Did they listen?
Anyone and everyone will recall the infamous line by Michael Caine in the Italian job. It’s funny in itself and if you haven’t seen the scene you can watch it here. But it does serve a powerful management lesson, everything and anything is always your fault.
What does this have to do with The Italian Job? Well, do you see Charlie Croker (played by Michael Caine) ask if his instructions were clear? Did he follow through as a task progressed, in short, did his manage his team? You may or may not know but the end outcome is clear. Croker didn’t get what he thought he was going to get, but thankfully that was only a test run.
Who would you blame?
You see, in life and in business, we often blame others for what has happened to ourselves. When you’re late, do you blame the alarm clock or Outlook diary not pinging to remind you? When you jump on the scales and see the figures rising, do you blame the supermarkets and your hectic life for the food that you consume? When you can’t get stock of goods or the equipment you need, do you blame your suppliers?
The point I am making is that it is all too easy to blame others first but the reality of the situation is that it is quite simply all your fault, everything. And the sooner you realise and accept this, then the sooner you will be able to stop the wrong things happening in work and in life. Trust me on this one, I’ve learnt that, the hard way.
Be Proactive
The point is to recognise what is going well and what is going wrong and to do something about the things that are going wrong BEFORE they’ve gone wrong. Learn to become proactive and not reactive to problems.
So if your business isn’t quite where you want it to be yet, then YOU need to realise that it is only YOU that can change it, because it is YOU that is in control.
And what a great place that is to be. Try it, it is fantastically liberating.
Be brave and try it. It’ll be hard to take all of the blame but none of us went into business thinking that it was going to be easy, did we?
Success is a simple equation
Find something you can do better, if that’s IN your business then you’ll gain process efficiencies and this will make you more profitable. If you can do something better ON your business then this will make you stand out more than your competitors and bring in more customers, which will make you more profitable. Whatever it is, take control of the situation and do something, because anything is better than nothing and if you do nothing, you’ll get nothing….It really is that simple of an equation.