The short answer is…you. But how does this relate to my business?
Confront The Brutal Facts
Confront the Brutal Facts comes from Jim Collins’s book, Good to Great – why some companies make the leap…and others don’t. Collins describes this principle like this:
“Confront the Brutal Facts is a concept, along with its companion concept The Stockdale Paradox, developed in the book Good to Great. Productive change begins when you confront the brutal facts. Every good-to-great company embraced what we came to call “The Stockdale Paradox” you must maintain unwavering faith that you can and will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, and at the same time, have the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.” – Jim Collins
“Productive change begins when you confront the brutal facts.” Many owner-operators (us included) may think they need more sales, and more customers because their cash flow isn’t great. They believe sales and marketing can be their silver bullet. Quite frankly, if you are having cash flow issues right now, marketing and advertising will accelerate your downfall.
You must come to terms with where exactly you are. You need to confront the brutal facts. Do you have the means to execute a marketing system that will require investment? Do you even know what that number looks like? How big is your market? How much of the market do you have?
Stop and get a sense of where exactly you are. Absolutely have hope but do not turn a blind eye to other parts, and functions of your business.
We might have scared people away here, but for us, finances are vital. They support your marketing and innovation efforts, however, we don’t want to be partnering, or collaborating with people that are ignoring reality.
So what is holding you back? You. You (we) tend to ignore the facts that will help us get to where we want to go. Either through laziness, being uncomfortable, or just fear.
How can you confront the brutal facts?
A great exercise is to simply write down the facts. Bring them into the light. Not opinions, or subjective statements. Where are things at? Can you prove these are indeed facts? Start there, and you will enter into the upper 20% of effective executives looking at data that is real.
