Health and Hygiene
It happens every time I go to the doctor. For some odd reason I want to impress him by telling him how I’ve been exercising, how well I’ve done with my diet…it is as though I’m looking for some kind of reward.

We know what the rewards are. If we do all these good things, we will, on average, live longer and feel better. We do this to set the stage to function better. Exercise and proper diet aren’t home runs in our lives, rather they are odds-enhancers.

This last point is a crucial one when we think about business. Intuitively we pay our vendors on time because its good hygiene…to not do so is to risk a disease welling up in an important part of our corporate body. So let’s play doctor for a moment…what is a valuable regimen for the average firm to increase the odds that it can perform when called upon by random events? Here’s my own list…I certainly would love to hear extensions to this from our readers.

1. Set aside dedicated think time for yourself and all of the critical players in your company. Measure the outcome.

2. Model the company. A simple abstract is fine…just lift yourself out of the noise and conceptualize what the company is and does. It is amazing what insights can come from a simple picture. Many of our greatest products and organizations started from a few quickly assembled pictures.

2. Data, data, data. You can’t do any kind of meaningful action without data to prime the pump. There is no such thing as too much data.

3. Can you describe you company to an eighth grader?

4. Be a seeker of analogies – the best ones are far afield of your industry.

There you have it. Now bend over…trust me, you will only feel a moment of discomfort…
- posted by Industrial Science @ 10:00 AM