Summary: have you ever thought about the cost of all the "just in case" or "What If" items your business has lying around?
Here's a photo of a cabinet door.
Why have I posted this?
Well, I spent the day helping my sister move home (her and her family have just bought their forever home and that means a lot of boxes to be moved).
As we were clearing out the loft we discovered this cabinet door. When I asked my sis what it was for, she said that it was the cabinet door from her old flat (which she now rents out) that fitted on the washing machine. It had been taken off about 15 years before when a new washing machine had been fitted and my sister had kept it just in case it needed to be refitted.
It got me thinking how many things in business (and in regular life) we keep for "just in case" or "what if" situations.
It could be old processes or replacement equipment that companies keep around because they think they may use them or because they don't trust the new process or new equipment. Yes, these can provide a good form of safety net but they come at a price.
In my sister's case, the price was the cost of storage and the cost to move it to the new house but in the business world the costs go beyond simple monetary terms. There is also the massive impact to focus and buy-in alongside the emotional cost of carrying around the old item.
It's often easy to overlook this when we keep items just in case, something to bear in mind when you set your strategies and something Shiageto Consulting can help with.
My 3 other takeaways from helping my sis move:
1) Always have a plan on how you will move before you start lifting any boxes, it'll save a lot of pain.
2) a variant of Parkinsons Law (work will expand to fill the time you allocate it) is in play - i.e if you have the space you will fill it with stuff
3) don't forget to properly value how much your time is worth if you are going to do the move yourself - we often forget the opportunity cost of each decision we make
#effectiveness #moving #focus #emotionalintelligence #startuplife #movinghouse #justincase #whatif
