Launch
March 19th, 2006
Welcome to The Change Engine. Oh, how I love a good launch. Opportunity for improvement abounds. No matter how good you are, you can always be better.
That sounds like an intro to a story.
Once upon a time I was in manufacturing. I was always impressed with what I could do. I was hot! Man I just knew we could do it faster and better than anyone else. I bragged about our quality, and our incredible customer service and delivery. I mean we were it. I could talk your leg off about what we could do. And I didn’t just talk it, man I believed it, to the CORE, and with every breath. Which I’m sure was the real reason for our success. Why am I sure?
A few years later I transitioned out of that business and was selling equipment to the very people I had been competing with in that business years before. I was actually going into my former competitor’s shops and poking around and asking questions and making suggestions. Here’s what I found out: It wasn’t true, it wasn’t close, I had deceived myself, we were merely ok. There were plenty of companies out there that had been flat out blowing us away all along. With creativity, with efficiency, with delivery, and customer service. It was all in my head (and in the heads of those customers I had managed to convince). After quite a long time of reflection I decided that if I had not been so sure of myself, maybe I could have learned a few things from someone else and would have been better for it.
What is the moral to this story? Well there are probably several.
1. Belief can take you quite a long way.
2. You probably have a lot to learn even if you think you know it all.
3. And this one is similar to 2: You don’t know, what you don’t know.
To my clients: Please believe me, I learned my lesson. Now we really are the best, most creative, with the best customer service.
Here we go!