As business owners it is easy to believe that the problems that we face every day are unique to our business and that we are the only ones suffering with this problem.
Well, recently I ran a creative thinking sessions for two very different businesses where the owners were frustrated with the performance that their business was achieving and both had a feeling that things could be better.
Each business owner identified what they believed the problem to be.
Firstly we had to break our initial human reaction to immediately solve the problem that is immediately in front them. We need to create time to explore the problem in more detail, for two important reasons:
- The initial problem is very rarely the real problem- it is part of a subset of problems
- By jumping straight in to problem solving mode you haven’t allowed the right side of your brain time to think more laterally or “outside of the box”, creativity has been closed off!
“You cannot solve a problem with the same thinking that created it” – Albert Einstein
We then identified “people” were not acting as the owner wanted them to behave.
But by digging deeper we discovered that there wasn’t a system or process in place that clearly stated what the owner wanted done, how it should be done and to what standard. Therefore success was left to chance, success comes when;
“The right people do the right thing right”
Do you have all three of these elements in your business?
If not which one are you going to start working on first and how are you going stop yourself from solving the immediate problem?
I would love to hear what you decide to do first and how you go about it!