Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Are you sure that something is happening?

I was once told a story about a man who has a puncture as he was driving down a road. In the distance he saw a farm and set out to it to see if the farmer has a car-jack. On the way he started 'playing' the conversation in his mind; "I will say hello do you have a car jack" and the "Farmer will reply, yes" the driver thought as he walked.

As he got closer, he started to think to himself, "What happens if the Farmer says no?", and his mind began to race as he mentally played out different scenarios getting more and more angry in the process!

Eventually, he arrived at the door of the farm and knocked and when the farmer opened the door, without waiting the driver shouted, "I don't want your bloody car jack anyway" before storming off.

The moral of this story - well, what it meant to me was that you cannot guess how situations will play out - whether customers are avoiding you because they are busy or because they are genuinely avoiding you? The act of going round and round the loop of 'playing out' scenarios has the effect of increasing your stress and reducing your ability to think straight - perhaps a better approach would be to go and ask rather than continuing to worry about it because you do not want to shout at the next customer you speak too "I don't want your bloody order anyway" before storming off do you?

Monday, October 08, 2007

Find us in more places on the web

To find out more about my views on Lean in Healthcare you can now also find us at our dedicated Lean Healthcare site.

I will continue to post here on relevant topics to the broader issues surrounding improvement.

See you soon!

Saturday, October 06, 2007

You Don't Know What You Don't Know

I did a short course yesterday about making a bigger impact with your blog and found it fascinating as I was introduced to topic after topic and site after site which I had no idea existed.

This workshop has led to some fundamental changes to the things I write in the 'virtual world' and in turn this will make my efforts more effective and it set me thinking about all the things that people don't know (or don't know how to find out about) which are holding them back........quite worrying when you think about it!

What do you feel you don't know enough about that you would like to know more of?