When You Come to a Fork in the Road, Take It!

Yogi Berra’s comically wise saying occurred to me this morning as I was thinking about options and choices.  Why in the world was I thinking about options and choices, you might ask.  Well, one of the things I stress with clients is that we always have options.  There are always other ways of accomplishing the same things, so if one path doesn’t appeal to us, there is usually another one that will work.  But of course, it only works if we make a conscious decision to follow it.  So we have a choice to make, often among many options.

Although options are good, too many options sometimes leads to paralysis.  We don’t know the outcomes of any of the options in front of us, so we hesitate.  It’s when the hesitation turns into a long-term pause, that things get dicey.  That’s when the improvement we seek or the problem we’re trying to solve stalls out, and we’re stuck exactly where we stand.  The fear of moving forward stems from the unknown.  None of us can predict the future, so we don’t know with certainty what the outcome of our choice will be.  We hesitate.

Ironically, the hesitation doesn’t help.  Progress only comes from action, not inaction.  So in order to move forward we have to act.  We have to choose an option and go forward confidently, but also realizing that if our choice doesn’t quite turn out, we may have to change again later.  But at least by making the choice we are making progress.  However, making that choice still comes with that fear of the unknown.  So even though we know we need to act in order to have progress, we still hesitate.  We are in the proverbial do-loop.

Although we can’t know the future with certainty, there are some things that can help us make a choice that will likely take our business in a good direction:

•  A goal.  If our goals are fairly clear, it makes options easier to sort out.  Will option A lead me to my goal?  If not, discard it and look at option B.  Will options B or C get me closer to my goal?  I think option B will, so that is the choice I’ll make.  Our goals are an important benchmark to at least give us some perspective about the path we’ll choose.  If you don’t have some idea of where you’d like your business to go, you’ll have a tougher time making choices.

• A financial proforma.  A proforma is a hypothetical financial look at the impact of a scenario.  Proformas can give us a rational benchmark for judging options in what can otherwise be a completely emotional decision process.  We might love to have a Super Bowl ad to blast our brand to the world, but a proforma look at the cost and potential outcome will probably give us the realism to decide on a more affordable and targeted marketing approach.  That might be oversimplified, but proformas are helpful for more complex decisions, too, like whether to add that new product line, or add or cut staff, or change a pricing scheme.  Even if you dislike numbers, a proforma exercise can be an eye-opener that brings relief to your decision-making.

• Collaboration.  Sitting and stewing over your decision doesn’t help the paralysis.  It helps to talk it out.  Engage your team.  Work it through with your business coach or other professional advisors.  Talk to your family and friends.  Don’t abdicate the decision to others, but at least let them provide you with perspective.  The best advisor might not need to say anything at all, but just be a great listener who lets you talk yourself into a decision.

• Courage.  I’m not talking about the take a bullet for a friend kind of courage.  Rather just the recognition that it is time to act, and get out of the state of paralysis that we’re in.  It is making a commitment and trusting in it, believing in it, and acting confidently on it so much so that a good outcome is assured.

Action leads to results.  So when faced with options, be aware of whether you are acting or hesitating.  My advice is to err on the side of action.  When you come to a fork in the road, take it!

Get Better

In most big businesses, there is a lot of effort put into improvement efforts that shave cost, increase efficiency, improve quality, and more.  The efforts go by a variety of names, from continuous improvement to TQM to Six Sigma, and the list of these initiatives can get pretty long.  The effort put into these programs is often quite large in terms of both money and time.  All of that investment wouldn’t be made if there were no advantages to be gained by these initiatives, and the point is that they are important, even critical, to the success of the businesses where they are employed.  These efforts help reduce labor content, improve product life, make the workplace safer, improve the customer experience, reduce inventory, and in general, make every single aspect of the business a little bit better.

In small business, not so much.  Instead, we tend to do what we’ve always done.  After all, why change what made us successful up until now?  Oh sure, we might tweak our product or process here and there.  We might invest in the latest machine or computer to enhance our product or service.  But like so much else in the life of a small business owner, we struggle to find the time or energy to get serious about long-term, sustainable improvement in our business across its various operating functions.

Do you think this topic doesn’t apply to you?  Then let me ask you, is your business perfect?  Do your customers always have an incredibly good experience, with no complaints?  Do you never have to replace a product, nor re-do an installation, nor refund money?  Are your employees 100% productive during their working hours, continuously producing value for your customers?  Is your inventory completely current, useable, saleable and accurate all the time?  Do your marketing programs generate a reasonable number of new leads that keep your capacity at a high, even full level?  And most importantly, are you as the owner able to pay yourself what you deserve for creating and investing in the business you proudly call your own?

I didn’t think so.

The truth is, no business, big or small, is that perfect.  They all have shortcomings, and they can all be better.  But we have to work to make it so.  The big business folks understand this, and they understand that it takes an ongoing, relentless, never-ending effort to truly achieve continuous improvement.  It can’t be an event, but rather a process.  It has to become a part of the culture of the organization not only to seek improvement, but also to make it long lasting, i.e. sustainable.  It takes a curiosity and a drive to constantly seek to make things better.  It takes a willingness to change, and then change again, always looking for that next little edge.

Changes are all around us, and we hear all the time that the pace of change is increasing.  New innovations occur at a faster pace than ever before.  Technology is outdated before it is outlived.  And yet many small business owners try to do things the way they’ve always done them, and then wonder why the new competitor down the street is eating their lunch in the marketplace.

Think about employing a continuous improvement mentality in your small business.  If you don’t know where to get started, look up a good business coach with a background in this area.  It is a process that I promise will make your business better, your team more engaged, your customers happier, and your checkbook larger.