Entrepreneurs´s Journal


November / December 2004
Don´t Look Back
By Emily McHugh

Many of us are familiar with the Biblical story of Lot, the nephew of Abraham, whose wife turned into a pillar of salt because she looked back on the city of Sodom and Gomorrah before it was consumed in a fiery conflagration. This story dramatizes the impact of longing for the past and yearning for how things used to be instead of looking towards a better future. This was not a case of simple nostalgia but an unwillingness to embrace change. In a nutshell, Lot’s wife was incapable of envisioning that life could be any better than what she had known.

It is human nature to want to revel in the familiar and to resist change. This does not mean that we should not learn from the past, but we must overcome degenerative hindsight that can hinder progress. What would our world be today had someone like Thomas Edison thought candle light was sufficient or had Henry Ford believed that the horse and buggy were good enough for transportation?

My mother always says spend as little time as possible looking in the rearview mirror but the majority of your time looking forward. Only look back for as long as is necessary but concentrate your efforts ahead of you. Imagine the accidents and collisions that would ensue if the bulk of our time was spent looking in the rearview mirror. This is exactly what happens when we linger, re-hash, and simply drag around the past. Most of us have mishaps we either wish we could change or just by wishing hard enough, undo. Just a couple weeks ago, a tech person who was “fine-tuning” my computer lost four months of my critical data. For about a week, with ongoing momentary relapses, I was reeling in despair at how not having this data would impact my work and how I viewed this event as a seismic disaster. However, in the broader scheme of things, I am very thankful that I did not lose all my data. Despite how disappointed I am at not having been able to retrieve the data, this situation served as a wake up call to improve our entire back up system to prevent future agony.

Instead of crying over the proverbial spilled milk, it is better to start figuring out how to move beyond where you were initially. Discomfort inspires progress and often radical change. If we are too complacent then there is not much incentive to do anything differently. Crisis, as uncomfortable as it may be, usually lays the groundwork for unexpected success.

As we embark on 2005, most entrepreneurs are busy setting goals, establishing budgets, and generally making sure to start the year off on the right foot. As most will attest, what you do in the first half of the year usually sets the tone for everything that transpires thereafter. So in essence, assess what happened last year, what worked, what did not, and what you wish did.

Get out a notebook and write your grand vision for this year and highlight the ultimate quantifier that you deem exemplifies success, e.g., sales. Then make a list of all the areas that are obstacles to this success, e.g., operations, technology, and so on. Then break the year down into quarters and realistically prioritize the “to do” list. Everything might be a priority but decide what needs to happen first for the next thing to happen. Decide what you can accomplish in a quarter and how it will set the stage for the next quarter.

Assess where you want your business to go, and think about the things that you are comfortable with now, but could potentially create problems in the future. Even though you may not need to do anything about them at this moment, it is time to start planning how you would address the issue, before it becomes a crisis. Anticipate crises and prevent them. Accept the realities ahead of you with their unpredictable twists and turns, regardless of that, focus on the goals and make sure that every day you are moving closer to them. Many times we hold ourselves back because we are afraid to face our own realities. We remain ensconced in the familiar cocoon shielded from the success which could be ours if we just went for it. 2005 should be the year that you go for it, with no regrets, impediments, or excuses from the past.

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