There is a fable told of a young woman who cut off the ends of her ham before she cooked it. “Why did you do that?” a friend asked. The young woman simply replied that that was how her mother had always done it. Curious to know the real answer, they went down the familial line, asking why the ham was prepared with the ends cut off. They finally got their answer from the great-grandmother who explained, “I only did that because the ham was always too big for the pot I had.”
Even monarchs can get stuck in a rut that doesn’t make sense. When Prince Albert discovered how the household was being run after marrying Queen Victoria, he was appalled. For example, the interior of windows were cleaned by the Lords Chamberlain or Steward’s staff while the outside of the windows were cleaned by the Office of Woods and Forest. Or if he wanted a fire in his room, the Lord Steward’s department was in charge of laying it but only the Lord Chamberlain’s men were allowed to light it. This was, more or less, how the royal household had been run since the 1400’s. While it may have worked way-back-when, Prince Albert was determined to overthrow the whole system and update. He cut back on the excess and streamlined household duties to run in a more productive manner.
I’ve been around enough landlords to question how effectively some of them run their businesses. In many cases they’re just doing what they’ve always done or what their parents taught them to do. One landlord, for years and years, simply wrote down all his units on the back of an envelope and put a checkmark by the ones who had paid rent that month. It was a way to record rent but wasn’t adequate to his needs. He lost track of a lot of rent money running his business that way. The envelope would get lost and he couldn’t always remember who had paid or not, or he would forget to update it. Not until two years ago did he finally switch over to property management software to help him manage his apartments.
So here’s the question for you - Is the way you’re running your business the best way?
Have you ever sat down and thought about why you do things the way you do and if there’s a more effective way? What worked in the past may be inhibiting you now, using up time and resources you can’t afford to waste. Computer programs are always being updated to help them run more efficiently. How you run your business should be no different. Take a look at your business process and figure out what could be better.
