This week I’m at the family cottage. I’ve been coming here for 35 years.
We arrived yesterday and my parents drove up a day earlier.
As my folks approached the cottage, less than 30 minutes away, and after driving for six hours, a massive black bear picked the wrong time to run across the highway.
The bear came out of nowhere.
Thankfully, my parents were unharmed. The car lost the bumper. Sadly, we’re not too sure about the bear.
The bear rolled at least three times before continuing into the woods.
It got me thinking…
Just because you’ve been down a road many times before, you still need to pay careful attention and keep our eyes on the road. You never know what might happen.
Here’s one example…
When things don’t change for a long time in a company, the work can become routine, monotonous, and like clockwork.
And when things become too routine, each person often has a tendency to get caught up in their own individual tasks.
When this happens, they often place the customers’ needs dead last on their list of priorities.
The bigger and more successful a business gets, the more likely it is to be infected with this attitude.
It runs rampant in smaller companies where each person is wearing multiple hats and has numerous responsibilities.
The customer, all too often, becomes seen as an interruption; the annoying distraction that’s not allowing the day-to-day work to get done.
It’s a cancerous attitude that can slowly eat away at a business from the inside.
Instead of asking, “why aren’t the phones ringing more often?”, they’re saying, “I wish those damn customers would just leave us alone so we can get our work done!”
Today’s Key Question: Are you busy serving your clients or are you too busy processing paperwork?
Keep your eyes focused on the road and watch out for bear.
