Another Random Excerpt

Chapter 11

Thirty Principles

Guidelines for Decision Making and Action

After the physical, mental and business nightmare, and the ensuing “enlightenment,” I created the Strategic Objective which delineated our goals and outlined a methodology for success. Then, the reconstruction began. We created, tested and documented new systems for handling situations that repeated themselves over and over again. As we worked through this process of getting control of recurring situations, things began to improve quickly as our collection of procedures guaranteed positive results every time, and as much of the work became automated. It didn’t matter what recurring demand surfaced, the end result was nearly always a good result. No more hit and hiss; no more errors of omission – most of the time.

There was an omission in the overall process though, and that was what to do when a new situation came up for which there was no documented procedure. There were lots of these situations, actually; enough so that we began to come up with general processes to catch these unpredictable and ususally one-of-a-kind situations. If we could not go to an exact 1-2-3 step process, we could use a general protocol that would easily translate to even the most complex and unexpected challenge.

The simple and nearly automatic response to handling unique challenges was nothing short of absurdly simple. We began to gather a collection of Principles for Operation. Putting together these “Rules for Decision Making and Action,” gave me more personal satisfaction that anything else we were able to accomplish. Putting the list together allowed me to dig deep into my experience, including the considerable reading that had become my habit over the years. And, here was the opportunity to walk-the-talk of what I believed deep down.

What we found out later was that these guidelines were really “hoops.” They were ” hoops that had to be jumped through” before the first efforts were taken...  To be continued...

Note: I am maybe 40% through with the book and am still aiming for an August publication. We will self-publish and then go on the road with it. If we find a publisher later, great. If not, that's OK too.-sc