Each of us has a difference between the desired and the real state of affairs. Between the ideal image of oneself and the real self. One has a chasm, the other has a small strip of shadow. Every day we live with this feeling of difference.
I can’t say for all and any business, but private business has the same difference. The difference between the desired and the real. You want a chain of 100 restaurants, but only 2 so far. You want sales of 100 million, but only 40 so far. You want to work all over the world, but for now only work in Mongolia.
The most interesting thing about this difference is that it must be. That this difference is the guarantee that you have a future. You just need to look not in the abyss, but on the other side. Then you begin to move towards the desired goal. If you focus on the abyss as it is, then as an unexpected bonus, you immediately get a bad mood at least or a neurosis as a maximum.
Someone must make the difference. In the case of business, it must be produced by the company's leaders, its owners. This is their job. They are responsible for ensuring that the company has a picture of the future, sexy enough for the whole team to want to move there. Companies without a difference can be called companies without a future. Moreover, they can have a magnificent prosperous present.
But besides the fact that there should be a difference and that it needs to be constantly updated, it also needs to be actively reduced. And if I look around, I see a lot of companies with the future, and I see a lot of companies that can’t reduce this difference. Judging by what I heard about the Japanese, we are systematically different from them in this. They are a bastion of culture of continuous improvement. We are in a conceptual field where “breakthroughs” and “swift takeoffs” reign.
Constantly reducing this difference implies many things. One of them is the ability to gain experience and not to make one mistake several times. That is, if the video did not start at the event, you will find the reason and exclude this option at the next event. If your presenters make a mistake in the name of the company, then the next time you make them say all the names 10 times. Every mistake should end with a rule or norm. After repeated repetition, a rule or norm becomes a culture of production. You simply do not know how you can do otherwise and how you can’t foresee this or that opportunity. That is, the rule in itself is not even the beginning of the path, but the sign “Start of the road”. And the most difficult part is the practice of its application.
If you make the same mistakes all the time, then everything is worse than it might seem. You are not just not bringing the future closer, you are not just not developing, you are degrading. Because even to stand still, one also needs to move. If you stand still, you lose in value as shares of a company that develops worse than the market.
In addition to errors, there are other loopholes for the future. For example, improving regular procedures. Now the same procedure can take not 5 minutes, but 30 seconds and requires much less effort from you.
For example, a contact list is compiled for each project. It contains the phones of everyone who might be needed at the event. From the director to a local taxi that delivers cars in 15 minutes. Already having a contact sheet is a wonderful and useful procedure. The problem with the contact sheet is that it is lost among other papers. Stays on the tables. Lost in the pocket of the jacket that you took off. If you spend 3 minutes before the event and add all the numbers to your mobile phone, for example, to a special group, then you will save yourself from the unpleasant situations of losing a leaflet and save time searching for the number.
No one dares call it a breakthrough. But this is definitely a small step towards the future.
