Its been an exciting week while Ruth has been galavanting in Hawaii. We had lots of client work, new client requests, proposals to write, I attended the first half of my Appreciative Inquiry Certification course, and…
Whoops, I flipped my paradigm!
So in process improvement, we so often look at the gap analysis, or pain points, or what’s bugging you. The the outputs and resulting improvements can be enormously beneficial to clients – particularly clients who are receptive or resilient to change, or who are incredibly self aware and thrive on continuous improvement. But what about when you are tired of getting sucked into the deficit vortex?
Have you been to one of these meetings where suddenly the mood goes south? Has your smile turned into a frown after an hour of this kind of talk?:
“We have horrible communication, nothing works well around here!”
“Things would be better, if we didn’t have all these problems with our sales folks.”
“This process never works, we seem to slip all the time.”
“If [insert employee name here] could do their job, things would be fine.”
Sometimes it feels like gap analysis sucks you into a vortex of misery.
Read on for how to have less depressing analysis tools to make your business better, faster, or cheaper.
Have you ever thought about the time that communication was really great at your organization? Have you thought of a really great sales person, that suddenly seemed to make the whole process a breeze? When was a time that your [insert process here] worked the best? Who were the players? How did it feel? What happened.
As a colleague of mine would say….“TELL ME MORE!”
The Power of Positivity
I’m going to keep today’s blog short, because I want you to take a minute and think about it and actually jot down a few notes. Next week we are going to go Back to the Future – or er Forward to the Future.
Tell me about your best client interaction? Think about your proudest moment as a manager/business owner?
Tell me about the year you really excelled at your business? (highest profit, best sales…whatever!)
Tell me about the best client feedback you ever received? What were the circumstances, who was involved?
By thinking in the positive, humans are naturally more creative and innovative – so instead of focusing on “fixing” something, we are going to recall when it went really well – and capitalize on the features of that incident.
Think of your story – we’d love you to share with us at info@whiteboardconsulting.ca/staging or @whiteboardcons using #betterfastercheaper.
Share your positive business story to be the focus of our next blog (hey that’s like free advertising) and we’ll send you a business book on a topic of your interest (value of up to $40). Click to Tweet! Sounds like a deal. Best positive story wins! Be descriptive. Tell me the story. Set the stage. Introduce the characters. This is your chance to be business-ey and creative.
Consider yourself challenged…..
Until next week,
Nicole