Lesson Fifty-Nine: All About You

I know you. Or at least, I know your kind.

Tell me if I'm getting it right. Every day you come into work thinking, "Today is the day I get organized."

But then a staff member comes into your office with a petty emergency, and a supplier calls with a delivery problem.Then a salesmen gets through your line of defence and keeps you on the phone for 20 minutes. And then a dozen other little things chip away at your day, until you look up at the clock and it's quitting time.

Then you survey your business, office, store, whatever the size, and think "How the heck did I get here? How did some idea I had 2, 5, 20 years ago, end up with all these people doing all these things?"

"And why can't I get anything done?"

You put in an hour just to make sure you can say you accomplished something today. You'll go home, think about work, while trying not to let on to your spouse that you're thinking about it.

Go to bed, wake up the next morning and say "Today is the day I get organized."

You are in the middle of it.The centre of the storm. And all around are tornado circles consuming people and time and energy.Where ever you go it follows. Always in the centre.

The tornado is made up of three things: Your life, your business, and your customers.

Your life is struggling to control your business. It's all consuming. Your business is struggling to understand and respond to your customers, (who you don't really understand). And your customers couldn't give a damn about your life, because they are thinking about their own. Where does that leave your life?

Everything is out of whack. But hear this.What if you could tame the tornado? What if you could develop a deep understanding of your customer and then engineer your business to do the things that will make that customer pleased.Would that help?

Well that is marketing. Doing things that make customers happy. And doing those things for more people, more often.

Your problem is that you're confined in the tiny box that is called 'The way it is supposed to be done.' This box is made up of all the rules, procedures, beliefs, values, and perceptions that make up how you do what you do.

It is created by all the people in your business, in your industry, in the trade magazines you read, in the discussions and debates that rage between industry pundits. The box is the rules all these people collectively live under for no reason other than it has always been so.

For them the box is invisible, until you become aware of it. Then suddenly it becomes so clear.

So your first step is to see your box. Join me, won’t you?