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When you look back on the last couple of months and notice things that haven’t yet happened – whether revenue, profit, project, product development, etc. – do you tend to go to a place of “solving” or “resolving”?
Before you answer, let me explain what I mean:
Let’s say your business didn’t bring in the revenue you wanted last month. Is your natural instinct to:
- Look at that fact (lower-than-desired revenue) and note that the economy is still down, people aren’t buying overall, your colleagues are talking about the same thing and think that it should handle itself this month or
- Look at your original plan (assuming you had one) and the actions you were going to take versus those you actually took, noting that, for example, you didn’t connect with your community as much, your social media time was down and you were two weeks late on announcing your new product?
If you answered #1, you’re “resolving” what happened — essentially finding a reason to explain it away without proactively doing anything to change your results for the current month.
If you answered #2, you’re looking internally (and externally) and examining what you could have done differently to influence the results, you’re taking action to solve the issue of reduced revenue. And, likely, what you will do differently in the current month. It’s this objective review which will allow you to take action to achieve your goals.
How does knowing this change your review processes, if at all?