Why Question the Status Quo

Vital knowledge that can immediately improve your business is easily accessible yet rarely pursued. Cutting to the chase, accessing this information quickly requires only that you ask the right people the right questions and then act on their recommendations. Assuming you agree, “Will you act on this idea and insight or merely acknowledge its obviousness and choose to ignore it?”

The Challenges:
Failure to ask: Arrogance is believing that you have nothing left to learn. I read this recently in one of Alan Weiss’s weekly emails and couldn’t agree more.

Failure to challenge the status-quo: Don’t fall into this trap. The costs of maintaining a “business as usual” culture can crush your company into oblivion. Examples of this are found in newspapers almost every day… Oops, there are fewer newspapers these days. Yes, I am master of stating the obvious.

Knowing who to ask: This is simple. Ask your employees how they would run the company differently if they owned it! Employees are smart and know much better than you do what is going on when it comes to their job and how they interact with coworkers and customers.

The Opportunities:
Innovation: This is nothing more than a fancy word for improvement. Engaging employees to improve your company by listening and acting on recommendations (that pass the common sense test) is a sure-fire way to strengthen the team and improve profits.

More fun and less stress: This becomes the natural by-product of doing a better job of serving customers and reducing the stupid stuff which happens in companies all the time. Your employees will thank you and you should be thanking them profusely.

The Inspiration for This Blog Post:
I was having dinner last night with my son Carl, who has been working with his company for over a year while still in high school. Curious about his job, I asked the question, “What would you do if you owned the company?” Carl then recited a very succinct list of ideas for ways to improve productivity and employee engagement, all backed up with very sound logic. I marvel at his business acumen and am very proud of the man he is becoming! It pays to listen; I learned a few things at the dinner table…