Why Review
Do you remember what you had for breakfast on the 5th of last month? Probably not. We sometimes forget what we ate for breakfast by the end of the day!
A “photographic memory” is extremely rare, no one is perfect and memories fade. That’s why it’s so important to review. Reviewing takes what we’ve experienced or learned and elevates it from short-term to long-term memory.
Beyond just memory, reviews are valuable for their ability to teach. If we immediately move on from each experience, how can we learn from our mistakes and successes? So often we hear “my staff just don’t learn”. They make the same mistakes over and over again. This is why you need to take time to review. You need to test that the lessons were learnt.
Is reviewing important in your business? It’s essential! The regular reviews are what helps your company to constantly improve.
Very few businesses can honestly claim that they have succeeded to achieve all of their targets and objectives whether for the week, month or year. Even by the smallest margin, if you did not succeed then you failed. But that is not a bad thing. It’s about how you look at the failings or short comings that makes the difference. Every failure should be seen as an opportunity to improve. Even if you missed your target by just 10%, acknowledge the failure, and seize the opportunity to improve by another 10%.
The common response to failures and mistakes is to “deal with it and move on”. We tell ourselves that we don’t have the time … to properly review. Ironically we always find the time to fix it and deal with it again when it goes wrong again.
The issue is that in order to find out how to improve, you need to review. Reviewing might be painful at times, but it is the door to truly learning lessons from the past.
So often when a mistake is made the immediate response is to allocate blame, to reprimand, and even apply discipline. While at times some of this might be necessary and appropriate, it stops there. Business Owners and managers fall short on reviewing, and asking why did it actually happen, and what needs to be done to address the root cause, such that it does not happen again, and we actually improve.
You may well have heard people comment that just because someone has been doing a job for 30 years, does not mean they are good at it. They just have 30 years of experience at making the same mistakes. Is that the legacy for your business? 5 or 10 years of just making the same mistakes over and over again? Surely not.
Think about your processes. How well do you know them? Having them documented is important, but do you review that documentation to make sure you’re following through?
Can the person that you have just taught, easily teach others how they work?
How well are your systems working? Do they need to adapt or be replaced to fit changing needs? These are things you find out as you review.
Reviews also help your business to correct mistakes and capitalize on successes. Did a project not get completed on time? Review to find out what happened. Did your marketing team have a lot of success last quarter? Find out what strategies they used and how they can be implemented going forward.
Reviews are a great performance tool. Get you team to talk you through the use of a system or process. Ask them to highlight the critical points. Ask them to list all the critical standards that are applicable. This is a fast way to understand what your team know, and don’t know. If they don’t know it …they are less likely to do it.
So if you haven’t done so already, make sure you schedule a little bit of time each day to review.
You do not know just how much coaching or consulting might be of value to you in your business journey, until you try it.
We would not expect you to jump straight in without knowing more, but we would expect you to use that “open mind-set” to at least ask some questions and explore some new ideas.
Our purpose is to help you to make an informed decision, whichever option you chose.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
paul@40megahertzconsulting.co.za
Mobile: (27) 69 365 2984
www.40megahertzconsulting.co.za