Tag: success

If it is not broken don’t fix it

Posted on by philipdodson

This true to a certain extent.

If the car is running fine, well perhaps leave it alone, don’t tinker with it. However, if we don’t get it serviced, change tyres and so on, it may not continue to work so fine.

We may be doing a good job, the money is coming in and everyone is happy. However, what if technology changes and we need a new skill to do our jobs and we don’t have it and someone else does? So then the job may not be going so well, perhaps we could have invested in keeping up to date with changes occurring and learnt some new skills.

The point is the mentality of ‘if it is not broken don’t fix it’ maintains the status quo and safe is the new risky in today’s world. We could choose to be working on getting even better as a habit, a daily ritual, then it’s not about maintenance, it’s about improving, doing our best, making a difference.

Also, the status quo becomes dull, uninteresting and lacking in rewards. The exciting things happen when we break things and find out how to fix them and make them even better.

Breaking things changes the world not fixing leaves everything as is.

Inertia

Posted on by philipdodson

Many businesses, especially larges ones, work on the premise that customers suffer inertia.

This is particularly true of insurance, mobile phone companies and so on, where there is an annual contract or longer and it just repeats month after month. Most of us have more important and exciting things to do than check our contracts and charges constantly. So the money keeps rolling out.

Then we become aware either by chance or we discover it, that there are much better deals available.

You could say well it is up to us as consumers to check and why is it the companies fault. Partly this is true.

However, when you find out that you’ve been paying more than you needed to for a year or longer and the company stayed silent you tend not to feel too warm towards the company and often, at the first opportunity, we go elsewhere.

Smart businesses aim to keep communication going with the customers. More importantly, from the outset, they adopt the right values and staying silent and hoping your customers don’t notice, is not one of them.

Customers are people to be valued always, it’s a long-term relationship, not a relationship based on using inertia as a strategy and hoping they don’t spot better options elsewhere.