“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” – a definition according to the quote from the brilliant Albert Einstein.
This popped in to my head recently, prompted by a client in relation to something that was totally unrelated to their business or strangely what we were discussing at the time!
He mentioned that his business partner was off to see a chiropractor, one that the business partner and his wife had been seeing regularly for years. “Really?” I thought. “They had both been going to see this chiropractor for years and were still going back?”
Maybe it was an ongoing stream of issues that they were both being treated for. However surely the idea of going to a chiropractor or any solution provider, to bring it into a business context, was to have perhaps a programme of ‘treatments’ to solve the issue at hand but once this had been dealt with, move on as the solution provider shouldn’t be required any more.
In my own business, I tend to have a feeling as to when the current working relationship will come to an end, as once I have provided the support that I have proposed to my clients, they should then be able to take on the action plan or run with the actions we’ve put in place and reap the rewards.
I tend remain in contact with my clients as we build a good relationship along the way, plus there may be other goals or issues identified that perhaps I can help with following on from the project we have just completed. However if I was working with a client who was asking me to do the same thing over and over again, I would be questioning what I had worked on with them in the first place. Why it hadn’t been implemented as it should have done? Why they were still asking me about the same concern? Was it an issue with my communication with them? Their resources to implement? Are the goals or results they actually want to see different to those that are being produced or that they thought they wanted in the first instance?
Either way, if you have implemented a strategy, a plan or tactics to grow your business, find new clients and/or expand your offering, and are still getting the same results or not seeing the results you want then something needs to change. You can’t keep carrying on doing the same thing as nothing is going to change – it’s like banging your head against a brick wall.
It might mean you have to take some time out to analyse what you have been doing and identify where the issues lie. It might even mean you have to look at yourself and see if what you are putting in is right to address the issue. Whatever it is you need to do, you really need to do it otherwise you will be getting the same results over and over again, a bit like ‘groundhog day’.
If you’re happy with that, then that’s fine ultimately it’s your choice as it’s your business. But if you’re not happy with the results you’re getting, make a change, and make it today. It doesn’t have to be a big turnaround or a massive investment, small changes over a period of time can be highly impactful. But it does need to make an impact and it needs to be sooner rather than later.
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