Businesses are very much like people: they have a life of their own, they need food (cash flow) to survive, and interaction with other people (businesses) to thrive, and order to be profitable, the business needs to be consistent in its product delivery, customer service, and management. Would you continue to patronise a restaurant if you experienced inconsistent food quality or service levels every time you ate there? Unlikely. So how do you begin to achieve what you want for your business? Start by trying to be consistent in what you do. That way, you will set yourself a foundation from which you can improve.
Be Consistent in Operations
Being consistent in your operations will allow you to determine the effectiveness of your efforts by the relative outcomes. Consistency affords you the opportunity to identify specific actions and decisions that have a direct impact on the result. You can then tweak and modify your decision making and determine whether the revised result is closer to your anticipated outcome. In other words, consistency enables you to identify and modify your actions to achieve your desired outcome.
Be Consistent in Expectations
You achieve goals by consistently working towards them. Being consistent in your goals frees both you and your team to work within the boundaries of expectations. I have previously blogged about how Google hires their managers based on the most powerful characteristics of management: consistency and predictability. You can read more about it here.
In the book ‘Great by Choice’, written by Jim Collins & Morten T. Hansen, they discuss the resistance of Southwest Airlines to follow the competition and expand their routes rapidly in line with the other airlines to secure their market share. Instead, Southwest expanded in a methodical and consistent manner which was much slower than expected. When the 9/11 tragedy occurred, most airlines started to lose money, but Southwest managed to maintain a profit due to their careful and consistent growth.
Where to Start
Start by being consistent in the way you run your business – give yourself and your team regular goals and expectations. Once you achieve a desired standard, you can then explore how to improve it by adjusting what you do and monitoring the outcome.
You can take it from there. If not, contact me…
“Success is neither magical nor mysterious. Success is the natural consequence of consistently applying basic fundamentals.” ― Jim Rohn
