Little things and the power of a penny

This is the second time this has happened. Once with a neighbor and again last week at our rental property. A penny, a single penny would upset a house by staying between the wall and the turntable in a garbage disposal. When it happens, this little penny can stop a kitchen running in an instant.

Think about the stuck penny for a minute. When you flip the garbage disposal switch, nothing happens. Not even a match for a hairpin attack or a rush of water.

Large chunks of food lie dormant. Decay. Inevitably stench. More more trouble.

Dishwashers are often connected to garbage disposals as a primary or secondary disposer, so when the dishwasher starts pumping water, the sink begins to fill. Fork and water attacks are followed by the plunger. Still nothing works.

From this point on, you could say that the kitchen cedes control to a single misplaced penny. If there is only one sink, you cannot clean dishes at all.

The resident’s time, previously used for productive activities or relaxation, is now spent working around a dysfunctional sink.

Then come the repairs. If the landlord calls a plumber, they will pay for the repairs or the installation of a new unit. A do-it-yourself job will likely result in a messy mess under the sink, a combination of dismantled plumbing, and leaking water.

Finally, the owner rescues the removal of the invading penny. Then the process of reconnecting parts and eventual cleaning is carried out.

All this for a penny. What power.

Well, that penny is like your business decisions or actions. A small decision or a small action can completely alter the results, even paralyze operations, if you are not careful.

With just a few weeks left in the year, you can still make seemingly small decisions or take small actions that will have a big impact on your organization next year.

Here are a few:

Upgrade: Outdated technology, old equipment and software slow you down and prevent you from competing at your best. You don’t always have to have the newest and latest generation items, but you can’t afford to miss deadlines or produce shoddy products, because your team isn’t keeping up. We recently visited a former vendor again to purchase some marketing products. An employee explained how the owner almost went bankrupt a few years ago and complained that times were tough even now. A quick look around the production workshop told the story. The team was archaic at best. The supplier could not produce us even the simplest of products by today’s standards. He fought for his job, losing our trust. Because it couldn’t produce what it claimed, it had to compensate with products that we originally didn’t want. He also put undue pressure on us when he violated our deadline. We will not be returning … nor, we suspect, will many of your other customers.

Shop: Buy reliable portable tools to stay organized. PDAs, calendar phones, and Internet access keep you on top of things even when you’re not at your desk. We use Treo products offered by most of the major players. (RIM, the Blackberry vendor, currently has a patent claim of $ 400 million to $ 1 billion that may affect several million subscribers, so be cautious with this product for now.) Let’s say you are at an event and are lucky enough to meet a very lucrative prospect. You’re busy, he’s busy, and it’s the right time to make a follow-up appointment to discuss serious business. Your chances of making that date a reality, closing a sale, and building a long-term business relationship are greatly increased if you can hit while the iron is hot. Having your calendar in your pocket via one of these handy devices gives you the ability to seize the opportunity now, rather than having to wait until you get back to the office and have to navigate past the prospect’s doorman on the phone. .

Strategy – Visit your strategic plan and make adjustments. Our philosophy is that if management doesn’t have their strategic plan on their desk regularly, the plan is most likely useless. Think of it this way. When you travel, take your map or GPS with you and check it often. This means it should have a form that key decision makers can use to plan their day every day for the coming year. David has just joined Infosys, a company that became famous on its own merits and featured prominently in Thomas Friedman’s most recent book, The World is Flat. During a strategy session with board members and billionaire CEO Nandan Nilekani, management often stated that they had had 49 consecutive quarters of profitable growth impacting both revenue and earnings projections while growing close to 45%. annual. Sanjay, the chief strategist, spends his days making sure his strategy is on target. They expect to grow from $ 2.2 billion to more than $ 3 billion next year. This from a group of people who each invested $ 250 in starting the business. When they finished, David and the team were able to put the strategy on one page so everyone was in sync. In addition, the plan must serve its purpose, but its duration does not have to rival that of War and Peace. The most important thing to remember here is that you should use the strategic plan as your roadmap to success in the coming year. Putting it on paper is often the most challenging task, but by far the rewards outweigh the time and effort you initially invested up-front.

Learn: Pledge to put self-education somewhere on your goal list this year. Evaluate the ways you are currently feeding new information into your brain. Which media give you the biggest brain boost for time and cost? Replace the ones that no longer cut you. The good news is, there are a lot of great books geared toward hungry leaders who want to do better this year than they did last. If you belong to a networking group or other professional club, ask around to see what others are reading that might be of benefit to you. Magazines are good for raising awareness, but by nature (article length is short), they can’t compete with books in terms of providing depth and enough information to allow you to retain and use what you’ve learned as well. There are also some great executive programs offered through continuing education departments at universities, ranging from online programs to classroom settings. The courses David teaches at New York University are experiences in themselves. Business 2.0 also recommends the University of Virginia, the University of Chicago, and others (see their website) to appeal to those in diverse geographic areas.

Balance – Schedule time to live your life amid a busy work regimen. This can be difficult for those at the management and ownership levels. What’s the point in everything you do if your nose is so close to the whetstone that you don’t see anything funny in your life? Working long and hard is admirable and often produces great successes. But there is no guarantee that numerous hours of sacrifice will bring a commensurate burden of prosperity. In fact, workaholic martyrs find themselves spinning their wheels because they don’t have the mental breaks they need to rejuvenate themselves and bring fresh ideas to the table. The time it takes doesn’t have to be a long, distant journey. You can start by taking a 3-day weekend or a Wednesday afternoon just to clear your mind. If traveling is something you would like to do, try going somewhere that benefits your business: visit a supplier, attend a conference, tour a customer’s operations, study your trade in a course. You can justify the time and expense and get away at the same time.

Exercise: This is not a New Years resolution that you can pass up by the time February rolls around. And no, we are not emphasizing the importance of the activity, because it will make you look prettier. Stress combined with a sedentary lifestyle will eventually take its toll on your heart or surprise you with other health calamities, if you don’t take care of yourself. Exercise is NOT optional, it is just as important as nutritious food and fresh air. Just 20 minutes of activity 4 times a week can greatly improve your health. If you’re looking for an easy, proven formula that combines activity with healthy eating, get a copy of Bill Phillips’s book, Body for Life. You will be inspired and informed. In addition to improving the quality and length of your life, it will improve blood flow to your brain, allowing you to make better and faster decisions at work.

Spending: If you haven’t already, take a big picture of your organization and determine where the extra dollars can go for improvements. Is there an unreliable computer in the mix or a roaring phone that deserves a hit in the trash? Now is the time to make changes. Not that we have anything against the tax collector, but let’s face it, smart spending now will improve your tax burden and your operations. Just be sure to document purchases before the end of your fiscal year, be it December 31st or another date. We know that December is a month when you are distracted by the Christmas holidays and the prospect of some well-deserved days off with your family. Just make sure to control distractions and stick to the deadline. Also, if you’re not sure where to put those extra dollars wisely, call on trusted colleagues or other outside advice. When it comes to your own work environment, it is sometimes difficult to make an unbiased decision. Someone from the outside can often see their challenges because they are not caught up in their daily work routine.

Out of Stock: For those of you with mandatory or restricted budgets, you may have to spend a certain amount to maintain budget figures for the following year – the old “use it or lose it” philosophy applied to budgets. This doesn’t always make a lot of sense for the rest of the world, but if you can’t avoid the process, there are some strategies you can implement to reap the benefits of hasty spending. Your smartest options are to look for opportunities that require payment now, but can be used or delivered at intermittent times during the next year: conferences, training and development programs, services or products that arrive on a monthly or rotating basis, etc. Also, prepaid projects are not cut so easily. New projects are subject to New Year’s scrutiny.

Not sure how to choose which tactics to employ? How about putting a number number next to each one on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being the hardest to do and 5 being the easiest? Then rate the performance of your efforts, with 1 being the lowest performance and 5 the highest. Add the numbers. Those with the highest number are obviously your best options.

As you can see, even with only a few weeks to go in the year, there are still options available to make quick changes to your organization. Adding just one of these tactics to your toolkit this month could transform the way you do business next year.

© David and Lorrie Goldsmith

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