Keep, create, discard

Three little words can change your life, in business and personally: Keep, Create, Discard.

I really enjoy the opportunity of working with these terrific people and helping them solve their problems and work through their challenges, and I notice how much easier it is to work through problems when you are outside the problem!

Last week one of my CEOs, who is a great student of life and business, came across the three words: Keep, Create, Discard.

The idea of these words is to take a look at our business or life and keep what is working, create new systems, ideas, plans where we need them, and discard what is not working.

This may be a good process to put in place either for yourself personally or in your business on a regular basis. To do this we need to have accurate information about our business (I am amazed at the number of businesses that are run without accurate financial information) without that we can’t decide what to discard or keep.

If we know the margins of each of our services or products we know what to focus our attention on; similarly, if we have these figures by client, we can identify our most valuable clients.

Of course we may also have products/services or clients for reasons other than immediate income but, if our figures are clear our focus becomes clear.

Similarly, in our lives we may be spending time and effort on those things that give us not only little money but worse still little happiness; these are definitely the things we may wish to discard.

Similarly a good, hard look at our life may lead us to the idea that we need to create some new interesting activities, income streams or even more fun!

A focused look will also tell us what is working, what we need to keep. Don’t make the mistake of discarding what is working for you.

This is where a mentor may be of assistance, someone who can objectively assess the things we may sometimes get too attached to!

To read more Marcia Griffin blogs, click here.