The Most Important Question Your Business Should Always Ask

The most important question a business can ask itself is:

What should we do next?

In any workflow, not just end-of-year reviews and lessons learned analyses.

From failure to focus

There is a challenge to working on lessons learned. 

That challenge is negativity. 

When all you talk about is problems and mistakes, you end up feeling like all you do is cause problems and make mistakes. 

When things go wrong, don’t get discouraged.

From success to scrutiny

On the other hand, there is also a challenge to celebrating success: that you only see the positive side of things. 

And that makes you stop thinking. You repeat the steps you went through before because it seemed to work so well. 

But a lot of factors contribute to success. And you may be ignoring some key ones if you simply go through the motions.

A balanced approach

You want work to go well. 

Mistakes will still happen, without you planning for them. 

Neither of these realities should paralyze you. 

Work in the space between perfection and impulse. 

Perfection is a distraction. If you are dedicating all your attention to avoiding mistakes, then you are giving all your attention to what you shouldn’t do. Leaving very little effort on what you actually are doing.

Impulse is a danger. Even though mistakes are a lesson, they still aren’t the goal. Build a plan and think ahead, aiming for a specific outcome. 

What next

Ideas are easy: following through on them is the hard part. Contact me to work on a plan and a timeline.