I was looking out the window to the small dog park below. In the park, a Boston Terrier was running after a squirrel. His leash was free from his owner’s hand, his owner running in a zigzag manner after him trying desperately to catch the leash. The Leash flying in the wind as the dog ran faster and faster toward the squirrel, a squirrel who was quickly reaching the busy downtown roadway at the edge of the park.
Sometimes the leashes business owners have on their Operational Cost are temporarily dropped or are pulled from their hands. Either way losing control of cost is as dangerous to a business owner as a busy street is to a dog in a frantic run to catch a squirrel. Running after the leash to get control is a matter of life and death for both the Dog and the Business Owner.
Why does the way it is now become the way it will always be? What forces cause any owner to become ok with something when they know things can be better? Or do they have the data to know what needs improvement? In today’s fast, moving business world knowledge is mandatory for making quick decisions. Today organizations must continuously improve. This ability to continuously improve is the greatest advantage many new companies have over their legacy competitors. Data and the ability to understand how to mine that Data is creating new competitors, transforming industries, disrupting others, and will untimely destroy some.
Today’s new business leaders don’t see Data as pain or a workflow they need buy-in to implement. Today’s new leaders understand the old management style of emotions over facts and this is how we always did it management is counterintuitive to the ability to adapt to markets at speed required. Today whether you lead a new company or a legacy organization without implementing a Data strategy and speed to action policy you will be left behind.
If your organizations have had the same business practices for more than five years, let alone ten or twenty years. It’s time to shake it up; it’s time to grab the leash you dropped when there was no threat of the dog running in the road. It’s time to understand the true impact of the changes which have impacted every industry, it’s time to implement programs using data, and most importantly it’s time to take control of your business operations. The best way to improve the bottom line is to capture back every cent of wasted operational cost. Too many organizations focus on selling their way out of bad management. What if instead they had excellent operations and fed the bottom line by eliminating the waste above the line, what if they put equal emphasis on hunting for profit as on the hunting for revenue?
Sometimes new energy is needed. Stop believing that the way it was is good enough to continue as the way it can remain. My last question is this. Why is it that nothing is the same in what we do, but some still insist that how they do it should not change? Leaders are the only ones who will grab the leash as the runaway management heads to the dangers of the cars in the street. The times of thinking one has time for status quo is over. The new leaders have teams which continuously improve they improve because they understand how to manage from data while their legacy competitors continue nurturing teams who fight to remain the same.
