“How can you ever get better at golf if you don’t cheat?” Larry Loehrke
We all love “do over’s”. In golf they’re called a Mulligan. Hit a bad shot; take another one without counting the first. It’s harmless, just a little extra practice.
A “do over” in business though is not harmless, they’re costly. Sometimes the situation that causes the “do over” can’t be prevented because market conditions change, new competitors spring up, temporal events happen, opportunity knocks. But many times a “do over” is necessary because of mistakes, bad decisions or rash actions. And these can and should be controlled in order to cut down on the number of times you have to use a “do over”.
I once worked at a place where doing things over became an art form. The founder was always in such a hurry to get to a decision that critical facts were ignored, necessary research was squashed and round table discussions were scorned. So, we ended up rushing out with half-baked products that couldn’t stand up to the stress of production and weren’t robust enough to stand up to the competition. It seemed like we always had time to do things a second (and third) time but never time to do it once.
Now, the antithesis of this is the good ol’ paralysis by analysis where everything is researched, engineered and developed until there’s nothing left but dust. But that’s another topic for another day.
We all love “do over’s”. In golf they’re called a Mulligan. Hit a bad shot; take another one without counting the first. It’s harmless, just a little extra practice.
A “do over” in business though is not harmless, they’re costly. Sometimes the situation that causes the “do over” can’t be prevented because market conditions change, new competitors spring up, temporal events happen, opportunity knocks. But many times a “do over” is necessary because of mistakes, bad decisions or rash actions. And these can and should be controlled in order to cut down on the number of times you have to use a “do over”.
I once worked at a place where doing things over became an art form. The founder was always in such a hurry to get to a decision that critical facts were ignored, necessary research was squashed and round table discussions were scorned. So, we ended up rushing out with half-baked products that couldn’t stand up to the stress of production and weren’t robust enough to stand up to the competition. It seemed like we always had time to do things a second (and third) time but never time to do it once.
Now, the antithesis of this is the good ol’ paralysis by analysis where everything is researched, engineered and developed until there’s nothing left but dust. But that’s another topic for another day.
Somewhere between always having time to do things a second, third and fourth time (but never time to do it properly in the first place) and becoming jaw-locked is the magic. But it's hard because it takes someone with enough juice to battle through the "visionary", the "screamer", the "nay-sayer", the "professor" and the "consultant".
If this person is you then go in armed with a lot a facts and and pile of guts.
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