Yesterday I spent a fair amount of my day supporting my Mum, who was admitted to hospital with a suspected heart condition. Mum is the daughter of a high achieving doctor, so having been raised in a medical family she carries significant medical knowledge within her. This can be both a good and a bad thing.
I watched with some amazement as Mum proceeded to convey her own detailed medical diagnosis to one of New Zealand’s leading cardiologists who was visiting Hawke’s Bay from Wellington. Her depth of self-examination was phenomenal. However, despite the insights that Mum gave, the cardiologist wasn’t able to be conclusive in determining what might be causing her chest pains.
Consequently, two different examination options were presented to Mum – one being more invasive than the other. I guided Mum to take the least invasive option to begin with, and then I gave her this advice in the kindest way that I could…
“Mum, what I suggest you do is that when the results from the first medical test come through, I think it is critical that you choose to believe in what the results are showing, and if nil evidence of adverse elements are present in the results then accept that being the case and move on with your life.”
Why did I do this ? Because, knowing my Mum, I didn’t want Mum to start applying her own interpretation to the empirical facts disclosed in the pending test report, to then continue to think in her mind that something was not right within her from a medical point of view.
Why I’m sharing this with you is that I can see a lot of “self-examination” going on in businesses; where the business owner primarily rests self-assured of their own determinations as to what is working well in their business versus what isn’t working so well.
Result ? The owner comes to believe in their own determination of the status of their business far more so than that of any party on the outside of their business; and unfortunately this can lead to a business owner thinking that there’s no room for improvement to be had in their business…and consequently this can evolve into complacency.
This danger of believing one’s self-examination of circumstances over that of all others’ can extend to misinterpretation of actual customer needs/ expectations. Time and time again, many business owners choose not to validate their speculations about the customer needs that they “think” they’re satisfying with their product/ service offer, by performing even the simplest of market research. Result ? They fail to align their core value proposition with the actual current needs of target customers, and consequently sales transaction volumes reduce as market needs shift from what they once were…and the businesses operating with an “I know what’s best” frame of mind dig their toes in and remain steadfast in their belief that either:
a) The change in market trending will change back (revert), so we’ll wait it out; or
b) We’ll be fine to continue to do what we’ve always ever done – we can count on the good name that we’ve got in the market to see us through.
You know what, both attitudes above are fallacies.
So, by all means keep performing self-examinations of your business to set direction, etc; but my best advice to you is after forming a firm view of what you “think” the facts are, factor into your analysis insights provided by parties outside your business who have no vested interest in it (e.g. market research agency, consultant, business advisory organisations, etc); before you press the “go button”.