Avoiding justifications and excuses while prioritizing essential actions drives accountability and ensures effective business management for achieving desired results.

Primary Implication

When you are stressed about cash or worried about profits, you know with 100 percent certainty that the right actions have not been taken. You know this definitively based on the poor results produced. Once you identify what actions aren’t happening as they should look for whether you are battling a skill or a will problem.

If you hear excuses, justifications, rationalizations, and victimization statements then you have a will problem. When people don’t know how that’s a skill problem and if they didn’t know they were supposed to do an action that’s a communication problem.

Overview

Justification, rationalization, victimization, and excuses all get in the way of being personally accountable for the results of your actions. An accountability failure robs the individual and those dependent on them of the ability to control the actions of a business. You also disrupt any rhythm you build through Steps 1 through 4 of the BusinessCPR Management System to realize your desired profits and cash reserve position.

You reduce the likelihood of falling victim to justification, rationalization, and excuses when you prioritize and eliminate nonessential activities based on what needs to be capitalized on or fixed in your business. Creating focused actions that are completed when they need to be created is how you make more money.

Without action on the “critical few” things needing to be completed each week, time and money are wasted on the “relevant many” things that are easy to do but can and should be ignored for the moment. Lack of priority focus is a quick way to begin feeling the following business cardiac arrest effects:

1. Stuff happens, but no one is sure if it’s the right stuff to do because there is no monitoring of actual performance results through recognized metrics.
2. No one is clear on who is accountable for what, nor are they clear on what’s expected of them in their individual roles.
3. Employees are more worried about whether their payroll checks will clear than they are about producing quality output and efficiently serving customers.
4. Any work getting done is the result of efforts by the critical few in your employ; the rest of your employees have given up or checked out.
5. The above four conditions result in the owner doing even more work for little to no pay or checking out. There is no organized, consistent process for effectively managing others to maximize profits.

When you are stressed about cash or worried about profits, you know with 100 percent certainty that the right actions have not been taken. You know this definitively based on the poor results produced. Once you identify what actions aren’t happening as they should look for whether you are battling a skill or a will problem. If you hear excuses, justifications, rationalizations, and victimization statements then you have a will problem. When people don’t know how that’s a skill problem and if they didn’t know they were supposed to do an action that’s a communication problem.

Every time you are left with less cash and smaller profits at the end of a month, quarter, or year, you know you have a breakdown in people being accountable for the results of their actions. You protect your business from this happening by focusing on the “critical few,” not the “relevant many” things needing to get done. Prioritize your weekly actions according to Step 1—Cash Velocity, Step 3—Cash Quality, and Step 4—Stop the Losses. These three steps of the BusinessCPR Management System combine to help ensure that your planned actions produce your desired results.