Recently, one of my daughters called up and she said she was having a problem with her car. She explained to me what the problem was, how it was acting and the noises and sounds that it was making. I turned around and called the mechanic that normally works on that car and relayed the story to him. I asked him, “What could the possible problem be?” He said, “Sam, there could be many causes for those problems. There’s no way for me to accurately diagnose your automobile without looking at it, without investigating it, without thoroughly examining all the possibilities of what could be going wrong.”
You know, many times, we look at our business when there’s a challenge and we go for a quick fix but we haven’t done the in-depth thorough analysis to fully understand what’s not working. We need to take the time to look at our business, to tear it apart, look at the details, and look at other businesses in the same industry.
Additionally, look at businesses in other industries that perform similar tasks because we can learn from them as well. And when you combine all that information, we’re in a better position to determine what may not be working right. Be accountable to establish the right expectations based on others’ successes combined with your past personal experiences. We can then take into consideration where we want to be and come up with a diagnosis of how we’re going to close the gap between where we are and where we want to be because it’s closing that gap that will lead us to success.
Great leaders understand that while their organization may not be working at the rate or the efficiency that they want, that to get there, they need to first do a thorough examination so that they know everything that’s wrong before they try to fix anything.
