The Virgin Way: Everything I Know About Leadership by Richard Branson

like a duck – it usually is a duck’. The ability to see one’s own actions either personally or corporately through the eyes of others is a skill that takes practice and ideally one that should be applied well in advance of making public statements or policy decisions that might be open to ambiguity or question. We are all consumers and yet I am constantly amazed at how many business people seem to dwell in some kind of subjective blinkered cocoon instead of looking objectively at their own products and services.
    Even more amazing is the simple fact that we are all surrounded by highly objective, ready-made focus groups. You don’t have to go outside and pay them to sit in a mirrored room – they’re around us every day and go by the name of family, friends, employees and acquaintances. In my experience some of the harshest and most valuable sounding boards you will ever find can be found around the family dinner table. I cannot begin to tell you how many times what I thought to be a really good idea never made it past the tough audience of Joan and the kids. I will never forget her no-holds-barred response to one new idea in particular that I casually announced over dinner with her one night. Never!
    It was during the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the late eighties and I was thrilled to see how fired up everyone at Virgin was about doing something positive to help tackle this dreadful disease that was destroying the lives of millions. In typical fashion we brainstormed to try and come up with some practical contribution we could make and before long someone had the great idea of setting up a company that would manufacture and sell condoms for a fraction of the price being demanded by Durex, the UK’s dominant condom manufacturer. Nobody stopped to consider any potential disconnects on the branding front and we simply set about turning the idea into a reality.
    Flash forward to my excited dinner table announcement that we were planning to introduce a new product line that would go by the name of ‘Virgin Condoms’. I remember seeing Joan choke on her food before exclaiming in her wonderful Glasgow accent, ‘Condoms! Virgin Condoms? Oh come on, Richard, pleeeease tell me you’re joking. Cos if you’re not, you’re soon going to be the butt-end of a hell of a lot of jokes.’ And of course she was absolutely correct!
    As is often the case, with the best will in the world, one can simply get too wrapped up in the creative process and forget to step back and see how whatever you’re working on is going to look from the customer’s perspective. In this instance we were all so fired up with the big idea that nobody had given a moment’s thought to how nonsensical it would be to offer a product called ‘Virgin Condoms’. I mean, it would be almost as crazy as starting a company by the name of ‘Virgin Bride’ – oops, well, maybe even crazier! In any case, following Joan’s astute observation we went straight back to the drawing board and quickly came up with a clever solution. Our first venture into the latex-wear business would instead be branded as ‘MATES’ – which if you think about it is really quite appropriate – and the M on the front of the logo was cleverly crafted using an inverted version of our signature Virgin ‘V.’
    IF IT AIN’T BROKE, BREAK IT
    Not everyone, it seems, has access to a pragmatic market expert like my wife – or more likely they do, but they clearly are not making very good use of them. Imagine for instance how differently things might have turned out for Reed Hastings, CEO of video-rental company Netflix, had he polled his family’s or friends’ reaction to the question, ‘Okay, folks, how would you feel about a new Netflix offer that will give you the same service you enjoy today but for twice the price and with double the complexity?’ Now, as I've said, I’m not a betting man, but I’d have put money on the response to that one! Clearly, however, such a