By Laura Lee Rose, author of TimePeace: Making peace with time
This is Laura Lee Rose, a business and life coach that specializes in professional development, time management, project management and work-life balance strategies. In my GoTo Academy: Soft Skill Tools for the GoTo Professional continuous online coaching series, I go into office etiquette on various real-world IT topics in detail.
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As a Business Process Consultant and Efficiency Coach, I am a subject matter expert in the field of Process Improvement. I work closely with the client to analyze both operational processes and financial metrics to assess project opportunities that positively impact the financial performance of the client business. In that role, I see a few misconceptions in how to make office changes (or any change for that matter). The most prevalent false premise is to “start where you are and take small steps”. That may be the resulting action – but I don’t recommend we start there.
3 Top Office Changers are:
1) Clearly articulate where you want to be, do and have.
2) Educate or review the explicit and specific foundation pieces required to get there (i.e., business plan, resources, staff, funds,etc)
3) Evaluate where you currently are against those specific foundation pieces.
Practice forgetting:
My recommendation is to practice forgetting how you got where you are today. Many of those processes and procedures definitely assisted you to this point. But now you are going to a different place. Therefore, you need a different map. You may find that many of your current procedures are still valid. But that is not the goal. So, forget those old procedures for the time being. Focus on putting in place the ‘right procedures’ for your new goals and destination.
Conclusion: Consider your GPS. When you have a new destination or goal, your GPS doesn’t try to force you to travel the same path as you did last week or last month. Your past paths have no relevancy to your current GPS navigations. Your GPS starts from scratch every time. Depending upon the gap between where you currently are and your new destination, there may be some roads and routes in common. But that’s not the GPS’s focus. It’s just a consequence of time and space – not the goal. Your Business Practices should be treated like that.
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You are absolutely right. The GPS analogy has many different levels of business process concepts. Your example is fantastic.
I wonder how many other readers can come up with other illustrations. I encourage others to do like you did — and send in their best version of the GPS Business analogy.
It will be fun to see how others can use this. Please continue to send in your comments!
Laura, your analogy of a GPS that does not look back (in time) when planning a route forward got me thinking about how that analogy can be extended. For example, the GPS’ database is based on a long history of discovery, conquest, trailblazing, growth and technology evolution. Even though the GPS doesn’t look back to look forward, the way forward it plots is based on roads laid down by experts in the field. This is also true in most businesses even though the roads cannot be easily seen or mapped. Rather than one convenient device to help us find our way in business, we must tap into many diverse sources of data such as best practice documents, product life cycles, expert colleagues, and our own personal experiences. This is how we know not to take that freeway during rush hour that the GPS may guide us to, but rather to stop off at Starbucks to let the rush die down. I just love analogies for the way they can make us think about how life fits together. Great job, Laura. Thanks!