It's Time to STOP

This post is going to be short and simple.

One of the most overused quotes on the Internet - maybe in general - is by Albert Einstein. "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

There's a reason it's overused. It's because people still constantly do the same thing and expect different results. Here's my response. "Duh."

There's another quote. "Fail fast." I'm not sure who said it first, so I'll leave it unattributed. My response? "Bravo"

And herein lies the problem.

People are resistant to change and are usually afraid to pull the plug on something that's failing. They'll keep doing it and they'll expect it to start working at some point. They'll pump time and money into it without thinking about how that time and money could be better spent.

That leads me to my next quote. "If you can't measure it, you can't manage it." Now, I don't fully believe in this one. For example, how do you quantify creativity? But it's right - so right - on many levels. If you can't quantify something, it's near impossible to know whether it's working.

So let me create a new quote that, perhaps, brings all of this together.

"If you don't define success, you'll never know if you have it. The same goes for failure."

When was the last time you took an "outside looking in" view of everything your company does? How about the ways that you do things?

Sales, marketing, websites and social media. Customer service, product and service delivery and support. Human resources, management and hiring. Personnel and leadership. External and internal services. What works and what doesn't?

How about what you do? What you sell? Or, more importantly, what you do that doesn't sell.

It's Summer right now. It's a great time to reflect on what you do and how you do it. It's a great time to define success and failure, and hold everything up to those definitions. Grow a backbone. Embrace change. Clean house. Start shedding.

It's time to STOP.

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Chris is Managing Partner of Fair Winds Strategies, a firm that provides small and medium sized businesses with Fortune services at affordable prices. Prior to this he was the Chief Innovation Officer at Internet Marketing Ninjas where he managed M&A activity, legal work, and also focused on the use of technology and other solutions to lead innovation and growth. Before IMN, Chris led the sale of his $10mil information technology company, twice an Inc500 fastest growing company in the US, to an investment banking firm in NYC. Follow Fair Winds Strategies on Twitter @FWStrategies.