A Simple Solution

Over the last twenty or so years, I’ve developed an intense appreciation for world class chiropractic care. Don’t jump ship on me here… Hear me out! I’m not referring to the Homer Simpson’s of the industry who we’d never need to tell “less yacking and more cracking,” I’m talking about the absolute experts in the field who are truly dialed in on identifying the underlying issues that are causing the problem rather than throwing opiates at the problem - like so many MDs have been doing for far too long! 

In late 2005, I was in a pretty nasty wreck. I was able to walk out of the emergency room after a series of x rays, albeit in quite a bit of pain, but the ER doc handed me one of those little sheets of paper for some sort of cocktail that would have prevented me from operating heavy equipment for the foreseeable future. I wasn’t operating any such equipment at that time but you get the point… Rather than getting the prescription filled, I called in a favor with my friend who owned a chiropractic practice and headed straight there. He immediately found the root cause of my pain and started working toward resolution. I won’t pretend that he fixed me in one visit, or even ten for that matter. I was hit head-on by a kid going more than 60 mph (in a 35 mph zone) and had one of the nastiest cases of whiplash he had ever dealt with. Although the cure wasn’t immediate, his approach to fixing the problem rather than masking the symptoms kept me from what very likely could have ended in opioid addiction, and he helped me get stronger through the process!

With that example in mind, let’s tie it back to what’s killing your profitability and consider who that approach matters if you want to have even the slightest chance of finding the right prescription… In more scenarios than I can count, I’ve seen companies jump on the latest thing being touted as the holy grail for improving organizational performance. Just like there was a time where writing a prescription for multiple refills of oxy seemed like the right thing to do because of the significant immediate effect, any proposed solution for capturing that lost profit can feel necessary if enough of it has slipped through our fingers. But we’re likely just treating a symptom without identifying the root cause. And that root cause so frequently ties back to poor leadership in one area or another!

An article I found called The Impact of Effective Leadership on Organisational Performance opened by stating that “Today, companies are struggling with a lack of skilled talent in the labour market and high staff turnover rates. Plugging payroll gaps from outside the firm is becoming challenging, which leads to poor organisational performance. Add to that The Great Resignation and the issue grows bigger.” While that statement points to a fairly specific issue that can kill profitability, the focus of the article had a much wider view. In emphasizing how leadership (good or bad) impacts profitability, the author referenced a Forbes.com article about a study done with a Fortune 500 commercial bank that closed with this statement, “In summary, poor leaders lost money; good leaders made profit; and extraordinary leaders more than doubled the company’s profits in comparison to the other 90%!”

Don’t misunderstand what I mean when I suggest A Simple Solution… I’m not about to pretend that identifying and addressing the issues that are killing your profitability will be easy - but fighting through the loss of profitability ain’t easy either! What I am willing to make a case for is that correcting the root causes of those losses is much simpler than we’ve been led to believe it is. Before we start working through the specific areas that are most likely those root causes, there’s one big mistake we need to avoid - and we’ll pick up there next…