If you are like most people, you are sometimes overwhelmed by what to do as a next step to grow your customer base.
There is so much we can be doing. And there definitely is a lot! We can get lost as to where do we start. And of course, there are always bad habits we could stop doing. We crave efficiency.
But this approach can overlook what is going well. Where we have real traction.
When I sat down to write this note and think about traction, I was reminded of a really old blog post of mine. From April 2015. I know that sounds crazy. But it’s because it really is a core belief of mine. That it’s great to try a variety of things at first. But we should always be looking for where or when we see traction. And then double down on what works.
Lean six-sigma practitioners often do a review exercise called a stop, start, and continue. It’s a retrospective of sort that looks at what we are doing and separates it into these three buckets.
I believe it is a valuable exercise. All too often we can be focused on what is not working. Or brainstorming and problem solving about what we believe we should be doing. We forget or overlook what is actually working.
Sometimes there just is not enough drama to consider it, lol.
So…
I propose we change “stop, start, and continue” to “stop, start, and double down”.
Use your customer satisfaction measurements to hear where you are doing well. Focus on doing more of what ever that is. Throw your focus and energy into that.
That old blog post was titled “Don’t chase, double down on what is working”. It talked about a startup event I attended. One of the speakers, Miriam Tuerk, Co-founder and CEO of Clear Blue Technologies. talked about traction. That for startups it can take some time to be able to see in your metrics that you are gaining traction. But when you do it’s time to stop chasing and double down on what’s working.
I likened it to when I took up tennis as an adult. Initially I ran all over the court chasing the balls that were coming at me. When I got to another level, I learned to slow down and take a stronger more prepared shot.
So…
Even though real time dashboards do let us see things as they fly at us, it’s important to all look at our trends.
Where you see traction, double down on what is working.
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