Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

It's Only Common Sense: Think Differently

Editor's Note: To listen to Dan's weekly column, as you've always done in the past, click here. For the written transcript, keep reading...If what you’re doing isn't working, do something different. That doesn’t sound too complicated, does it? All you must do is change the way you’re doing things or think up new ways to approach what you’ve been doing. But, for some reason, this is the most difficult thing you’ll ever do. Doing something differently means crawling out of your comfort zone,and there's nothing harder than that.

You only have two choices: To change or not to change, but I must warn you that change is not for the weak. You'll need to be solidly behind the idea of changing your company and doing something differently or the movement will fail.

I have known a number of companies that want to change--they know what they've been doing is not working--but they just can’t seem to take the first step. They just can’t seem to get out of their own way. Often, they begin by looking for a new, more effective way of doing things, but things get too hard and become less familiar--they find themselves in strange new territories.

They're uncomfortable, and soon they begin looking for reasons to return to the old way of doing things. They will justify this return by offering examples of the few times that the old ways did work or find outside evidence that it could work and they should not have given up in the first place.

Here are a few examples:

A company has done a pretty good job of growing because it has some very good technology. Company heads know that customers come to them because they can do things better than rivals who sell the same technology. The only problem is that this company is almost always late with delivery. The company knows it should work on this issue, but figures the customers know they build tough stuff and build it better than anyone else. The company takes the good old Alfred E. Newman "What, me? Worry?" approach, thinking they have done pretty well so far so they don’t have much to worry about.

Let me ask you: Are they wrong or right to think this way? The answer is easy--they are wrong because they are leaving themselves wide open for competition to come in and eat their lunch, which they will do sooner than later. While they are standing still, others are getting better and pretty soon, someone is going to come along who can build those boards as well as they can and deliver them on time. Guess who's going to get the business in the end? There is a second factor: Due to attrition and buy-outs and a number of other conditions, no company can keep the same customers forever. Things change and you have to get out there and find new customers. What is this company going to do when a salesperson brings in a hard-fought-for first order and that order is late, as is their modus operandi? They are going to have a hard time getting a second order and winning new customers.

So, rather than convincing themselves they can live with being late, they must get out of their comfort zone and fix the problem by doing something differently, no matter how uncomfortable that may be.

Another example is the way some companies perform marketing, if they do any at all. Many companies base their marketing direction on their own personal likes and dislikes. How often have you been in a meeting where the president of the company says, “I don’t believe in social media"? Or, "Frankly, I don’t believe in having my sales guys out there--they can work just as well from the office and it saves us a lot of money in travel expenses”? Or, “I don’t think we need to spend any money on marketing - everyone knows who we are and we have been doing OK”?

The president should be reminded that he is entitled to his own opinions, but not his own facts. Just because he does not like or believe in social media does not mean that he's right. This kind of thinking will surely hurt his company in the long run. He's actually handicapping his company and not allowing it to be all that it could be. By opening his mind and stepping out of his self-imposed comfort zone, he can make a huge change.

How about you? Are you stuck in that quagmire of inactivity we call a "comfort zone" or are you willing to step out into the wide-open world of new and innovative thinking? Do you have what it takes to do something new and different? The world continues to change at a quickening pace and if we keep doing things the same way and expecting different results…well, we all know what that’s the definition of and we don’t want to go there, do we?

It’s only common sense.