Monday, February 4, 2008

No Silver Bullet......

In many areas of both my personal and business life I see myself and others searching for the "silver bullet" solution, ie the great warrior on the white stallion coming over the hill to save the day. The politicians seem to seek that killer 'one' policy that will get them the votes and thus get them in to power. Businessess seek that one killer ad that will increase sales and then hopefully get them the bottom line the owners say they want. Even in sports we quite often hear the "one thing" the player or team needed to do better was.....!

I have a much stronger view now that we need to take the "no silver bullet" approach to improving our lifes, both personal and business. For this to happen requires that bit of effort we quite often don't have the energy to do. What is required is for us to analyse and write down the components of our business. What are the bits that make up our business. In short this might look like this for one of my magazines. Print quality, editorial, images, design, distribution, layout flow, ad placement, ad quality, website, etc. From this list I can then review each component with the view of always seeking improvement in EACH AND EVERY AREA. That's the killer, seeking improvement in each and every area. If I was to be lazy I might just say, get a better design company and then hope that was the answer. My experience to date is that this will not be the answer.