The popcorn cook

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Since my last post reminded a few of you about creating successful business’s and others about starting a family and laying the groundwork for a healthy, nurturing and educational envrionment, I decided I would continue the thought process.  Some of you even pointed out that the analogy could be used when trying to start or repair personal relationships.

A lesson I learned when I was doing sales presentations and measuring results constantly is the lesson of the popcorn cook.  Like the airplane story, this is another analogy that can be applied to many things.

When you go to cook popcorn, there are several steps that need to be completed in preparation for cooking.  First, you need to get the pan of popcorn out.  Then you need a heat source, in the old days this was the burner of your stove.  Then you wait for the burner to get hot.  When it’s reached a high enough temperature, you then put the pan of popcorn on the burner.  And then you wait some more. 

As the popcorn heats up, it helps to agitate the pan to more evenly distrubute the heat and avoid burning the corn.  This all takes time, and yet the popcorn is still not ready to eat.  Finally, after a few minutes, the first kernels pop.  Then, after a few seconds, pow!  The other kernels start poping like crazy.  Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, ….and in just a few seconds, the popcorn is done.

Most of the time in cooking popcorn is spent up front, preparing the oven and pan, adding heat then waiting.  Once the corn starts to pop, it’s almost all over (time-wise).  A lot of other things are like that, it seems that you spend a lot of time and energy up front, and don’t see any results.  Most people quit during these stages, not realizing that the hard work up front has taken them so close to their goal.  Once that first kernel pops, you are almost there, but it takes a considerable amount of time to get that very first one to pop.

Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book called The Tipping Point which illustrated and explained this idea very well.  Things can go along at a steady pace for a long time, without much excitement.  But if you get the right circumstances, the right people and the timing hits, then you have a phenomonon.  The Tipping point is that point when the popcorn starts to pop.  There is no turning back.  You could even remove the pan from the burner and the other kernels will still pop.

That is what business people are trying to create when selling there products.  It’s also the idea behind trends, positive and negative.

Whatever you are trying to create in your life, relationships or a business, remember that you should expect a lot of work up front, with little results.  Keep at it, and eventually you will hit that tipping point and the change you are looking for will be inevitable.