A ridiculous claim has repeatedly been made for the value of persistence in a small business, which boils down to, "If you persist, you will succeed." The problem with untrue claims is that when they are rejected, any related truth is rejected also. So let us sort out the truths and untruths about persistence.
Starting a small business usually turns out to be harder than the owner anticipated. Almost all small businesses go through financial strains, especially when beginning, and take far more of the owner's time than he imagined he could supply. Frustration and discouragement are common. If your business does not fit this mold, but is succeeding easily, good for you, and keep on doing what you are doing. Otherwise, read on.
The two obvious truths relating to persistence are 1) if you give up, you lose, and 2) you cannot give up and win. The only other two possibilities are persist and lose, and persist and win. Logically, then, there is only one way to win, and that is to persist. Persistence does not guarantee success, but it provides the chance.
How does a small business owner turn persistence into success? One major action will do it.
Keep improving.
Every aspect of your business, from production to sales to finances, can continually be made better, as in more efficient and more effective. In short, quality can be increased. All the principles of quality come into play in every area, but the most important is the first: Quality is an Attitude. You have to want and intend improvement, across the board.
Persistence without improvement is spinning your wheels until you have dug them into a rut too deep to drive out of.
Two other principles of quality are Learn and Fix. Here is where the bulk of your persistence time will be spent.
The more you learn about the various aspects of your business, the better you will be at them. No matter how busy you are, your future success depends on spending some time every day on learning. Most of your learning can be from articles and ebooks on the internet. Some will be from books and audio or video tutorials. We are not talking about learning from experience; that falls under the next section. We mean learning the theoretical and practical information about what to do and how to do it for every function in your business.
Then there is the School of Hard Knocks: learning by experience. You make a mistake, or you do not get the results you expected from an action, and you learn from it. First you fix it, to keep overall quality up, and then you figure out why it happened, and how to prevent it in the future.
What is the enemy of persistence? Discouragement. Whether you feel discouraged by how long it is taking to make progress, or because people are actively discouraging you, the best answer to discouragement is to acknowledge its presence, then spit in its face. Persistence almost always takes longer than you want it to. Discouragement is just a temporary reminder of that fact.
Persistence alone does not guarantee success. Persistence with continual improvement does.
Showing posts with label quality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label quality. Show all posts
Friday, June 18, 2010
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Personal Development vs. Personal Improvement
Both personal development and personal improvement deal with growth or expansion. Yet they are two different viewpoints. With the first, you are looking at the horizon, and with the second, at the stars. Clearly, the two complement each other. But they should not be confused.
When you read an article or a book about making your life better, ask yourself whether it is talking about adding a new capability or direction to your life (personal development) or about how you can do what you are already doing, but better (personal improvement). The answer to this question matters, because each viewpoint needs a different attitude in order to succeed.
Personal development needs an adventurous attitude, with some courage on the side. Say, for instance, you decide you want to increase your self-confidence. You're tired of being shy, and want to feel comfortable in groups. Treating this undertaking as anything but an adventure will get you not very far, not very fast.
Adventures are full of risk, and possible injury, and the unknown. They include blind alleys and monsters and heroes and villains. Above all, adventures take place in unfamiliar territory. And therein lies the secret to not only surviving the adventure, but gaining the prize at the end.
Increase familiarity with the territory. That is the essence of personal development. Enter a new, unfamiliar territory, and become familiar with it. It takes time, and you will stub your toes on unfamiliar rocks once in a while, or step into quicksand, but the faster you can become familiar with the territory, the closer you are to owning the prize.
To use the self-confidence example, you know the prize is out there, of being able to speak easily with others, and feel comfortable in any situation. Dozens of articles and books give advice on how to reach that prize. So, pick one that seems to make sense, and try it. Give it a good, honest try, and see if it works for you. Some will, some won't, but the only way to find out is to try. Try another, and another. Be ready for the lumps of embarrassment when one doesn't work, but also be ready for the glorious feeling of finding one that moves you closer to the prize.
Personal improvement, on the other hand, needs a quality attitude. A quality attitude boils down to one simple premise: making things better is a good thing to do. When you fully understand that, and live by it, personal improvement follows as surely as day follows night. Any and every aspect of life bows to the power of that attitude.
It seems so obvious, but it is not. Very, very few people apply that attitude with any consistency or regularity. It is one of those ideas that everyone agrees with, but almost no one considers as a guiding principle. They haven't looked at the corollary, the logical conclusion, of that attitude: making things worse is not a good thing to do. And most of all, they haven't looked at the fact that those are the only two choices.
It is a fool's errand to try to make things the same, or keep them the same. The universe will only allow that for a very short time, before some random factor will come slamming in to change things. Very seldom does the universe change things for your benefit; the laws of probability alone dictate against it. So if you are just trying to keep things the same, in the long run you are making them worse.
Making things better, then, is not just a good thing to do, it is a necessary thing to do. What things, you ask? All things. Every action you take, every email you write, every conversation you hold. The questions should be at the top of your mind every moment: am I doing this as well as I can? How can I do this better? How could I have done that better? What do I need to know to do my job better? Lots of questions, all looking at improvement.
It is really quite astonishing how much life can improve when you make it happen.
So there you have it, the difference between personal development and personal improvement. You can walk both roads, concentrating on one or the other at a given time, or both at the same time. But I hope you find them easier to walk, now that you have a map of each.
One last note. This essay needs to be read a few times to get everything from it. Once more with an attitude of adventure, and then again with a quality attitude, trying to read it better. (Remember that phrase above, "Every action you take"? Reading is an action. End of hint.)
http://www.oakwand.com/
When you read an article or a book about making your life better, ask yourself whether it is talking about adding a new capability or direction to your life (personal development) or about how you can do what you are already doing, but better (personal improvement). The answer to this question matters, because each viewpoint needs a different attitude in order to succeed.
Personal development needs an adventurous attitude, with some courage on the side. Say, for instance, you decide you want to increase your self-confidence. You're tired of being shy, and want to feel comfortable in groups. Treating this undertaking as anything but an adventure will get you not very far, not very fast.
Adventures are full of risk, and possible injury, and the unknown. They include blind alleys and monsters and heroes and villains. Above all, adventures take place in unfamiliar territory. And therein lies the secret to not only surviving the adventure, but gaining the prize at the end.
Increase familiarity with the territory. That is the essence of personal development. Enter a new, unfamiliar territory, and become familiar with it. It takes time, and you will stub your toes on unfamiliar rocks once in a while, or step into quicksand, but the faster you can become familiar with the territory, the closer you are to owning the prize.
To use the self-confidence example, you know the prize is out there, of being able to speak easily with others, and feel comfortable in any situation. Dozens of articles and books give advice on how to reach that prize. So, pick one that seems to make sense, and try it. Give it a good, honest try, and see if it works for you. Some will, some won't, but the only way to find out is to try. Try another, and another. Be ready for the lumps of embarrassment when one doesn't work, but also be ready for the glorious feeling of finding one that moves you closer to the prize.
Personal improvement, on the other hand, needs a quality attitude. A quality attitude boils down to one simple premise: making things better is a good thing to do. When you fully understand that, and live by it, personal improvement follows as surely as day follows night. Any and every aspect of life bows to the power of that attitude.
It seems so obvious, but it is not. Very, very few people apply that attitude with any consistency or regularity. It is one of those ideas that everyone agrees with, but almost no one considers as a guiding principle. They haven't looked at the corollary, the logical conclusion, of that attitude: making things worse is not a good thing to do. And most of all, they haven't looked at the fact that those are the only two choices.
It is a fool's errand to try to make things the same, or keep them the same. The universe will only allow that for a very short time, before some random factor will come slamming in to change things. Very seldom does the universe change things for your benefit; the laws of probability alone dictate against it. So if you are just trying to keep things the same, in the long run you are making them worse.
Making things better, then, is not just a good thing to do, it is a necessary thing to do. What things, you ask? All things. Every action you take, every email you write, every conversation you hold. The questions should be at the top of your mind every moment: am I doing this as well as I can? How can I do this better? How could I have done that better? What do I need to know to do my job better? Lots of questions, all looking at improvement.
It is really quite astonishing how much life can improve when you make it happen.
So there you have it, the difference between personal development and personal improvement. You can walk both roads, concentrating on one or the other at a given time, or both at the same time. But I hope you find them easier to walk, now that you have a map of each.
One last note. This essay needs to be read a few times to get everything from it. Once more with an attitude of adventure, and then again with a quality attitude, trying to read it better. (Remember that phrase above, "Every action you take"? Reading is an action. End of hint.)
http://www.oakwand.com/
Sunday, January 4, 2009
How Much Quality Is Too Much?
You may think it odd that I, the champion of quality, will admit that quality can be overdone. Well, first, this means you haven't read my book about the principles of quality. But second, what do you think, I'm unrealistic?
Maximum quality can be defined as that level of quality which best fulfils a purpose. Some things have no maximum, and can keep on getting better for as long as you work at them. Most things, however, do have a maximum level of quality. It's often higher than is reached. Sometimes, though, it is reached and passed.
Achieving a quality product often takes longer than achieving a mediocre product. It may involve double checking measurements, or taking the time to align things perfectly, or proofreading several times instead of once. The problem is, time is valuable too. You always have other things to do as well. So there is always a trade-off between time and quality. If you can get two mediocre products out in the same time as one quality product, what do you do?
First and foremost, you continue on the product at least until it fulfils its purpose, at least minimally. Then, make it better. The benefits are many: you enhance your reputation, you feel more pride in the product, you can charge more for it, you learn how to make it better more easily next time, and more. All it takes is a bit more time.
Rarely, very rarely, the time is just not there. But watch out not to fall back on this as an excuse. You always find the time to do at least some of the things you like to do. Well, make this one of the things you like to do!
But how far do you go? Very simply, until you are no longer making it better, or the difference is not noticeable. You can sand that birdhouse roughly, so it has no splinters. Then you can sand it so it is smooth all over, with no rough spots. Then, and this is too much, you can keep on sanding it until it is satiny smooth. This is too much. This goes beyond the purpose. After all, you are going to paint it, so it will look the same whether it is satiny smooth or just smooth. Then you are going to hang it outside, where weather will do what weather does to a birdhouse, whether you have sanded it just enough or too much.
Too much quality is when it doesn't make a difference. Too much quality is when another product suffers needlessly. Too much quality is continuing after you are done.
Read the book. It explains all this much better, in greater depth.
http://www.oakwand.com
Maximum quality can be defined as that level of quality which best fulfils a purpose. Some things have no maximum, and can keep on getting better for as long as you work at them. Most things, however, do have a maximum level of quality. It's often higher than is reached. Sometimes, though, it is reached and passed.
Achieving a quality product often takes longer than achieving a mediocre product. It may involve double checking measurements, or taking the time to align things perfectly, or proofreading several times instead of once. The problem is, time is valuable too. You always have other things to do as well. So there is always a trade-off between time and quality. If you can get two mediocre products out in the same time as one quality product, what do you do?
First and foremost, you continue on the product at least until it fulfils its purpose, at least minimally. Then, make it better. The benefits are many: you enhance your reputation, you feel more pride in the product, you can charge more for it, you learn how to make it better more easily next time, and more. All it takes is a bit more time.
Rarely, very rarely, the time is just not there. But watch out not to fall back on this as an excuse. You always find the time to do at least some of the things you like to do. Well, make this one of the things you like to do!
But how far do you go? Very simply, until you are no longer making it better, or the difference is not noticeable. You can sand that birdhouse roughly, so it has no splinters. Then you can sand it so it is smooth all over, with no rough spots. Then, and this is too much, you can keep on sanding it until it is satiny smooth. This is too much. This goes beyond the purpose. After all, you are going to paint it, so it will look the same whether it is satiny smooth or just smooth. Then you are going to hang it outside, where weather will do what weather does to a birdhouse, whether you have sanded it just enough or too much.
Too much quality is when it doesn't make a difference. Too much quality is when another product suffers needlessly. Too much quality is continuing after you are done.
Read the book. It explains all this much better, in greater depth.
http://www.oakwand.com
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Quality: The Best Christmas Present.
Today is Christmas, 2008.
For many, 2009 contains more uncertainty than is comfortable. Presents under the tree this year may tend to be more practical, more conservative. Looking at the future does tend to color one's outlook about the present. Which color, however, is up to you: gray, or green? The answer lies in the ideas of quality.
Will 2009 be better or worse for you? The very question tells you the answer is about quality. Quality is all about better and worse. So for this Christmas (or any time of the year) give not only to yourself, but to all those you love, the best present of all: a better future.
The future is created by actions in the present. Seems obvious, but until one fully grasps this idea and uses it, the future will continue to catch one by surprise, and will disappoint. Keep in mind, the future is not just six months from now, but also an hour from now, and tomorrow, and next week.
Making the future better is so incredibly simple, so practically magical, that not doing so passes understanding. Just do what you know to do, and what you know how to do, a bit better. Show affection: give a quick back rub when you walk past your spouse; tousle your child's hair; call your mother; blow a kiss. When you send an e-mail, make sure the spelling is perfect. Building or making something? Make it better than "good enough."
Much goes into creating quality in the present, all of which creates quality in your future. Read all about it in my book, Anyone Can Improve His or Her Life: The Principles of Quality, available at http://www.principles-of-quality.com/, if you wish, but you can work out a lot of it on your own as well.
Give the Christmas present of quality, and Christmases of the future will contain it also.
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