Shaking My Head

There are so many instances where I’ve heard someone say this to me in the last number of months. Here are some examples of what I’ve heard.

“I’m shaking my head…

• wondering how we got talked into this.”
• at these guys who push their rotation trying to get a big payday.”
• trying to figure out how they can keep getting more credit when I can’t.”
• at these guys who haven’t learned from the mistakes of others.”
• at these guys who keep going full throttle when they don’t know their numbers. Do they even have a clue how they’re doing?”
• at how some of these guys just keep spending. Where is it coming from?”
• why we didn’t buy that land 5 years ago.”
• why we paid so much to rent that land 2 years ago.”
• trying to figure out how anyone can be profitable paying that kind of rent.”
• at what it’s going to take for the people who need help the most to realize they need help!”

While these aren’t my words, I concur with most of them. We must not punish ourselves by berating yesterday’s decision because of today’s new perspective. We can’t change the past, we can only move forward. BUT, we can apply future risk management to today’s opportunities when determining what decision to make.

To Plan for Prosperity

Lately at most of the events which I’ve been speaking, I’ve been giving reference to “the ripple effect.” This pertains to the effect that today’s decisions will have on other aspects of our business, especially future results. We often see long term decisions being made (especially around land, buildings, and equipment) based on short term results (Eg. one year’s profitability.) I continue to be a proponent of “long term assets securing long term debt” and if you subscribe to that logic, then shouldn’t long term decisions be based on long term results?