In December 2022 Southwest Airlines canceled 1000s of flights. Now at first, they blamed it on the weather, because there was a huge cold front going on. Other flights however did not cancel, which was pretty fishy. It was later discovered that the software that gets people scheduled, and the planes at the right place was from the 90s which caused glitches and it caused a complete meltdown. I guess every businessperson just wondered, did they not at least plan for a day like this, I mean the software was close to 30 years old. There’s just so much to learn from this incident:
- Plan a little bit more?
If a problem is anticipated, act on it. Ignoring it is just setting you up for future failure. Some will say, “if it’s not broke don’t fix it” but you only experience the catastrophic results of the problem if nobody has acknowledged there's a problem and tried to fix it, the problem was just swept under the rug. Hunt through your business, identify what needs to be fixed, and set up a plan to fix it.
- Don't neglect the obvious.
As a dentist, you get patients coming in with a broken tooth that doesn’t hurt, you offer a solution and they respectfully decline because they aren’t feeling any pain today. But someday, you don't know when that's going to blow up on them, usually on Christmas Day, Fourth of July, or some moment when you cannot help them. The same thing is happening to your business, take a look at your business, and your life. Where are those warning signs that there's something happening? And you're just pushing it under the rug? Take a step back, acknowledge what needs attention, and make a plan to develop a solution.
- Pay attention to the things that affect your business and/or your investment.
You have to invest in the things that nobody sees, like, everybody hates to put a new roof on their house. Nobody can see it, nobody cares. But if you don't, at some point, you're going to have a leak. And that's going to be worse. Sometimes it's an employee, that you probably know that you've had too long, they’re not performing as well as they used to, but you don't really know what to do. And it's too much of a hassle to deal with it now. So, you kind of just let it wait.?We all know when you kick the can down, it gets worse. So, pay attention and deal with it right away.?
- Celebrate your wins.
As you’ve entered 2023, you should look and see all the great things that you did in 2022, too. I bet you did make some improvements, big or small - they are your wins. You do have to celebrate all those wonderful things that you did do and that are paying off that no one else is noticing.
In a nutshell, going into every year, we're not just saying try to be honest about areas that might be declining?but be honest about the wins and celebrate them too.
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