Do you make assumptions?

Have they served you in the best way?

Assumptions can either serve or hurt you. The reason for this blog is that I’ve recently returned from speaking to 20 business leaders at a special conference in the southern United States. This was a special time for me as I was the first person invited to this conference in the over a decade that it had been going on. Yes, this is a very unique conference. It was started many years ago as an idea exchange weekend for business leaders. It was all about them coming together to share ideas on how they have grown their business over the years. They have never had a speaker attend before so I was honored and at the same time a little apprehensive. I write that because to be the first at anything is very positive, and yet I was apprehensive as these business leaders were successful and may have thought that they had all the answers for their business already.

So I viewed my time with them a little differently. I decided that I had to challenge them. I had to make them think beyond the borders of their thoughts. I had to get them beyond their assumptions of how good their businesses were already.

The way I decided to handle this was to develop a lot of questions. Yes, questions that would make them uncomfortable.

Keeping this in mind, I’d like to conclude by asking you a few questions;

• Is your business all that it could be?
• What have you done lately that is outside the ordinary?
• If your answer is nothing, what kind of a long-term impact will that have?