I heard this quote the other day and I thought to myself WOW! This really does sum up most business problems. The quote was
“ The price of doing the same old thing is far higher than the price of change.”
I haven’t heard too many blanket statements that were so on point.
It is called opportunity costs, this is the unseen costs of things we don’t do, and this isn’t to be confused with FOMO which is the fear of missing out. Opportunity costs are the costs that are associated with everything that you do. Let me give you a real-life example, let’s say today at 6 O’clock your friends are meeting at the local watering hole to have a few drinks and catch up, after all, it has been almost 7 years since you guys hung out. At the same time, you have a client that wants an estimate for work and wants to sit down and talk at that exact same time. What do you do? If you go with your friends you could be missing out on a lifetime customer that may spend 50K over the next ten years, but if you decide to go to the estimate you could be missing out on a get together that may not happen again for ten years. There is no right answer here, but they both cost you something. In business, the goal to see those costs, and find out if doing the same old thing is costing you money or making you money.
The problem with opportunity costs are that they are forever in flux and they constantly change. This means your company must also constantly be in flux, and also constantly changing to keep up with the demands of the market. This failure to constantly evolve and grow leads to a large list of excuses and here are my top five list of my favorite excuses on why a company doesn’t grow and change.
#5 It won’t work in our company…. (Well that’s funny it seems to work in other companies that had even bigger implementation problems than you.)
#4 I don’t like it….. (Umm why don’t you like it? Better question is do you like to make money?)
#3 My Employees will quit if we do that. (Are you a business owner or do your employees own your business, I have seen this a million times, believe me, they will complain but they won’t quit. Let’s just say the worst-case scenario does happen and they quit, well then they were not the right fit for your company anyway.)
#2 Our company is different. (The more things change the more they stay the same. Using the excuse that it will not work without research and numbers. It is like crossing a busy street with headphones blaring in your ears, and a blindfold on. Yes, you may make it across the street but there is a good chance you will be street pizza.)
#1 We have never done it that way…. (This is the most dangerous sentence and excuse, in the English Language. Every time I hear it, I want to stab myself in the ears and scream “SO WHAT!!! There was a time when you had never eaten chocolate chip cookies, but that turned out ok!”)
