I’m sure it’s not a lot of fun to deal with something like that, and if you have a team in place, you think once or twice why they’re not dealing with it themselves.
Fair enough.
Today I want to share a hidden secret for a shift from reactive to proactive that creates a self-managed tea.
Where you don’t have to deal with it, and you can finally focus on things that can help your business scale.
The Mindset shift from reactive to proactive
This mindset shift is the pinnacle of success for most business owners but to achieve so we have to install some smoke detectors.
Smoke detectors? Yes, I’ll explain it.
It pays off to overreact to a burned toast, compared to underreacting to a burned house
You want the alarm to go off when your toast gets a little burned so you can be on top of it, instead of waiting until the building is covered in flames!
This is applicable internally among team members and externally with clients. And that will help remind the team if something is going off track, if they can proactively reach out to clients, and that you can support the team when needed.
Shifting Team’s energy
The massive energy shift that happens when the team changes from reactive to proactive is inexplicable, we avoid one of the most challenging things for humans:: pessimism.
Knowing that our goal is to shift the team’s energy and be more proactive, what does that journey look like?
The Journey to Proactivity can be an ongoing journey that never has an end.
It’s the real path to business mastery, where you fall in love with the practice of doing better what you do for clients.
It will require time, effort, and realistic expectations:
- Learning how to be reactive is a skill
- We work with the team to teach them how to be reactive, it’s a skill that can be learned
- How can you be proactive?
- A proactive approach is nothing more than a number of if/then rules that inform our behavior about other’s behaviors
- When does the preventative approach take place?
- These are called heuristics, or rules of thumb, that our brain builds with experience to save time/energy
- There is no way to shortcut this process, the team needs reps on a reactive approach, proactive, and then with the reps the automaticity will build the heuristics.
- How can you help your team think upstream
- The baseline concept (book Upstream by Dan Heath)
- This is an approach that focuses on prevention versus treatment.
- He expands that “upstream” is the right term instead of our commonly used “proactive” or “preventative” because the metaphor focuses on the opportunity to continually improve what we’re doing. This is why I framed several times that we can skip steps to get to the final preventative, based on heuristics, approach.
- What to look for
- Beware of celebrating Reactive wins
- Normally reactive solutions provide immediate tangible results which can look like a victory and train people to focus on that. Saving a client from a refund sounds amazing, but wouldn’t it be better if a refund was never requested?
- Beware of celebrating Reactive wins
- Look for bright spots
- How can you scale solutions that are working, instead of just solving problems?
- The baseline concept (book Upstream by Dan Heath)
- How tracking, and Health Scores play a Role Here
- As you now probably understand, we need tracking, and clear SOPs (health scores) to ensure a systematic approach to deliver your clients a great experience.
What should be my next steps?
I want it to be actionable so there are a few things you can work on immediately:
- Tracking SOPs and non-negotiables
- Tracking must not be an option as it is the only way to react, move to proactive and then train the brain to be preventative
- Tracking should be a non-negotiable for your team members, as it should be end-of-week reports, and Quality Control Processes internal (at least once a month).
- There is a balance
- I’ve seen people go on the extreme opposite and end up over-tracking. There are probably only 3-5 KPIs you need to know on a consistent basis to measure the effectiveness of the changes we’re making.
- Nassim Taleb said:
- “I am not saying here that there is no information in big data. There is plenty of information. The problem — the central issue — is that the needle comes in an increasingly larger haystack.”
Last but not least, a few words of wisdom from someone who has been running businesses for a while now. It’s never about the timing of joining the marketplace with an offer, is the time in the game. How long you can sustain your authority and offer, and then beat any possible competition.
At the same time if you’re in a rush to solve problems and see results today, remember that what we reap today was planted last few months, and what we’re planting now will be ready in a few week’s time.
To your success,
Jay