At some point, for anyone with any capacity for self-awareness, one has to look at what is working and what needs work and come to a potential enlightenment – I got myself here. Since anyone with this awareness would most certainly be able to identify what is working and what needs work, they would then focus more attention on what needs work.
That’s all totally appropriate, however, I would challenge that person to go beyond the simple “fix what isn’t working” to “why isn’t it working”. My experience, thus far, every time I enter into this awareness with a client or personally, I find the answer is embedded in a paradigm that drives thought processes which create practices. The choices come from the paradigm we perceive.
What virtually every single person I work with wants to do is consider the practice as flawed or in need of tweaking. I have found that most of the time, it is the thought process derived from the paradigm they envision that needs the work long before the practice needs to change.
Like what, you ask. If sales are soft, do more marketing. If profits are soft, increase prices. These are simplistic ways to reconsider action. Contrast the simplistic responses with if sales are soft, is my approach to my prospect actually of any interest – who is my customer and what do they want? If profits are soft, is my approach to visible customer value not appreciated by my customers?
The existing circumstances in which you find yourself or your business is a direct reflection of choices made and piled up on each other over months and years. To use an easy metaphor, if your flight takes off from San Francisco and makes only a 13 degree change in navigation in the first half hour, in 5 hours you will find yourself in either Atlanta or New York. You would still fly over the Sierra Nevada unaware and maybe even all the way to the Rockies, clueless. Maybe when you reached the Mississippi River you might wonder. But, it all looks so much the same. Every day, navigation matters.
