I Used to Say “If It’s Not Broke, Don’t Fix It” — I Was Dead Wrong

It was 2015 and things were going really well, I was on pace to having a great year. Because of that I was reluctant to change. I figured that if my current systems had created this success, there was no need to change or modify. If I was going to do anything, I would only double down on my efforts. Over time I became one of those people that goes around saying “Well this is the way its always been done”. Little did I know that I was reinforcing a terrible mindset. Overtime my activities created less and less results so I did what I thought was the most responsible thing to do — I did more of it. Until eventually I reached a point where I couldn’t do more because I was restricted by the finite limitations of a 24 hour day. I burned out trying to keep up. So what exactly happened?

The advice “If its not broke, don’t fix it” is the enemy of innovation. Just because something is not broke, doesn’t mean its not the best it can be. And sometimes its not about fixing something, its about improving it. I think that advice was great in the Industrial Age when products had a life cycle of 10+ years. But today in the technology age there is a constant demand from the market to do things faster. Nowadays a product is considered outdated if its 6 months old and the market already wants an improved version. Imagine that. The market is evolving, technology is becoming faster, and therefore we as individuals must update with it. My friend at WeWork was talking to me the other day about the concept of Agile Management. While I didn’t completely agree with it I did like something that he shared with me. “People need to stop creating systems for consistency and instead creating processes that adapt to change”. Bingo. That is why I’m a big fan of the Japanese productivity philosophy known as Kaizen. In essence it means “constant, continuous improvement”, and is more of a philosophy than an actual “system”. It’s the idea of getting better at getting better.

In 2015 I was using 1 sales approach that helped me get all my meetings. But as the market heated up, so did the competition. Before I knew it the market was saturated with agents using my exact same sales approach. Because to be honest there was nothing unique or clever about it. It took me a while before I could identify the issue but now looking back I wish I would’ve been more open to change. I learned the hard way. But the good thing is that I learned.

So here’s my advice. Be ambitiously lazy. Work hard at finding ways to do less. Because I believe that’s the spirit of innovation. 😉