Rookie errors are normally associated with people new to their activity, business or niche, something obvious that more experienced operatives have learned from bitter experience.
Or is that the case? I frequently find well established organisations making the same mistakes repeatedly. It is not so much a case of “if you’ve always done what you’ve always done, you always get…”, it is more a matter of learning and awareness subordinated for ‘wolf from the door’ approaches that deliver at least unimpressively and sometimes even catastrophically.
Examples include:
-The marketing company, whose own promotions are grammatically incorrect and/or misspelled.
-The office or retail outlet, that fails to post details of variations to its opening times for Covid, holidays, festivals and the like.
-The online sales company that doesn’t give comprehensive dimensions or accurate descriptions of their products, so that the consumer is prevented from making a considered, confident purchase in the abstract (which is precisely what an online sale is).
-The company that inhibits the best use of its services because it is vague about its fees.
-The company that procures a business system/solution without insight into the implementation impact. —
-Practices involving poor communication with staff, lack of role clarity, projection of blame onto others.
The list goes on….
Sales have become a numbers game for some where the relational space between the customer and the seller is entirely situational to the sale itself. There is a real danger in salespeople imputing a closer, more responsive relationship than is sustainable, the customer responds accordingly only to find that that relationship was truly only contingent upon sale and once completed, the connection disappointingly pales. Many business owners make the basic mind-set error of believing their accountant or FD deals with everything financial, thus perceptually relieving them of this burden. There is no organisational or business decision that is not a financial one and leaders must understand and own finance, rather than see the issue as managed “over there”.
Remember also groupthink, that ability to prize affiliation and group cohesion over objectivity so that the team or board, works at a relational level but develops selective blind spots to organisational problems, market fluctuations, mental health and company wealth. It’s led to many an organisation going bust, faction, directors at war, litigation and absurd company valuations that inhibit growth, investment and excellence.
I see it all in my coaching practice. The good, the exceptional, the abdicative and often, just the ‘not thought through’. Many people come to coaches for high level inspiration and direction, and that’s valuable to a certain extent, but the basics have to be considered, and those basics are so often absent from both company and leadership practices.
Attention to detail matters. That’s why it is important to review and reflect upon one’s business and understand not only where you are coming from, but where the organisation is going.
There are over fifty human cognitive biases that ensure that we do not always see the world in an objective and focused way. Most wellknown amongst these is confirmation bias, seeking evidence that confirms a decision that one already has arrived at. This bias plays a key role in processes such as “groupthink”, but it is not alone. A selective synthesis of biases results in particular definitions of reality prevailing over others in our personal perceptions or groups.
The value of using reflective practice, therefore, cannot be overstated. It is often best done by speaking to an independent person who is not vested in the business. The opportunity to vocalise issues that are normally held internally, explore them in detail, receive challenge, think them through and make changes can frankly amount to gold dust in terms of both organisational and personal development. This helps the new and the not so new to avoid making those rookie and other errors, substituting instead, astute action suffused with greater self-awareness.
It also provides an opportunity, to get away from the politicoaffiliative processes of the boardroom, the need to maintain false confidence in the company, across one’s business network and really get the ‘bonnet up’, both on oneself and one’s business to understand what’s going on in complete confidence.
Keeping to motoring metaphors, many people don’t bother to maintain their cars either, only seeing a problem, when a breakdown arises, or a repair is needed. In the business context, this equates with reactivity, reliance on uncertain processes and, to a certain extent, ‘acts of faith’ with little information. Without planning, thought, reiteration of ideas and receiving challenge, we cannot hone our direction of travel either in life or the marketplace.
As we start to live with Covid those who “get it” have renewed their efforts if anything to tap into these constructive processes of reflection to think about the future, plan, develop and enact in the times to come, but many have gone in the opposite direction. The latter, by not realising that their strategies remain those of basic survival, rather than of prosperity and in ‘keeping the wolf from the door’, they lose sight of the need to keep the entire house in good order for it to be credible to customers, motivate staff and keep all forms of intruder out!
