The techniques and recipes set out in this blog are meant to be adapted to your own process. You could choose to follow them exactly and you would achieve great results, but I ultimately don’t think that is practical or sustainable. Why? You don’t live or work in a vacuum, and because of that you will need to follow this process when adopting these techniques and recipes:
- Practice the technique.
- Evaluate the process.
- Modify the process.
- Rinse and repeat.
The cornerstone of effective change is the process of engaging and adapting. Engagement comes from repetition and I call that working your process. If you engage and then adapt, you will find what works best for you and your business. A single test run will bring better results, but the actual gold is to repeat the techniques again and again and glean what works.
Mileage may vary
It is ok if these techniques don’t seem to apply to you. Not everything is useful to everyone. I’ve made a very successful career out of constantly expanding my toolbox and using the right tool at the right time. I’ve gotten proficient in adapting other people’s tools for my own use and this collection of adaptations are what I think will have value for your process. I would be doing you a disservice if I didn’t encourage you to work the exact same process to adapt these techniques to your specific circumstances. When I adapt and then adopt something, I have the advantage of experience to tell me what to change to fit how I want and need to work. Hopefully all of these techniques are bite sized enough to make then easy to wrap you head around, use quickly, and see effective results.
Adapt, Adopt and Ignore
Use what you need to move forward, ignore the rest. It is ok to leave good ideas behind. Maybe they weren’t for you at this time and place. Don’t hold onto things that seem really great but simply don’t work for you. Don’t beat yourself up, it is ok. The important thing is to begin the process of adopting and adapting in order to get your project completed.
Evaluation is key
If a technique doesn’t work for you or doesn’t produce the results you want, try to figure why it didn’t work before modifying it. Did the breakdown occur because of sloppy implementation or is it just not right for how you operate the business? Finding out that why and pinpointing the failure points is hard. How do you reliably figure out what really went wrong? Never fear, there is a technique for that. Next up, we are going to get familiar with the 5 whys.