No Pain, No ChangeImplementing changes, even when they’re good for your business, can be tough. As
old adage goes, old habits die hard and it’s just as true in business as it is in our personal lives. It’s simply easier to take path of no resistance and revert back to doing what we’ve always done. Here’s a way to skyrocket your profit potential by linking change to pain and payoff.
Whenever I sit with a client who has hired me to assess and identify ways to streamline their business operations, we eventually get around to what I call "no pain, no change" discussion. I can present a neatly packaged assessment report with recommendations for increasing efficiencies or streamlining processes, but new efficiencies and streamlining requires change. And, change typically meets with resistance because way of doing things has become habitual.
As old adage goes, old habits die hard. It happens just as frequently in one-person operations as it does in businesses with 10s, 100s, or even 1,000s of employees. It's just easier to take path of least resistance by doing what we have always done. And, until you realize how 'doing what you've always done' dramatically affects your bottom line, change is less likely to occur. For any change in behavior, procedure or practice, there must be a desire for it - benefits of change must become more attractive than comfort of keeping old habits.
So how can a desire for change be ignited?
That's where "no pain, no change" discussion starts. Quite simply, I relate recommendations I make to actual bottom-line benefits. Let me demonstrate by using a real-life client example.
In a business assessment I did last year for a property management company, processing tenant payments was a four-step process from moment payment arrived, to final posting and deposit of funds. The company had two co-owners and four employees. Three of four employees were involved in payment processing procedure.
Now, this may sound like no big deal to you, but keep in mind that, as a property management company, they receive several hundreds of payments from tenants nearly every week for all of properties they manage. There are many days when no other work is tended to, and they clock overtime to process checks same day they are received; and then they clock more overtime to catch up on work that was cast to side. The more property contracts business acquires, more time it takes to process payments. The more time it takes, more man hours are clocked. The more man hours needed, less efficient - and more costly - process becomes.
