The Real Issues Behind Great Results, Part I

The more people I hang with, the more I learn.  I just learned some cool things from a consultant that assists business owners with seeing their real problems, and helping them design strategies around eliminating those problems in their business.

His thinking went like this:

Entrepreneurs and business owners want to change RESULTS,

But the problem behind the results is really poor or solid PERFORMANCE,

And hiding behind getting good performance from your business is really individual BEHAVIORS,

But the thing that is really going to change behaviors is really corrected THINKING (I added this last part).

If the above is accurate (and I believe it is), then you can see that if you are solely focusing on results, then you aren’t dealing with the issues that will bring you lasting change in your business (and life!).  You are dealing with symptoms, not the real issues.  That just bites!

RESULTS – These are typically monitored through things/ideas you can measure.  Concrete stuff.  The most popular is dollars.  “Number of hours worked,” “widgets made,” and “gigs performed” are a few more.  If you want these things to improve, then keep reading…

PERFORMANCE – This is the physical output needed to create or increase the things being tracked as results.  If an entrepreneur wants better results, then they most often switch to increase the output created from a higher level of performance.  And this is where a entrepreneur or business owner’s control typically stops.  Let’s face it, you can only enforce or improve what you can see, track or measure.

But insightful entrepreneurs listen to counsel (like this blog) and move to the deeper core issues behind PERFORMANCE and ultimately BEHAVIOR.  Others don’t ever go there because (1) they may not know it’s an issue, (2) they’re too lazy to deal with these issues and take on the hard steps to improve them, or (3) they just don’t care.

Let’s move further… (in a later post).  See you next time.

Thanks, Jason M. Blumer, CPA