Think Like An Oyster

Every single business has them. In fact, most businesses have a lot of them.

What are they?

Irritations. Those small, nagging things that continue to bug and annoy you, your team, and your customers. And they will continue to irritate unless something is done about them.

It’s a natural thing for any business to have some imperfections. Afte all, any business is nothing more than a group of people doing a set of actions. A system, in other words.

And no system can be perfect. Especially a system that relies heavily on humans, along with their emotions, and complex psychology.

Anytime you have “people” doing “things”, you’re going to have areas of weakness. The problem is that many of these weaknesses seem quite small. After all, any major weaknesses in a business would prevent it from operating for long. So if a business has been around for any amount of time, any weaknesses are bound to be of the “small” variety.

And there lies the problem. Because the weaknesses are “small things”, they are easy to put off. The owners and team let themselves get too busy working in the “now.” Puttting out fires. Dealing with crises.

These weaknesses are put on a “to look at someday” list (usually a mental note). These weaknesses are like a grain of sand in your shoe. Annoying, but if you’re really trying to get somewhere, you can put up with it while you take care of other things.

But that mindset robs you of some tremendous opportunities to really create some massive improvements in your business. These small things, when dealt with, create some of the most impressive increases in the profits, fun, and free-time you get from your business.

You just need to deal with them. They are often very simple to eliminate if you just make the time.

So rather than just putting up with that “grain of sand” in your shoe, adopt Oyster Thinking.

What does an oyster do when it encounters a grain of sand in its life?

Here’s an explanation from a science website, www.livescience.com.

I’ve added some emphasis to highlight some key points.

“A natural pearl begins its life inside an oyster’s shell when an intruder, such as a grain of sand or bit of floating food, slips in between one of the two shells of the oyster… In order to protect itself from irritation, the oyster will quickly begin covering the uninvited visitor… until the iridescent gem is formed.”The keys from that definition that apply to your business:

• Intruder – the irritant is viewed as an intruder. Strong word, but that’s a great way to start thinking about any weaknesses in your practice – they are intruders. Intruders into your ability to create a better practice.
• Protect itself from irritation – the oyster needs to avoid the continued irritation. Even though it might be a small thing, it “knows” enough to avoid just “learning to live” with the irritation.
• Until the iridescent gem is formed – the end result of the oyster taking action to remove the irritation is a beautiful gem.

So to summarize, the oyster recognizes it has come into contact with an irritation, takes action and deals with it, and in the end creates a beautiful gem. It turns sand into a gem. Kind of like the mollusk-equivalent of “turning a pig’s ear into a silk purse.”

Using the same principles can create some huge “gems” in your business. Adopt Oyster Thinking and see what kind of massive improvements you can create.

Here’s an outline of how you can apply the power of Oyster Thinking to your business:

1. Work with your team to brainstorm a list of ALL the things that frustrate them, frustrate your clients, and frustrate you.

2. As a group identify the 3 that should be addressed right away. These can be ones that are the most frustrating, the ones that seem the easiest to deal with, or any combination.

3. For each of those 3 frustrations, identify the processes that are involved, and brainstorm the probable causes.

4. Develop concrete action steps that will be taken to attempt to remove those causes.

5. Assign specific responsibilities for following up, measuring the results, and reporting back to the rest of the team on a regular basis.

As you remove on of the frustrations, keep revisiting your list, along with your team, and select a new one to work on. Over time you and your team are going to start creating a lot of “pearls” out of things that used to be irritations.

And that will create more profit, fun, and free-time in the process.