Making changes in your business can be equal parts scary and exciting. Sometimes all rolled into one. When done right adding a product or making changes to your business can be the catalyst for getting your business to the next level. When done wrong it can result in customer mistrust, unclear vision and ultimately the end of your business. How to make sure it’s done right? Assess and educate.
Assessing your business runs inline with what a talked about last week with regards to your values. Assessing your values but then you need to ask other questions before you make changes. Do I have the team in place to implement? If not, do I know where I can get the team? How do my systems look? Are we ready to move forward with what we have? What changes need to be made? These are just a few of the questions that you need to ask yourself to be able to judge where you are at with an idea and how quickly it can be taken to market.
With education, it’s all about better understanding of your business every day. This post sums up the attitude that you need to have to compete in today’s marketplace. The article is about understanding other areas of your business that are not your expertise because so many avenues work together these days to make a cohesive strategy. You must have a working knowledge of all the parts of your business. Have you ever had a boss or manager that you tried to explain the importance of something to but they didn’t have the knowledge of the area you were talking about so they thought it had no value? Then finally they do get educated and want to move forward but it’s too late? Don’t be that leader. Educating yourself will help to ensure that you are not that leader. This will help you understand what moves need to be made as a leader in your organization.
As far as assessments go, you can go too far with assessing. Don’t over assess. Inaction is just as crippling to an organization as hasty action. Don’t take education too far either. Functional knowledge is all you need. Leave the expertise to those that have passion for it. Don’t mistake knowledge for having to be an expert.
How have you been able to make good decisions with assessment and education?