I guess it’s only natural to start thinking about new beginnings in business when one has a baby! Typically, I see business owners and managers fall somewhere in between constant newness and staleness in their business.
Are you the type of owner or manager who needs newness just for the sake of newness? Are you trying new ideas, strategies and processes because they are exciting but don’t check if they are needed? If you are, you might spend unnecessary dollars, experience limited return on your investment and use a lot of employee energy for limited success.
Or are you the type of owner or manager who believes that if it isn’t broke, we should not spend our time trying to fix it? If you are, your processes, systems and strategies may get a bit stale and work, but fall short of their potential.
Is there a happy medium? I think there is and it is found in the answers to these two questions:
1. What is it that we are trying to achieve? What does our vision of a successful company look like? What do we want to be known for? How do we want to do business (our values)?
2. What do our metrics tell us about how well we are achieving our desired vision, results and values with how we currently do things?
Any exciting new idea should be tested with, “What do we hope to achieve with this change?” and “What is the probability that the benefits will occur?” and “What resources will be needed to test and implement this new idea?” In other words, what are the good reasons to implement this change, and how do they weigh against the costs and probability of success?
Every process, especially when there is a problem or issue, should be met with, “Do we need to revisit this process overall?” and “What do our metrics tell us about how well we are doing?” and “When’s the last time we looked critically at how we run this process?” If the issue is an anomaly, there is no reason to spend time analyzing the whole process, but if the issue is in fact a warning sign of a larger problem, it is time to revisit the process before it crashes.
What is something new and exciting that you decided to implement? How did you make the decision to put energy in that area? Do you have a process that needs to be revamped that you are avoiding?