Buckminster (Bucky) Fuller once said, “If you want to teach people a new way of thinking, don’t bother trying to teach them. Instead, give them a tool, the use of which will lead to new ways of thinking.”
On Tuesday I introduced you to Temple Grandin and we learned that too many processes, too many systems, and too many guidelines might be causing us to look beyond the obvious and most glaring issues in our business, mainly – how many chickens can’t walk?
Well now that you know you need to count the chickens first, I would follow up by asking “how are you going to count them?”
What tools are you using? What tools do you need?
Here’s a practical example: I once worked with a company who relied on an internal call centre to generate a large portion of their business. The problem? They had almost ZERO auditing or review of the call centre’s performance. Sure, they knew they “should do it” and it “might help,” but nobody knew how to find or create the right tools, and put the findings into an easy-to-understand format that could be used to improve performance, boost profits, discover weaknesses etc.
So here’s the key concept, and my question for you to think about over the weekend:
Are you letting your business strategy be dictated by your existing tools (or lack thereof), and are they serving the right purpose, or have you crafted your tools to service your strategy?
