Tag Archives: Deming

Having a Plan B

June 21, 2011 8:00 am ⋅ 2 Comments ⋅

Recently, I read something that suggested, not only should you have a plan B to ensure success, but also a plan C and a plan D. Well, I am here to argue against the case for a Plan B. As for the others, if you don’t need a plan B, then it should go without saying that you don’t need them either.

One time, I attended a management training course and in one of the exercises we were asked to think of our own strengths and weaknesses. By the way, it is a good thing to do for yourself when you have some time. Just brainstorm a list of those things. If you run a business, do a full SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) and commit to doing them regularly. You would be amazed at how you can refocus your efforts once you become aware of your weaknesses.

Anyway, I remember listing ‘optimism’ as one of my strengths. When it came to weaknesses, it was not so easy to make the list. Not because I don’t think I have any – I certainly do have many weaknesses – but that is the very reason why the list can be so difficult to make. I mean, how do you pick out the top ones? Not so easy, eh? So what I did was to take each of the strengths and then try to see an associated weakness.

Now, as I said, I had listed ‘optimism’ as one of my strengths and I genuinely believe this attitude is indeed a strength, not a weakness (see here). However, I started thinking about what people who are not naturally optimistic would do that I didn’t, as an optimist. The answer I eventually came up with was that they would make contingency plans; in other words, they would have a plan B.

Over the years, I have lost count of the number of conversations I have had in both my business life and my private life where someone would ask, ‘what do we do if it doesn’t work?’ My answer has always been the same i.e. that it will work and that if some set of very unlikely circumstances conspire to scupper our plans, we’ll deal with the situation when it arises. That has always been my attitude. I have always felt that time spent on making a plan B is, essentially, time wasted and indeed, possibly a sign that we did not really believe in our plan A.

Of course, I do accept the need for contingency plans in very many situations. Business Continuity Planning is, or should be, an important part of any business. But when it comes to my own personal success planning, then plan B is always out the window. I don’t want or need a plan B. I want to dedicate the time and effort to plan A. I want to get it right, I want to refine it, I want to tweak it as we go and I want it to succeed. So I think that really, this attitude can be both a strength and a weakness, depending on the type of planning you are doing. When it comes to personal success, I neither want nor need a plan B.

So, as far as your personal success plans are concerned, do you have a plan B? If so, I wonder if you would describe yourself as an optimist; I would guess not. You would probably not wish to describe yourself as a pessimist either. My guess would be that you might describe yourself as a realist. Is there anything wrong with your plan B? Probably not. But my advice would be to take another look at your plan A. If you feel the need for plan B, then it may be a sign that you are not fully committed to plan A.

Posted in: Goals, Motivation, Success ⋅ Tagged: , , , , ,

Play in the Bigger Pond - Part 1

June 7, 2011 5:25 pm ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅

Like many other people who blog regularly, taking the time and trouble to create good quality, helpful posts, I have been wondering what on earth I need to do in order to significantly raise the profile of my blog. You know the problem: you read all the posts you can find on the subject of how to do this and quite a lot of that advice boils down to the creation of good-quality, fresh, original content. Now, you’re a writer, so you are not at all concerned about being able to do that, but after several months, if not years, of producing some of your best content, on a daily basis, you are left wondering why you have not yet managed to create that high-traffic blog you dreamed about at the beginning.

You start searching the good-old internet and you come across post after post telling you what you already know. You find the same old advice: social bookmarking, comments, join in with the conversation, create quality content and so on and so forth. Now, of course, I don’t mean to imply that any of that is bad advice. However, the point is that a) you knew that already and b) you have already been doing that stuff. Your problem turns out to be a much bigger one than the guy who is just starting out because a lot of the advice you find actually comes from people who have no idea how to create a high traffic site. It is therefore ill-informed and turns out to be the usual recycled ideas that are simply not going to propel you to the heights to which you aspire.

Do you relate to this situation? That’s the position I find myself in right now. I have created a very successful site. Many people would be extremely happy with the level of success I am currently enjoying, but in order to reach my goals, I need to find the way forward and the obstacles to that are a) the people who know how to do this are not telling, and b) the people who are telling are not doing. In other words, I no longer expect the answer to this question to be found by me searching the web. This situation has led me to return to me favourite method of making breakthroughs – the business of listening to my inner, or higher self; the process of introspection.

As I have considered the question of how to improve my Google rankings even further, there is one phrase that keeps recurring in my mind. It is this: ‘play in the bigger pond’. Now, I know that you might be thinking, ‘surely, that should be swim in the bigger pond’. Perhaps my inner self cares less about English and mixed metaphors, but the same phrase keeps returning to my mind, ‘play in the bigger pond’. Perhaps my inner self chose the word deliberately to illustrate a deeper truth in just those few words. ‘Swim in the bigger pond’ means, I think, to network with higher quality sites, partner with better-connected contacts and associate with better distribution channels; to ‘play in the bigger pond’ means to do all of that, but it also encompasses the idea of having fun whilst doing it. So, I have decided to let this phrase become my mantra.

Over the coming months, I am going to find out what it means to ‘play in the bigger pond’ and I am going to concentrate my efforts on doing exactly that. The first thing I intend to do is to put a little sign over my desk with those words on it. That will serve as my reminder for what I about to attempt. In three months – I think that will be enough time for me to evaluate my new methods, whatever they turn out to be – I will have some answers. This method (The Deming Cycle), coupled with the principle of testing the ideas I receive from my inner-self, is the only way I can seem to get them these days. At present, I have no plan: just the mantra with which to work. Each day, I will simply look at those words, read them a few times, let the message sink in and then … yes, I’ll go play. I will find bigger and better ways to network, connect and grow. Hang on, is that a plan I can feel hatching? Perhaps.

Well, as with any improvement initiative, it is always worth doing a bit of base-lining to measure your starting point; otherwise how can you know if you have improved? So, to that end, here are some of my current stats.

Figures below are for last month (May 2011), taken from my Webalizer stats:

  • Total Hits 2,804,022
  • Total Visits 124,475

So, looking at my Webalizer stats for last month, I can see that the site received 124,475 visitors which amounts to 4,015 visitors per day. In the next post I will consider what it means to ‘play in the bigger pond’ in a bit more detail.

Posted in: Blogging ⋅ Tagged: , , , ,

Success: The Deming Cycle

March 25, 2011 9:50 am ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅

Here is a truism: you don’t have to get things absolutely right in order to achieve success, it is so much more important to simply get things going. People who succeed, I believe, intrinsically understand this important principle. If you simply get things going, and you also build improvement mechanisms into your working methods, then it is very difficult indeed to fail at anything. Think about this very carefully.

Many people actually put off their own success by not understanding this principle. There are many people with whom I speak, for example, who are interested in making money online, but who say something like this: I just need to get the right idea together. It is so common, but my response is that that you can actually succeed online with pretty-much any idea. Or sometimes people will say: I did have a great idea, but then I found out that someone else had already done it. Again, this is very comment, and my response to that is: well, so what?

The chances are that you won’t be the first person to think up some great idea, the chances are that you won’t be the person with the next Facebook idea or the next Twitter idea – that’s true – but you just don’t need that kind of idea. Almost any idea can be turned into success online. But you can absolutely guarantee that you definitely won’t get to where you want to be if you don’t set out in the first place. Of course, you do need to know your final destination, but you don’t need to know the route you will take.

Quantify your mission and goals. Make sure each of your goals represent steps along the way to achieving your mission and plan how to achieve each goal one at a time. Then, focus on just achieving one goal; the first goal in your mission plan. If you encounter difficulty, well that’s only to be expected isn’t it, especially if you are planning something big? Brainstorm your way around those difficulties and just keep going.

Here’s a nice little approach you might like to try, in relation to making those course corrections along the way to each goal. It is a quality cycle, or circle, proposed by the famous management expert William Edwards Deming with four simple steps: plan, do, check, act. I understand that Deming, who died in 1993, actually called the cycle the Shewhart Cycle, but these days, most people know it by his name i.e. The Deming Cycle.

Let me briefly explain the 4 steps:

Plan – Decide upon the specific actions you intend to take
Do – Perform those actions for a specified period
Check – Measure and Analyse the results
Act – Decide what you will do next based upon the Analysis

Now there is a great deal of wisdom contained within this simple idea. When we set out to plan something, especially if we have not done it before or if the goal is very big or high risk, then we simply may not really understand how to reach it. The Deming Cycle gives us a simple method of testing out our ideas. Essentially, you can try something out to see if it works, then, by collecting data you can analyse the effectiveness of the approach and base your subsequent decisions on the actual results you produce.

You may remember that in an earlier post, when we spoke about the 30 day trial period (see [link id='549']), I mentioned that I am presently engaged in two trials. One of those trials (writing 1000 words per day) is not just to see if I can keep up the effort for that period, it is also about checking the effect of that effort upon my Adsense revenue. Thirty days-worth of writing 1000 words is the equivalent of writing a book in a one month period. Quite an effort, but I expect this test to answer the following two questions for me:

  • Can I keep up this level of effort for a sustained period?
  • How much effort is necessary to get my Adsense revenue up to the level I want?

There is no question that writing 1000 words per day for thirty days will increase my Adsense revenue. I already know that, but what I don’t know is: by how much and also whether I would be able to maintain the level of effort required to make this tactic viable for me, long-term. When the 30 day period is over, I will have the answers to those two questions and I will be able to see whether or not this particular tactic will enable me to progress toward my goal of achieving financial independence through my online efforts.

What happens if I decide that I cannot sustain that level of effort indefinitely or if that amount of effort does not produce a significant improvement in Adsense revenue? Well, that’s ok too. At least we have definite answers, based upon data, and not opinion. Once the 30 day period is over, I can assess my results and then make the decision about whether or not I wish to continue the same way for another month. By changing course (the route to the goal) we are not changing the goal itself; we are simply changing the tactics used in order to reach the goal we have set for ourselves.

If you are someone who likes to get everything absolutely right before you set out, it may come as a bit of a surprise to learn that this behaviour may be sabotaging your own attempts to achieve success. You must not let the search for perfection stand in your way of achieving success. Don’t worry too much if you don’t know how you will get to your final destination. Just make sure you know what that destination is, and then set out on your journey to success and resolve to correct your course along the way.

Posted in: Blogging, Goals, Motivation ⋅ Tagged: , ,