Brush Your Teeth, Comb Your Hair

It seems simple. We all do it.

We brush our teeth and comb our hair EVERY day.

But, if you have children, you know that it wasn’t natural to them as they were growing up.

They had to be reminded EVERY day to “brush your teeth and comb your hair.”

And by EVERY day --- I mean EVERY day. Multiple times.

For years.

It just didn’t make sense that something so simple was so hard.

In business, we all have some fundamentals that seem simple but, for some reason, are hard to do.

As Jim Rohn would say, “If it’s easy to do, it’s easy NOT to do.”

It’s a common challenge.

There is a big emphasis on doing something new and different instead of maximizing what they already have.

I talked with a friend last week and he said that his

company broke a years-long string of month over month growth and had actually declined AFTER a big event.

Ouch!

I asked him why he thought it happened.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing and he was quick to reply that they simply had tried to do and launch too much too fast.

It confused their sales force.

They lost track of what they were supposed to focus on. They were confused.

With an abundance of options, they began to choose “none of the above.”

The executive team had lost focus on a basic concept – clarity and simplicity matters.

It’s amazing what happens around a conference room table. A very smart team can make fundamental mistakes and convince themselves it’s the right thing to do.

Keeping things simple is hard – but worth it.