always looking for the next BIG thing? Okay, don’t answer that.

But I think as we’re all looking for that next big thing, we should keep in mind that a lot of the time, people are talking about the little things. And that it’s the little things that make those companies remarkable. It’s the little things that make those companies, well, the next big thing.

There are so many daily opportunities we have to surprise and delight through the little things. From the copy on your packaging to the way you answer the phone to how you greet people face-to-face to your leave behinds. But the first step is realizing that we have all these opportunities around us. All day. Every day. And most of the time we never see them, because we’ve ALWAYS done it that way. We always take the same route to the office. We have our routines first thing in the morning. We just lock ourselves into work mode and go through the motions. So when we shake ourselves loose from the routine and take a step back to look at things differently, the opportunities to change the little things start to become obvious.

Case in point. If you aren’t one of the 11 million people that have seen this video, take 5 minutes and watch it. (Here’s the link since embedding has been disabled.) These folks simply took a little thing - a traditional, boring, never questioned, always assumed, this is part of the ceremony sort of thing - and made it big.

And now we’re all talking about it.