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Take the Right Action and Accomplish 20 Times More in Your Business
Never confuse movement with action.
--Ernest Hemingway
I've learned never to assume that people have read and remembered what is in books I've written. Since I would like you grasp and use the key lessons in how to accomplish 20 times as much, this article will give you the basics.
If you haven't already read my longer writings on this subject, I hope the information will encourage you to take a look for yourself. If you have read them, I hope this overview will encourage you to reread it.
When I first wrote about exponential solutions, the prose was dense enough with concepts and directions to be two books. However, I didn't want to do separate books because I was concerned that if I wrote the material as two books, many people would never get the total message.
You need to apply all of the information in order to successfully create exponential solutions, ways of accomplishing 20 times as much with the same time, effort, and resources.
Here's a metaphor to help you understand the opportunity: In our neighborhood, a house stood empty for several years and became an eyesore. The owner was satisfied to live elsewhere and let the house fall apart. He was a rich doctor who didn't care enough about the money he could have gained by renting the house to bother with that option.
As a result, the doctor was stuck with property he didn't need and had developed a habit of ignoring. That's what I call a "stall," a bad habit that delays progress.
Finally, a new owner bought the property, bulldozed the old house, and flattened the now-empty lot. He had cleared the way of the obstacles to making a lovely home and yard. That's what I call "stallbusting."
The prior owner's habit could no longer exist.
With everything about the property now open for change, the new owner built a lovely home that took best advantage of the property's qualities. In the process, a home was created that could easily house a large family and lots of guests for a party.
By making the location suitable for habitation, the new owner created a better way of using the lot. He had created a 100 percent solution by building a home in the usual way. If instead he had built that new home with 1/20 the time, effort, and resources of a usual home, he would have created an exponential solution. That result might have been accomplished by moving and repairing a lovely home scheduled for demolition to make way for a new road.
In part one of my writing about exponential solutions, you can learn about how bad habits keep individuals and organizations from accomplishing their potential. What's the problem? Our habits are so ingrained that we usually don't notice that we have them. Otherwise we would get little accomplished as we endlessly second-guessed ourselves about what to focus on and do next. So habits do have positive potential.
The most common bad habits that stall progress are based on blindly following traditions that no longer apply; being closed to new information that's valid; misunderstanding what's going on because of a preconception; avoiding unattractive situations and places; assuming that you are understood when you aren't; involving more people and steps into processes than are absolutely necessary; and putting off required actions.
I call these bad habits "stalls" and name these most common bad habits as tradition, disbelief, misconception, unattractiveness, communications, bureaucratic, and procrastination stalls.
One chapter is devoted to each stall. Much of each chapter is intended to help you spot such stalls in yourself and others. Then we provide possible solutions, which we call "stallbusters" (a humorous allusion to the popular movie Ghostbusters).
More importantly, we describe thought processes that will help you unravel the cause of your stall and pick a better habit to build. For example, in dealing with tradition stalls, it's a good idea to find out what the original purpose was for the activity. Then check to see if that's still the right purpose. If it isn't, pick a better purpose and make that a new tradition. Design the activities required to accomplish the purposes of the new or the old tradition (when that should be continued).
Most people find the first part of the book to be fun, easy to follow, and not overly hard to apply. I've been tempted to write a sequel to part one that would address more stalls and go into more detail. But so far the closest I've come is to create a teleseminar called "Stop Stalling" with a lightly edited transcript based on the recording.
Hopefully, the first part of the book will direct you to overcome the bad habits that waste so much of your time now. With those bad habits reduced in their harmful effects, you are now ready to look at the potential to create 20 times the results.
The second part of the book addresses making an exponential solution, any way that you can accomplish 20 times as much with the same time, effort, and resources. In practice, this accomplishment might mean using the same time and resources and getting 20 times the results. Or you might accomplish the same results in 1/20 the time and with 1/20 the resources.
Any combination of spending less time and resources that also boosts your total output can also be a 2,000 percent solution. For example, if you accomplish a total result that's 5 times as large in 25 percent of the time, that's a 2,000 percent solution.
In part two, I describe an eight-step process that organizes your thinking to accomplish such 2,000 percent solutions. The steps are designed to help you access your most helpful memories as well as add new information that will improve your thinking. The 8 steps are:
1. Understand the importance of measuring performance. (Otherwise you cannot know whether you are improving.)
2. Decide what to measure. (Focus on the causes of greater performance.)
3. Identify the future best practice and measure it. (What will best-in-the-world performance probably look like in five years?)
4. Implement beyond the future best practice. (Combine cutting-edge practices that no one else has ever combined before.)
5. Identify the theoretical (or ideal) best practice. (This kind of "best practice" is the best anyone will be able to perform the task over the next five years by drawing constructively on the most powerful human emotions, instincts, and preferences.)
6. Approach as close as you can to the theoretical (or ideal) best practice. (Shoot for perfection around the simplest possible model of employing human behavior.)
7. Identify the right people and provide the right motivation. (Establish conditions under which the change can succeed.)
8. Repeat steps 1-7 endlessly. (This is the most important point because you will have only scratched the improvement surface with your first exponential solution.)
Our biggest challenges in leading people successfully through the eight steps are to get them to realize how little they know about what tomorrow's cutting-edge practices are going to be, how people routinely do something similar in virtually perfect ways very rapidly, and why it's critical to keep repeating the process.
Of those lessons, repeating the process is the most important and least appreciated point. Here's why repetition is important: Like all new habits, you build skill with regular use. Until you've repeated this process several times and taught someone else, you won't make this a new habit.
You may achieve an exponential solution, but the potential benefits you've left behind when you stop developing the habit are enormously larger than any gain you get from the first time through.
About the Author Donald Mitchell is an author of seven books including Adventures of an Optimist, The 2,000 Percent Squared Solution, The 2,000 Percent Solution, The 2,000 Percent Solution Workbook, The Irresistible Growth Enterprise, and The Ultimate Competitive Advantage. Read about creating breakthroughs through and receive tips by e-mail through registering for free at http://www.2000percentsolution.com |
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