Multiply

In our last article we looked at the concept of the seed and the need to nurture to be fruitful. We all have resources surrounding us with untapped potential and as leaders we must nurture this potential to produce fruit. Today we look at how to multiply that fruit.

Multiplying is the art of reproducing, making a copy or equivalent of the original. It is to increase, to expand, or to exceed in number, size or depth. It is one thing to get fruit out of a seed, but in order to make a living out of it, you must make it available to others. You make a living by solving other people's problems and you must figure out how to make it available to them.

There are four stages to achieving successful multiplication as described by Mensa Otabil:

·         Complexity;

·         Simplicity;

·         Affordability; and,

·         Availability.

I take a look at the evolution of the messaging system in the life of human kind to elaborate these stages. In the early days, when you wanted to send a message to a neighbouring village several hills away, a messenger would clip the note on a stick and run to the next village to deliver the message. Anything could have happened to the messenger on the way. He could be attacked by wild animals or fall in a river and get the note wet.

Several years later, the postal mailing system was adopted. You acquired a postal address and there was a central system for receiving and distributing mail to several destinations. All you needed to do was to write a letter, put it in an envelope and put postage stamps of the appropriate value depending on the weight and destination. If you sent mail overseas it could take weeks (even months) to reach the destination.

The next generation birthed electronic mail as we know it today. You just need to register an email address and share it with your friends. At first, cyber cafés were the talk of the town. You had to queue at the nearest cyber café waiting for your turn to check mail. Instead of postage stamps, you paid for internet usage by the minute. At the click of a button you could read your messages and reply to them. You did not need to wait days or months to receive a message.

Today we have web enabled hand-held devices with capabilities to access your emails on the go. We do not use a running messenger, postage stamps or pay for internet access by the minute. We just purchase data bundles!

Complexity and Simplicity

When you look at the progression of the messaging system, the earlier methods were quite complex and tedious to the person that needed to send or receive the message. I imagine the sender had to select a trusted running messenger that knew the route to the destination and could traverse the terrain. The sender then prayed that the messenger did not encounter a hungry lion on the way. It was a simple message-sending process, yet quite tedious.

Sending a letter through the postal mailing system became simpler - just put a note in the envelope, lick the stamps and drop it at the nearest postal collection point. You did not need to worry about how the message will reach the recipient 1,000 miles away. The post office will do all the sorting and delivering for you.  What the sender did not know is that the postal office had thousands and thousands of mail to sort and ship. The back end process became more complex in order to simplify the sender’s & receiver’s mailing experience.

The electronic mail today only requires you to have internet connectivity and you can mail messages instantly. The back end process of sending electronic mail is coded in ones and zeros - a much more complex process compared to the postal mail sorting system, but it can deliver billions of emails in a second across continents.

How did we move from delivering one message at a time over days using a running messenger, to delivering billions of messages in a second across continents? In order to make sending and receiving messages easy, inventors had to find ways to make it simpler to send a message. The back end process had to be made more complex so that the end user experience would become simpler. 

If you want to multiply your fruit, you have to find ways to make it simpler to use your solution which will require you to make the processing behind the solution more complex. It sounds like a paradox, but when you think about motor vehicle, telephone system or manufacturing evolution they use the same concept. As the systems became more complex on the inside, they were easier to use on the outside.

Affordability and Availability

Your aim for multiplying your fruit is so that more people can get a hold of the solution you are providing. Complexity and simplicity will make your solution quite attractive to your target user, but if it is not available to them and they cannot afford it, then you are suck with your inventions.

When you reproduce a product in large scale, the cost of producing an item is reduced drastically. In our analogy, if the messenger had the capacity to carry a ton of letters on his back it would reduce the cost of having him run back and forth to deliver one letter at a time. As the mailing system provided a platform to deliver bulk letters by postal office and now by email, it is now affordable for many to freely send and receive messages at a fraction of a dollar per message.

People will not use a product that they cannot reach. You must work on your distribution channel to make your product available to your target market. Postal boxes had to be fixed in every town to connect them to the rest of the world. At the entry of the email system, cyber cafés were established in many towns for the mass market to gain access. Now we have web-enabled handheld devices that and you can access your mail on the go. The devices are becoming more and more affordable and reachable by all.

Now you know what to do to multiply your fruit. You have to get it into the hands of every one in need of your solution. Simplify its use by refining how it works, find ways to make it affordable and expand your distribution channel. How will you multiply your own seed?