If You Had A Magic Eraser, What Would You Erase?

Erasers, Remember The "Pink Pearl?"

Every business model has some things going on that are not working right.  Maybe some inventory categories are total losers?  Maybe some employee groups are never going to be productive?  Maybe one of the leaders has reached the Peter Principle ?  Maybe the demographics in the region have changed below the level of good support?  Maybe the location is not the best one to use?  Maybe the previous owners ruined the respect for good customer service?  Maybe the huge amount of debt is dragging the model down?  Something big needs to be erased.  If you could determine one thing that a magic eraser could remove, what would that be?  If you had a magic eraser, what would you erase?

I will sometimes sit in my office and think about stuff like this.  I try to imagine what my business model would look like if it were a better machine.  What would I change if I could?  What would I change first, if given the opportunity?  Who would I re-assign?  Who would I terminate?  Where would I like to see my profits work best?  I sit in my office and think about what kinds of stuff needs to be erased that my business model is currently doing?  I try to picture how I would use a magic eraser.

Have any of you tried this exercise?  If not, give it a whirl.  You will discover how you can think more freely about doing some more radical stuff to help improve your business performance.  You might discover a new way to look at complicated issues.  I once had an interior design instructor give a simple piece of advice.  He said in order to see a room in a more objective way was to take a small mirror and look backwards into that room.  See the room from a mirror.  Move the mirror around the room before you begin your evaluations.  You will see the room from a different perspective.  I appreciate seeing things from a different perspective.  It helps me widen my options.  More options allow me more choices.  More choices reach more diversity.  More diversity increases wider sales opportunities.  Wider sales opportunities offers more revenue chances.  Increasing revenue chances spells good growth potential.  I am a business owner, I like the sound of these kinds of things.  Increasing my perspective can open up some interesting options.

The problem with this process is that we often develop some very limiting obstacles that get in the way of this kind of thinking.  One of those obstacles is fear.  We are afraid to do some creative management because if it fails, the finger points in our direction.  We were the one who initiated the creative move.  Therefore, we must be the reason why the failed effort arrived.  Now we must face some criticism.  We hate that kind of stuff.  We hate it enough to keep us away from trying to risk having it happen.  Therefore we kill creative ideas and refuse to try them out.  We allow fear to win.  I once had a good business operator tell me what fear really was.  He said F.E.A.R. is False Evidence Appearing Real.  It is often true, however.  Sometimes the thought of fear is bigger then the reality of what fear truly brings.  We are humans and we allow fear to dominate how we move.  Everyone hits the brakes when they see a cop.  They hit the brakes event though they were not speeding.  That is exactly how fear works.  Business owners are no exception.  We fear stuff that should never be an issue on our plate of operations.

Fear dominates all of us.  It drives us to remain more safe than maybe we should be operating.  Life is already a great risk.  Do you drive an automobile?  I rest my case.  There are thousands of ways and opportunities for us to meet tragedy in one of those things.  I drive a lot, I know.  There are a lot of people out there who drive dangerously.  I saw a person on a motorcycle just yesterday, text-ing!  That is not a lie.  He was sharing that road he was on with my vehicle and my space!  Think about this stuff.  We take enormous risks in our lives and think nothing of it.  Why do we stop that process when we go into our business office?  Maybe we need to force ourselves to develop some interesting habits of operations?  Maybe we need to build in our mind an imaginary eraser.  Maybe we can use that eraser to perform some wonderful tricks.  Maybe we can learn how to erase a serious part of our business model that is not working very well.  Maybe during December, we can pick one of those rotten things we would like to erase and begin to imagine what it would be like to have it all gone.  Here, take this eraser out and start using it.

What would you erase if you could erase one thing without retribution?  What would it be?

I posed that same question to a close associate, recently.  His answer shocked me.  He did not answer it in exactly the same way I had expected.  I know him very well so his answer was a complete surprise to me.  I had not seen or heard this side of his thoughts before.  I was silent for a short bit.  It took me by surprise.

He has been in the roofing business for over 30 years.  He has been married, divorced and then re-married to a new wife.  He lives quite a distance form where I live.  We do not communicate as often as we used to when we lived closer together.  I know his first wife and a couple of his grown children.  His answer shocked me.  I asked, "If you had a magic eraser, what would you erase in your business life?"  He answered quickly and stuck to the one he offered.  He said, "My first family."  It jolted me.  Now you see why I was silent at first.  I did not expect that kind of answer.

The conversation proved to me that we all need to find a way to allow our fears to become better removed more often.  Had he been able to express himself many years ago with less fear, like he is doing now, he might have a better chance to manage how that life could have produced better results.  He was not actually trying to erase the people from his past, he was trying to erase the mistakes those relationships have grown to make.  Removing those people would permit him to remove the pain of the mistakes they all made along the way.  Trust me, I have made a few of them myself.  I might be making one right now.  I believe he reads my blog.

Our business life is mixed tightly with the people we share time with in this world.  I believe the better we produce good relationships, the better we will find the success trail.  In the end, those relationships will drive how we do what we do.  Those relationships we encounter in our business walk will tend to dominate how we decide what we decide.  They matter.  Using an imaginary eraser well will offer us a chance to see who we are and how we decide to do what we do.  The owner who wanted to erase these people from his life was not looking at their faces.  He was looking at their broken relationships.  If I could erase one thing in my current business world, it would be my lack of knowledge.  I would like to erase that component from the dealings in my business world.  I would like to have more knowledge.

I hate to take inventory.  It is tedious and time consuming.  What I hate the most about taking inventory is to reveal honestly what I do 'not' actually own.  Inventory reveals where we are short.  That is never really a fun thing to do.  I think that is exactly why many business owners 'cheat' by 'fudging' their inventory results.  Those owners hate to reveal the truth of where they are short.  It never feels good to admit our shortcomings.  Humans are not very talented at performing that skill.  We will freely admit we lack those skills but still protect ourselves from an honest assessment of where we truly lack.  We need to develop an imaginary eraser to help us see things from a different perspective.  We need to look backwards into the room of our business model and try to see it from a whole new perspective.  We need a mirror.  We need an imaginary eraser.  We need the wonderful tool of creativity.

Creativity is one of the seventeen principles to success.  Did you know that?  Several years ago I did not know that fact.  If you have recently divorced and your life is spiraling downward, get more creative.  Grab an imaginary eraser.  Make some imaginary changes.  See how they work out in your imaginary world.  Test how you would act if those things were erased from your life screen.  Who would you be?  What would you do?  Add those kinds of thoughts to your imagination.  Turn those creative thoughts into something your business model could use.  Do not allow fear to govern how you think.  Do not permit fear to limit where you decide to take your business model.  Erase the things that place those limits on how well you can perform.  Quit worrying about what isn't.  Start thinking about what could be.  Erase the things that are in your way to make this kind of effort become a reality.  Your business model is waiting for you to act.  Get on with it.  Erase the stuff that is holding you back.  Get out your magic eraser.  Start removing the stuff that is holding you down.

What would you truly erase first?

Until next time...