Discernment and Decision Making, Are You Smarter Than a 6 Year Old?

Sometimes we make decision-making harder than it needs to be.

My family and I recently moved into a new home - new as in new to us - and the faucets and fixtures are from the 80's. This has practical implications for our family as our eldest child is still just 6 years old and thus none of our kids can turn on the faucet in their bathroom to wash their hands without help.

As responsible parents we're preparing to replace the faucets and my son (the aforementioned 6 year old) asked, "If the faucets are bad why did we even move in here?"

In his mind in that moment the faucets were the most important aspect of the house and they didn't work we must have made a mistake. We shared with him that the home is a better fit for our growing family, it gives us more space etc and he walked away chewing on our sage words.

As adults we look at that example and it's clear you'd never choose not to live in a house because of something so small as the faucets. Not only is it a trivial aspect of the home but it's also easily addressable. However, we see these same things happening all the time with publishers and business owners.

A contractor in Colorado said he didn't have a website because, "he's too small." What?!? A website saves a business time by answering common questions not to mention attracting new customers which would help him to be less-small.

Publishers have similar gut reactions. We regularly have print publishers join us who make a fuss about having their 'subscription pages' just so and when we ask them about it they say something like, "we hate dealing with subscription" or "we get about 10 per year but have always had them." These insignificant or non-strategic activities are thus standing in the way of ushering in a new chapter for their business that includes truly significant revenue opportunities.

The status quo or current fire should not get in the way of progress. For those of you who've followed our blog for much time, you'll recall our posts about being too busy to be profitable, the 5 things publishers should be doing but probably aren't, or our Office Hours covering Blue Ocean Strategy and one of the key tenets is ERRC - Eliminate, Reduce, Raise, Create... as in what can you eliminate from your business, offering, process etc so you can focus your time on something more valuable?

So, I'll challenge you to think about the conversations you've had over the last week or even the last day and ask, "are you smarter than a 6 year old?"