Now is your chance to change your history

I was reading the book Disciplined Dreaming by Josh Linker recently and it was another great reminder of how important it is to continually challenge your business model. If you are not tinkering with your business at least once a week, sooner or later one of your competitors will start to tinker with you.
Lets face it, your competitors are probably not actively plotting to take market share or business from you but if you are not actively expanding your creative vision you could wake up one morning and fine someone else has implemented your dream.

Complacency is not an option. Every day a new business opens and an old one closes. So you need to take control and be the one with the audacity to decide what the future will be and not wait until circumstances force you to a corner. You have to be disciplined enough to spend time working on your business while working in your business.

‘Today is tomorrow’s yesterday’ - take a moment to let this really sink in. You are in fact living your past today. Now is your chance to influence and change your history today. Think about it.

In a recent news story on business management, it was suggested that you “Think like a designer”. Good designers look at the world with a different viewpoint and awareness. They have unique views that enable them to come up with new products and innovations. They tend to think about people, not just customers. For every one new product they come up with, they have four more on the drawing board waiting to be launched. As an example I have never seen a survey asking if I needed an iPod or needed the ability to text messages. Please let me know if you have. These things did not just happen but just appear on the market overnight and became indispensable. They came about through a plan carefully developed, implemented and adjusted as required. Designers move beyond asking what customers want and think they need. They create something that they feel people will yearn for. You could say that is a risky but essential way of doing business.

How do you begin such a process? One way might be to work with a business coach who can help you to explore multiple ideas. Help you to tap into your creative side in order to establish potential future trends in your particular area of business. You could also hire innovative and inventive people that have the ability to look at things upside down instead of right-side-up. Another way might be to get out in the world, scrutinize and observe what people do. We have to move beyond the traditional thinking constraints we all have. We have to see through what people tell us they need (or think they need) and start to really observe what they are actually doing and how it is accomplished. You might be quite surprised to learn how the need and actual the end-result is accomplished differ and how large the gap is between what they say, what they are actually doing and how they are doing it. Many of us are too focused on the present but the designers who live in the mystery of the future can foresee the future needs. They live by credo ‘Yesterday is history, tomorrow a mystery, today is a gift, which is why today is called the present".

To all business owners reading this article my challenge to you will be to take advantage of this great gift that is the present we all have and start crafting what people will need tomorrow by stepping out of your current beliefs to start thinking like a designer.

Call to action;
The question you need to answer after reading this article is,
• What will you start doing differently tomorrow? And how do you propose to keep score?
• Are you capable of being a disruptive force of change? In order to bring out the best you can be and the best your employees can be.
• Can you or your employees do one thing differently that would drive the business results to a new level over the next 6 to 12 months? Remember it takes 60 to 90 days for the change to be internalized your quit line will need to be longer than most of the people your know.

In one business we worked with, the owner was doing twice as much as the employees. She was working 60 to 70 hours a week and had no time to take any vacation. Today she works more on her business and less in the business as a result of developing improved leadership skills that have enabled her to tap into her employees’ underused potential - a seemingly impossible task only a few years ago. She is now able to take a three week vacation twice a year and everyone contributes to the overall business objectives. Each person is working not only on delivering services; they are now acting in the best interest of the business and the customers. Interdependencies have been developed and along with the owner, they have become an integral part of the business.

For this type of change to happen one must be open-minded enough to allow employees the opportunity to bring ideas to the monthly team meetings that contribute towards overall short tern and long term strategy. The employees who work with the customers, in turn, listen to the customers and what they are looking for and want. Prior to the change turnover was high and very little communication to take place. Remember that what can differentiate you business from another are those breathless moments in time that all customers and you as a customer yearn for. What to learn we are just a phone call away. Expect the best from tac-coaching.com