Complacency makes you satisfied with where you are and what you are doing. That's fine if you are sentenced to life imprisonment, but it's a bad mental state if you operate in a competitive business world. This article shows you how to shake off complacency and regularly deliver valuable breakthroughs that will make your organization more effective and forward looking.
My purpose for this article is to shock you out of your complacency, to make you to think, and to get you to act.
What if a cat landed on a hot tin roof and just stayed there? The results wouldn't be pretty.
The same result happens when organizations become satisfied with doing what they've always done; they are burned on the hot tin roof of complacency, resulting in a searing obsolescence.
Consider the organizations that don't exist any more than were once considered world beaters. They patted themselves on the back, repeating the same old same old, and they quickly became irrelevant. When was the last time you flew on a Concorde SST? Are you still following the Scarsdale Diet? When did you last eat at Minnie Pearl's? Did you stay at Howard Johnson's during your last vacation? Can you still find your George Foreman grill?
Consider all of those organizations that pretend that everything is fine . . . when anyone can see that they are in trouble. The hot tin roof of complacency will eventually burn them, too. Do you shop at Sears as much as you did 20 years ago? Do you consider GM cars and trucks when you need a new vehicle? Do you still read a daily newspaper? Do you watch the nightly news on ABC, CBS, or NBC?
How can you get off that hot tin roof of complacency? You need breakthroughs; breakthroughs you can best create by designing and delivering 2,000 percent solutions (ways of accomplishing 20 times more with the same time, resources, and effort). This article shows you what actions you need to take now to get the most benefit for your organization by hopping off the hot tin roof of complacency onto the upward rising elevator of continual breakthroughs. Here's the list:
1. Write down where your organization is performing well in relation to your needs for tomorrow.
2. Write down where your organization needs to improve now in light of tomorrow's potential.
3. Write down those areas where your organization has to improve in order to perform close to its future potential and set deadlines for when these changes need to occur.
4. Share what you have written with those who will have to make the changes. Give them copies of The 2,000 Percent Solution and The 2,000 Percent Solution Workbook and set dates for completing plans to meet these deadlines for change.
5. Begin helping everyone in your organization learn to identify stalls (bad habits that make you complacent and retard improvements, overcome them through stallbusting and create many 2,000 percent solutions by employing the management process described in Part Two of The 2,000 Percent Solution.
6. Put measurements in place within each key activity to track the rise and fall of complacency throughout your organization.
7. Check to be sure that the dates to begin repeating the eight-step process for creating 2,000 percent solutions are being observed.
8. Reread relevant materials about how to create 2,000 percent solutions annually.
Copyright 2007 Donald W. Mitchell All Rights Reserved.
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