Fix Your Own Machine During this New Years’ Downtime

I have previously posted that a “Business is a machine that produces outcomes”. When you begin to treat a business like a machine, you start to realize that the reason problems continue to get created is because somewhere the machine is broken. Maybe you are missing a process, or a policy. But somewhere it is broken and you need to fix it.

In the same way — we, as individuals, are also machines that produce outcomes in our own lives and in our businesses. Those outcomes are either good or bad; but 100% of the time, these outcomes are your fault. If you don’t fix your own machine (i.e. you!), the way you think, operate, execute, and manage other individuals — then you are going to continue to have the same outcomes.

This is why it is imperative to reflect on your 2017 as this year comes to a close. You need to think about the goals you didn’t accomplish. The things that didn’t go the way you wanted them to. The crises that continue to pop up in your business. Write them on a list. Then, you need to map out the process or series of steps that created each of these outcomes.

You need think like an engineer who is fixing a robot – literally. The scary part about this process is, you will quickly realize how robotic you are, in how you mindlessly we all follow certain patterns, biases, assumptions, or ways of doing things every day when some might actually be the cause of future bad outcomes. But if you take the time right now to stop, reflect, identify the broken parts of your own machine then you will go into 2018 with the best version of your machine. That’s what I want you to do. As such, your 2018 will be set up on day 1 towards a completely different success trajectory.