Improvement

August 15, 2008 - Are You Constantly Working on Improving Your Business?

Main Idea

Do you have ideas for improvement?  How dusty are they in your brain or on your desk?  Or are they so buried on your desk that it would take six months to rescue them?  Are you stuck in a rut and just can’t get enough energy to change ruts?  Ideas are worthless unless you act on them.  

Expansion of Idea

Best quoted by the late Christian author, Vance Havner, "The vision must be followed by the venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps – we must step up the stairs." At best, an idea is a launching pad - a take off point, the bottom of the stairs.  Most of us know how to improve our companies.  The problem is that we are afraid to do what we know we should do.  We think that we can incrementally improve the services.  On the other end, we don’t change anything until we get it absolutely perfect.  We just don’t want to change anything because we are comfortable. 

All of these approaches end up with us continuing to do the same thing over and over and then we wonder why our businesses go into a slow and steady decline.  A banker called me yesterday and asked if I could help one of his clients with a business workout.  The company had been in business for a long time and now is selling or liquidating.  There isn’t much to do when it is in that stage.  The time to act is when the business is going well or at a minimum when you still have resources to make changes. 

These weekly business ideas were in my brain for almost a year.  I knew that I needed to get started because I thought they may be able to help clients.  I would never know unless I tried them. 

Areas to Start

  1. Make a list of things that you think will help your business

  2. Plan for the implementation. (Include your team!!!!)

  3. As Nike says “Just Do It”