When is the best time to make hard decisions? When times are going well.
I’ve heard several times over my 20+ year professional career, “If it isn’t broke, break and fix it.” I was often very confused by this statement but it has become crystal clear to me what they meant by this statement.
Complacency is just as bad as shrinking… if we start to become complacent, it doesn’t take long for things to go south and this is exactly what is happening to the auto industry right now!
When things were going great, the heads of the US auto industry had blinders on and thought that this would last forever and when the unions demanded certain wages, they were quick to give into the demands of the union to keep the status quo… the status quo.
But in hindsight, the wages and the cost associated in running the business got out of hand and the market started to shrink. With this dual edge sword, we now have GM and Chrysler in bankruptcy.
And we have factories closing and highly paid hourly workers out there with jobs that don’t even pay half of what they were making before. They still have their bills and living standards at what they were making the BIG money but with the only jobs out paying half as much.
As you can see this is a recipe for disaster.
So the question remains, when is the best time to make hard decisions? And the answer has to be, when times are going well.
When you are forced to make decisions when the times are hard, you tend to make decisions based on desperate situations and these decisions often compound the problem.
Here are a few questions that you should be asking yourself on a constant basis, during good times and bad times:
1. Is the most cost effective way, to do what I am doing? If not, then steps need to be implemented immediately to ring out any of the unnecessary cost involved.
2. Is this step still a necessary, part of my life or business? If not, eliminate immediately. And don’t look back!
3. Look at every step in the process and apply the good, better, best filter to it. Do not do anything that is good, when there is a better way of doing it and don’t do anything better if there is a BEST way of doing it. This by itself will ring out some unnecessary cost and time.
4. Ask yourself, “If I could do this over again, would I still be doing this?” If so, then continue doing it. If not, Ask yourself, “How quickly can I eliminate this situation?” Brian Tracy teaches this in his great success training.
When you are constantly working to make yourself or your company better, you should be able to weather any storm.
This will work on any part of your life or business and the best time to start this, is NOW!
As Always, Here’s to Your LifetoSuccess,
John Clark
P.S. Make sure to pass this on to anyone you know who may be able to use this information and remember we do a lot of things based on our habits and we need to be able to discern what habits are working for us and what habits are working against us. Make sure to get over to http://www.habitbustingsystem.com and start to take control of your habits today!