Are Your Business Methods Held In A “Day-Tight” Compartment?

I have sat in the passenger seat of many automobiles in my life.  Whatever the reason for being the passenger on these automobile trips, someone else did the driving.  I usually do the driving.  One thing I notice when I am the passenger, not every driver uses the same techniques.  In fact, some are kind of scary.  Some do not pay attention as much as I think they should.  I recall thinking about trying to convince a few of the drivers to allow me to finish doing the driving.  My goal was to make sure we arrived in one piece.

Automobile driving is a lot like building a business.  We do not get into the automobile without really knowing where we are going.  However, we do waste some trips.  Some of our trips were not as worthwhile as we first thought they might be.  Other trips were so quick we do not even remember taking them.  Occasionally, a trip is so good we wonder why we have not taken this one before.  Some trips are not very much fun at all.  Some we take because we have to, not because we want to.  Some of our trips included passengers we do not really like.  Also, some of the destinations we drove to were not the ones we really enjoyed.  Once in awhile, we got lost.  I remember driving many times when an accident nearly happened.  I remember being surprised and having to quickly react to avoid a terrible crash.  I remember falling asleep when I was at the steering wheel.  I remember getting mad at the other drivers and doing some stupid road rage stuff to get even with their stupidity.  I remember turning around because we realized we forgot something.  I remember turning around because we did not like where we were going.  I remember fighting and arguing with my wife while I was trying to drive.

I remember thinking how mad I was when the government said I needed to wear a seat belt.  At the time, that rule just seemed like too much.  I have driven too fast, too slow and too reckless to be proud of managing my automobile very well.  I have used my cell phone while driving my car.  I shave, brush my teeth, talk on the phone, eat food and drink coffee while I am driving.  I have driven vehicles that were dangerous to drive.  I have driven vehicles that were difficult to drive.  I have driven on roads that were not very safe to navigate.  I have driven in weather that should have caused a tragic wreck.  Guess what?  Operating a business includes a lot of these same characteristics.  Driving an automobile is a lot like building a business.  They are very much the same in a lot of ways.

One of the things drivers do not do when they get behind the wheel of their vehicle, they cannot function safely by treating the trip as if they are the only ones on the road.  Drivers must share the rules, the road and the spaces they use with other people and other things.  The trip always has a ton of obstacles in the road.  Drivers must learn how to navigate those obstacles.  Sometimes a driver needs to go west for a bit in order to end up somewhere in the east.  They cannot just drive straight east through some farmers field that has not been made into a road.  They must stay on the pavement even though it may wind around the wrong direction for a few miles before it leads back into the correct direction.  Drivers cannot navigate their vehicles well in a 'day-tight' compartment.  Sometimes it will take 162 miles to actually travel 91 miles to a destination.  Sometimes it will take 6 hours to arrive at a place that should have taken about 3 hours to do.  Obstacles simply got in the way.  To drive successfully requires the person behind the wheel to operate outside of a 'day-tight' compartment.  Drivers need to become more flexible.  A driver cannot safely hold the freeway speed at 65 miles per hour while going through a construction zone.  They cannot go 65 miles per hour next to standing workers who are flagging along side a bumpy 'make-shift' detour.  Staying in a 'day-tight' compartment would be foolish and dangerous driving.

Business owners need to understand this rule.  Drivers usually get it.  Business owners often miss it.  The roads to success in business have many hidden obstacles that business owners often ignore.  Warning signs are everywhere but owners sometimes refuse to read them.  Many owners have the foot down on the gas and believe the fast speed they are driving in their business is the best way to operate.  They become enclosed into a 'day-tight' compartment.  I have watched many owners drive their businesses at full speed right through some of the bumpiest roads anyone could endure.  They also experience a tragic business wreck.  It may be a wreck that easily could have been avoided.  Business methods do not need to be held in a 'day-tight' compartment.  They need to be flexible.


Drive your business more like you would drive your car.  Become very flexible.  There is no shame nor harm in becoming a very flexible operator.  In the world today, flexibility is one of the key components to success.  Learn how to get out of the 'day-tight' compartments you may be using to manage your business methods.  Some of those 'day-tight' compartments may be hindering your potential growth.  Every business owner has developed some methods they practice and they keep those methods closely monitored in 'day-tight' compartments.  We all do it somewhere.  Examine those methods closely.  Work on finding what methods you practice that you keep closely monitored.

Once you are able to identify what those methods are that you keep wrapped up into 'day-tight' compartments, write them down on a piece of paper.  You do not need to describe them, just write a word or two that gives them some kind of identification.  One of my 'day-tight' compartments is how much I work on finding out what types of decisions are bad ones.  I hold that process in a very tight compartment, every day.  Whether I like it or not, that simple method becomes a good part of who I am as a leader.  It is held in a 'day-tight' compartment for a reason.  It is protected because it is part of who I am.  In fact, I might not be able to completely identify all of my 'day-tight' compartments.  Some of those compartments I actually hide from myself.  We all do this.  It ain't no big deal.  I would just as soon work on changing the ones we can identify rather than doing some heavy work on the deeper ones we do not understand, the ones we tend to suppress more deeply.  We will leave those deeper ones alone.  I do not mind using a shovel or two to dig up some junk, but some junk is better left buried.

Select And Work On One Method At A Time

For now, describe on a written list a couple of methods you hold in 'day-tight' compartments and set them aside for a day or two.  Forget about them for now.  Leave the list set aside somewhere for a few days.  Then after a couple of days, return to see if the list has become the true ones you practice.  You will know if they are true when you come back to the list a couple of days later.  If you did not practice these methods on your list, they are not true.  You lied to yourself.  I lie to myself all of the time.  However, on this project, let's skip the lies.  When you come back to the list you will immediately know if they are true or not.  You will also know if they are not true because stronger ones will appear in your mind when you read the list you made a couple of days ago.  When that happens, you now have the right list.  Write the new ones down.  The new ones in your mind are the true ones you practiced the most during the past couple of days.  They are the ones you hold in your 'day-tight' compartments.  These are the ones you practice in your 'day-tight' methods of your business.  You hold them dearly within their proper and trusted compartments.  Write one of them down.  Some of those on the list are the ones that may be holding you up.  We are going to go to work on one of them.

I selected mine.  You select the one you want to work on.  Now we are going to make these methods a strong part of our conscious awareness.  We are going to try to move them from the involuntary role they currently play and transfer them into becoming a bigger part of our thinking roles.  We actually may not change them.  All we want to do is make sure we use some heavy thinking about them before we continue to use them.  Each time we involuntarily resort to use this 'day-tight' compartment we selected to work on, we want our mental lights to go off like loud alarms.  We want to make sure we are aware of the fact that we are using this particular 'day-tight' compartment.  We want to make sure we are using our thinking capacities to continue to use this 'day-tight' method.   We no longer want to allow our 'natural' instincts to manage this method of decision-making.  We want to change how we allow this process to work on one of our 'day-tight' compartments.  We are going to focus on changing how we do this one method.  Just one, that is all.

Work on this project for about one month.  Go ahead and try to change it up a little bit.  You will not fail in business because you changed one little 'day-tight' method.  However, you will notice some of your patterns of operation will be altered a little bit.  Pay close attention to how others react to your changing approaches.  Allow some time for the absorption to mature.  Some changes may occur very slowly.  Be patient with this experiment.  Keep in mind all new ideas are met with resistance.  You will face some pockets of resistance.  It is natural.  You will be practicing some new changes.  You will experience some resistance.  Get over it and move on to working this project.  Your business will not die.

Do not openly share this project with anyone else.  Keep it to yourself.  This is a project you are working on with yourself, about yourself and to yourself.  Nobody else needs to be involved.  The only involvement others will experience is what they may see or feel in how you have changed what you previously protected.  You will see and feel some changed reactions from that process, yourself.  Changing a method that has become a silent part of your 'day-tight' compartments will be difficult to perform.  However, the lessons you gain form working on one will lead you to believe how important some of the others may be to consider expanding the process.  This is what they mean when they say, "Think, And Grow Rich."  It is not always about money.  Richness is more importantly in the mind.

Work the mind with more thinking than before and learn how to manage your 'day-tight' compartments more openly.  Your business methods will be pleased with the results.  Go ahead and do this simple project.  It will not kill your business and it will teach you a great deal about a lot of important things.

Until next time...