Is management too busy fighting the alligators to clean the swamp?
Are you too busy fighting the alligators to clean the swamp? In other words, regarding management, are you so busy minding the details of your business that you seldom if ever have a chance to look at “the big picture,” about where you are heading, and how you are best going to get there? How do you know what to do each day to improve your company’s prospects for success if you are constantly “fighting the alligators?”
Famous American basketball player and coach John Wooden offered the following advice to his players:
“When you improve a little each day, eventually big things occur. Not tomorrow, not the next day, but eventually a big gain is made… and when it happens, it lasts.” [Read more…]
Some of the axioms of business don’t ring true anymore. Oh, there is passed down wisdom that never goes out of style: “the customer is always right,” and “if you’ve made a mistake in business, own up to it and make it right.”
I’ll get right to it: an understanding of the kind of people your business needs and the willingness to do whatever it takes to bring out the best in them.
A writer friend of mind told me that when she is considering her next novel, she starts with one question: “What if?” What if a Southern Belle played flirty with a handsome Southern gentleman during the Civil War? Or, what if a widower found a letter in a bottle from his long lost love? And, from that, classics are born.