What This Book is REALLY About
By John Counsel
The reason I hope you’re reading this book is to gain useful, reliable knowledge, perspectives, attitudes and skills that can help you make a success of your small business.
The key to success lies in three simple principles. Here’s the first one:
- “Do the right things for the right reasons.”
Sounds too simple, doesn’t it? So let’s rephrase it to give it a clearer meaning.
- “Do ONLY do the right things – for ONLY the right reasons.”
It’s not good enough to do the wrong things for the right reasons. “The end justifies the means” is the classic, Macchiavellian Win-Lose political philosophy that destroys trust, shatters relationships and, ultimately, robs you of the very results you’re seeking. (As we’ll see in “The Winning Perspective”, there’s no such thing as Win-Lose or Lose-Win. They’re both counterfeits. They’re just Lose-Lose posing as a Win to deceive you.)
Doing the right things for the wrong reasons – “the means justify the end” – makes no sense at all.
And doing the wrong things for the wrong reasons is more than self defeating. It’s downright suicidal!
The real secret, of course, is to know what the right things are – and what the right reasons are. Until you discover what they are, then actually do them, you can never gain control of the processes involved, so you can never control the results they create.
Which brings us to the second principle of success:
- “To ensure a predictable, desirable result, you must first gain control of the process that produces it.” (See “The Oyster Principle”.)
There’s no other way.
We understand this principle when it comes to manufacturing. We research and develop the process that will produce the end product (result), then focus on getting that process totally under control.
It’s like baking a cake. We have a recipe (the process) that we must follow faithfully if we want a predictable, desirable result – an edible, delicious cake that people want to eat – and we interfere with that recipe at our peril.
If we substitute cement powder for the flour, we’ll get a predictable result. But it won’t be very desirable.
If the recipe says to bake the mixture at, say, 300º Fahrenheit for 45 minutes, and we’re pressed for time, so we bake it for just 15 minutes at 900º, the same thing happens: the result is predictable, but not particularly desirable.
It’s against the law to force people to give you the results you want. It’s also against the law to deceive them to gain those results. Extortion and fraud are felonies that carry severe penalties. Putting a loaded gun to a customer’s forehead and telling them to “buy or die!” will produce a predictable result. You’ll go to jail. If your defence is that the gun wasn’t loaded, you’ll still go to jail!
A predictable result… but not really desirable.
And that brings us to the third principle of success:
- “Only two things count — quantity and quality.”
This is the central issue of life itself. Who wants to live to be 100 if those years are all spent on a life support system? And who cares about the most fabulous lifestyle if you’re going to die next week?
Even when we die, it’s still the central issue: everyone wants to live forever… but we want to go to heaven, not to hell.
Having a predictable result is not enough. All we have is quantity.
But, when that result is desirable, we have both quantity and quality.
It’s the same in business. We don’t want to make just enough profit to survive. We want to prosper.
Then again, if we’re really profitable and have a huge quantity of money, but we’re so busy producing it that we have no time left to enjoy it, we don’t have quality.
It’s all about maintaining a careful balance between quantity and quality. Between right things and right reasons. Between process and result.
So lets revisit those three principles of success:
- “Do ONLY the right things – for ONLY the right reasons.”
- “If you want to gain a predictable, desirable result, you must first gain control of the process that produces it.”
- “Only two things count – quantity and quality.”
It’s all about cause (right reasons, processes) and effect (right things, results).
In each case, we need to exercise control.
We need to control the connection between our motives and behaviour so that we always do the right things for the right reasons.
We need to control the processes in order to control the results.
We need to control the balance between quantity and quality.
Which brings us to The Big Dilemma:
- “You can never control what you can’t define”.
Why?
Because if you can’t define something, you don’t know what you’re talking about or dealing with. It’s as simple as that.
The problem for most people is that they can’t tell the difference between defining and describing. Ask them for a definition and they’ll usually give you a description. They’re not the same things at all.
A definition, when it applies to human behaviour, ideally spells out the cause and effect relationship involved… WHY it works. A description deals only with the effects… HOW it works (or how it makes you feel). For example, ask someone to tell you why their business works (the principles and motives), and they’ll almost certainly start telling you how it works (the structures, the methods, the procedures).
Because effects are so familiar to us, while causes are usually hidden, we tend to focus only on the effects. If we have a headache, we take a pain killer. If the pain eases, we think that the problem – the cause – is gone.
But what if the cause of the headache is a brain tumour?Pain is not a medical problem. It’s just a symptom of the real problem. It’s an effect.
Just like lack of sales in your business.
Lack of sales is not a business problem, despite what most business owners think. It’s just a symptom – an effect – of a more serious cause.
Why aren’t your products or services selling? Or, more to the point, why aren’t people buying from you?
Being able to define cause and effect is crucial to being able to do the right things for the right reasons.
Being able to define cause and effect is indispensable to controlling a process in order to control the result.
And being able to define cause and effect is equally vital to controlling the balance between quantity and quality.
That’s what this book is really about.…
- Definition.
Accurate perspective.
Control.
Balance.
Predictability.
Desirability.So you can define and control the right things and the right reasons.
So you can define and control the processes that produce predictable, desirable results.
And so you can define and control the balance between quantity and quality.
It achieves this by putting small business at arms length and stripping away the intricate methodologies, myths and mumbo jumbo that obscure the accurate perspectives needed to understand the true cause-and-effect relationships involved.
In other words, this book is not about how small business works. It’s about why.
When you only know how, without knowing why, your ability to produce a predictable, desirable outcome is severely limited. If things go wrong, you have no idea why. So you can’t fix the problem. You’re not in control.
Predictable. But not desirable.
On the other hand, if you understand why, even if you don’t know how, you’ll soon work out your own methods for achieving a predictable, desirable result because you’re in control of the cause-and-effect process.
It’s interesting, isn’t it, how we never want to learn why things work – we just want to learn how. (Even instruction manuals are pre-occupied with how to operate things. They rarely explain why we should do the things they tell us to do. Even scarier, dictionaries rarely define anything – they just describe, compare, contrast, put words in context so we can deduce the meaning, or offer words with similar meaning.)
Is it any wonder that 90% of small business people fail?
Or that most of those who do manage to survive work far too long, and much too hard, for too little money?
Reading this book will be the right thing for you to do.
But only if you read it for the right reasons.
Taken from
“Don’t Go Into Small Business
Until You Read This Book!”
by John Counsel
Small Business Books 1996
© 1996, 1997 by John Counsel
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