The “Truth”
This month I will be posting a series of business blogs written by Victor J. Temple, business manager at Friendship Garden Nursery School, Inc.
By Victor J. Temple
Is your truth……the real truth?
We are the best…..we are the best childcare…No one is better….our business runs like clock-work….nothing is needed. Isn’t it easy to believe your own stories and rhetoric. In a business the stories of superiority spread like wild fire when fed from the top.
We fell into this trap in the past at our childcare. We had the best childcare, just ask the teachers. Some parents stated there is no better in the industry. Accounting boosts of fail safe processes, with no errors.
It takes a brave, insightful leader to support the bravado with fact. If you desire the truth, ask all your customers; past, current and future. Our story was we were the best in town and had the most competitive price. Then we asked our customers when returning from a sabbatical how we did while away. They told us that the teacher turnover was excessive, policies weren’t followed and pricing was inconsistent.
Try this in your company, walk into a classroom and ask the team why they are doing a specific task. If the answer is, “because we have always done it this way”, you might not have that fail safe process with no errors.
If you want to add fact to the bravado, just ask your internal and external customers for their opinion.
How inaction is an action
This month I will be posting a series of business blogs written by Victor J. Temple, business manager at Friendship Garden Nursery School, Inc.
By Victor J. Temple
Inaction is a Decision that will Create a Result:
In today’s political turmoil and possible economy downturn it is easy to find yourself re-arranging the deck chairs on your Titanic. Perhaps your wait list is off, cash is low, and parents aren’t calling! Many of us turn to what we did yesterday or worst yet, clean our desk, file and re-organize last years invoices, candidly taking no action.
Over the course of history, the dot com bubble, the housing crisis, Covid and more brought similar economic and political turmoil. We were mentored back then by a very successful entrepreneur that founded Whistler Radar, with help, we created a simple acronym for our action plan, OAF or rather OAPH, Operational Action Plan Highlights.
Create this plan with your team, all of them, get them together and ask a very simple question, what are we going to do differently tomorrow than what we did today? In each functional area of your business, ask this question, challenge yourself to craft unique and ridiculous objectives, don’t debate them, there is no wrong, just opportunities for change. Prioritize these objectives and take action, report on them weekly and continue to push change, remember no action is a decision and will create a result, one that might not be pleasant.
The companies that weathered the storm of the great depression emerged to be the leaders of today. Create the possibility of success and live into that possibility by doing something differently everyday, when the economy shifts you will be poised for grandeur.