Bad Profit Mechanics Comes From Impatience.

What?

Damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead.  This is a famous phrase.  It denotes the need to forge ahead at all costs to get something done immediately.  The thinking suggests that there are times when a certain level of loss is actually permitted to be calculated within the structure of making a better move ahead, usually political in nature.  Go ahead, wreck the ship, we can worry about fixing the damage later.  We just need some good results to appear right now.  The thinking implies that in order to get good results later we will ignore the losses we calculate to accept now.  We concede to pay the price today in order to arrange for better play tomorrow.  This theory truly has no business playing ball in the profit centers of a small private business.  No effort can bring back the profits that were forced to be lost.  The profit losses designed to occur will become lost forever.  All losses must somehow be paid for in the end.  Private business cannot function long term accepting this kind of routine approach.  For that matter, neither can governments.  The problem we see in most governments, they design their system to operate at a loss.  What's worse, the patrons actually accept this kind of design as being normal.  It is not, but it becomes familiar enough to run in tandem with our decisions to accept.  Unfortunately, this phrase and its suggested methods often dominate some small business profit concepts.  Damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead runs well too common among many business models.

This kind of concept promotes bad profit mechanics.  There are no good designs resting inside this whole concept.  If you constantly wreck your ship by running it ashore to get back to land, your ship repair bills out run the revenues you generate from being on shore.  Stop using this method and your future profits will increase.  Quit sacrificing your assets, your energy and your good values by intentionally damaging them to get better future numbers in a specific area of your focus.  It is stupidity, justified.  Your small business model will never grow up strong with this kind of thinking.  Too many really smart people get way too smart to respect the harm this kind of plan promotes.  Do not damn the torpedoes, and run full steam ahead.  The calculated losses are not worth the trip and the cost of the resulting repairs.

Let's examine how we get too smart to see the damage this kind of planning provides.  We get so smart we sometimes stink in results.  We think we are so calculating, so intelligent, so clever that we come up with plans that are surrounded by pseudo winning concepts.  Since we can define how our thinking works towards a better goal, we accept what losses we must endure to get that goal immediately served.  We want instant success so badly that we are actually willing to pay a stiffer calculated loss to quickly promote the justified arrival of a goal our patience can't absorb.  Now...my business friends...that is the real truth.  We can use our intelligence to calculate a plan that will include a sacrifice of profits in order to reach a more desirable goal.  We will actually pretend and convince ourselves that the losses we calculate to accept do not ever need to be re-paid.  We believe this foolishness to be true.  We get too smart with our intelligent ways to justify loss as we expedite impatience.  It is the main ingredient to the invisibility of why a business model continues providing its future with levels of plagued failure

Smart people sometimes do not get it.  This whole concept is likely why only a very small percent of all business owners produce basically all of our world's profitable success.  It might be that as little as 3% produce over 90% of the world's profits.  Too many people operating within the hidden confines of this stupid phrase.  Forcing a planned loss is stupid stuff.  It reflects damaged thinking.  It reflects a level of great impatience.  It might even suggest a politically motivated slant.  Shame on us for getting this simple concept wrong.

Let's take a huge current example and break it down.  Let's challenge how invisible these stupid thoughts can run.  Let's go to the phrase.  We can apply this phrase to a current business move that was exposed to millions in a flash of wrongs that looked like rights.  Damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead is the center of thinking that can show how easily wrong thoughts get moved to the top of our intelligent beliefs.  We like to perform stupid thoughts when our impatience runs thin.  We are more apt to allow the pressure of time to enter our views so we can work on our logic to arrange for more expedient results.  At that point of pressure, the losses we must endure do not glow anymore.  They become part of our intelligent plan.  We actually plan to lose what we will lose.  It becomes part of our intelligent work.  We actually accept driving a loss as a benefit to receive a better dressed future result.  We want that better result now so we must find a justifiable way to accept the price we would be willing to pay.  We can calculate what loss we would be willing to promote in order to paint a better outcome now.  We intelligently promote what levels of stupidity we can eventually support.  We are smarter than we thought.  That is exactly why some winners lose.  It is also why some losers never win.

I have a perfect example.  You will not like it.  In my mind, it ain't rocket science.  But I like winning more often.  Most do not.  Most spend way too much time working on intelligent ways to calculate why they justify loss.  I do not spend time working on my losing ways in this fashion.  I do lose a lot.  I accept that part of my management ways.  I know I will have some lost profits with what I sometimes decide to do.  I get beat when things turn out wrong.  That is part of the game.  Losing happens.  However, I do not like the idea of intentionally making a loss happen to build up a better view for someone else to see.  I do not like to practice getting too smart to accept a loss.  If my plans do not work profitably, I do not damn the torpedoes and forge straight ahead so I can desperately sacrifice quality efforts, quality faith, quality respect for the right things we make and to permit my impatience to rule my thoughts.  I like winning clean.  I will take my losses with perfect stride.  They are part of what happens when we risk doing what we do.  You will never catch me planning to lose on purpose.  I will not be counted in that line of smart people.  I suggest to those who prefer to win more often, go the other way.  Do not buy in on those intelligent ideas that are arranged to accept how we should arrange our play to actually lose on purpose to gain a better looking set of immediate results.  It is pure stupidity with layers of clothing that look very intelligent.  Refuse to play that way.

Now...for the great example.  In the end...bad profit mechanics come from impatient ways.  Let's take a look.

We Sometimes Get Too Smart For Our Own Good!

The Super Bowl.  I watched it.  I actually liked it.  I watched it for the football.  I like watching football.  I enjoy all of the other included parts of the entertainment cycles that come with this major marketing event but if the football game was not part of those other things, I would not sit down and watch the event.  I would go do something else.  I watched the Super Bowl because I like watching football.

I especially liked that wonderful sideline catch in the last Giant drive.  I watch the game to see this kind of extraordinary play.  It was a phenomenal catch.  It made the game turn out the way it did.  It was a game changer.  All else was just part of a good game.  Everything else the players and coaches did during the whole game was to be expected and routine for Super Bowl happenings.  That unique catch, at the time it occurred, was the one simple thing that changed how the outcome would work.  That catch drove up the group belief for the Giant players that was necessary to carry them through their exhausted pains.  It came at a time when they needed it most.  It helped lift up their spirits to believe they could do what was necessary to win.  It provided some solid dynamics to the winning ways most great teams learn to perfect.  It also killed some of the spirit the Patriots had during a time when the pressure was squeezing their patience.  It set in motion some not so good thoughts.  You could hear that truth in the sounds from the fans.  You could see it in the faces of the sideline players and the coaching staff.  The thought of losing was at the door.  It was obvious.

Bad profit mechanics come from impatience.  We lose our faith and slip backwards with our minds.  Our play begins to reveal how far back our thoughts have been reeled.  This kind of thing happens in the business world.  Did you know that?  It does.  Losers get caught up within the battle they fight next to the things that enter their minds.  Business leaders work like troubled coaches.  Staff and players feel the pinch.  Impatience takes over.  Intelligence gets tested.  Honor and integrity gets pushed aside.  We eventually find ways to justify how we can damn the torpedoes to full steam ahead.  We calculate what we can cut off to help us make it better to receive it sooner.  We get too smart for our own britches.  We use rationale as our immediate defense.  We will actually convince ourselves to believe that if we "let" them score we can win the game.  We get impatient because we need more time.  We forget to honor what a great group of players we have and lose faith in believing that they will stop them cold from scoring on this drive.  I have seen hundreds of fumbles on goal line stances that have changed the game from one way to the other.  I have seen hundreds of blocked and missed field goals under the goal posts that have changed the outcome of some destined victories.  I have seen only a small few 20-second long field drives actually work to win a game that was on the line.  How stupid can we get?  Most missed it.  Bad profit mechanics come from impatience.

When you accept the method to force a calculated loss to win a game, you will lose more often than you will win.  It is not rocket science.  We just want to believe it is clever thinking.  It is not.  Get rid of this kind of stupidity if you own your business.  What looks intelligent is not.  Winners do not lose on purpose.  Instead, they carry will, determination, faith, belief, extra effort, respect, persistence, strength, sound thinking and many other great qualities that help them mold more wins than they lose.  They also accept a loss when they see it arrive.  They will never get caught feeding it to exist.  Never.  Do not buy in on the idea that damning the torpedoes, full steam ahead is the correct way to win the game of business play.  Do not write off a bunch of old slow selling stuff to get them out of the way of your operating numbers for the next years budget!  Do not accept our routine desires to justify how to intelligently create the losses we force.  Do not ever allow the opposing team to score on purpose.  That is a total lack of respect for the players you teach how to rise up to the occasion that was seen by the receiver who caught that sideline ball!  There is nothing more demoralizing than a leader who does not understand how much damage he delivers to the ones trying to stop the score, when he expresses his loss of faith in the work they do!  Oh my.  I would not want to be standing in his shoes of lost leadership.

Bad profit mechanics come from impatience.  Bad profit mechanics will cost you your future leadership as well.  As a result, you will need to accept losing more often in the future.  Your plans may be too smart to produce protection from the losses you accept.  Do not ever accept losing on purpose.  It is not rocket science.  It is just more difficult to see than most intelligent leaders can understand.  I watched a great coach compromise his leadership ways on that final game of the last Super Bowl.  He dropped his ranks down from the great coaches of the past.  He no longer can stand next to the pictures of the Coach Browns or Lombardi's.  I think they may have rolled over in their graves when they witnessed him take that loss on purpose.  Business people do this kind of crap all of the time.  I am never surprised at what I see.  Most of it is political in nature.  A lot of it is masked as intelligence.  I tend to differ.  They do not fully comprehend the art of good economics.  That is likely why our huge government runs its debt package out of control, and always has.  Bad profit mechanics come from impatience.  Have faith, get more patient with your planed defense.  Control better what you are forcing to lose.  If you fail to get your planned losses under control, you will forever be faced with losing ways.

Ships are not cheap to repair.  Make sure you do not forge them ahead while you ignore the torpedoes coming to harm.  Quit planning to lose.  It is sheer stupidity dressed in an intelligent mask.

Until next time...