Follow Up…for Results

“It’s not what you know, it’s what you do with what you know” is a quote attributed to the motivational speaker,  Anthony Robbins.

Over the last while, we have been discussing building in reporting systems and feedback loops into your practice. Now…what do you do with all this information that you have gathered? After all, Albert Einstein said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Armed with your data from your feedback loops, you are in a position to now lead the dialogue with all stakeholders on how your plans should be adjusted and how the goals and/or strategies should be modified to better take you and your team towards your desired goals.

Aside from planning, effectively following up can make the difference between a firm that gets to its destination vs one that just gets by.

For example, all of us have accounts receivable at some level. Yet some firms have little or none in the way of A/R, but others have huge A/R balances.  What is the difference?

The low A/R firms have learned from their past mistakes (leadership) and have put into place stricter client selection processes (Planning) as a result, they monitor the A/R balances, they effectively communicate the firm’s policies on payment of retainers and invoices and they are effective in dealing with a client who starts to have an A/R problem (follow-up) before it gets worse.  It is not just enough to know what your A/R balances are, you need to take action to produce change once armed with this info.

Accordingly, it is vital that you take the information that you have learned from your reporting systems and take action …*NOW*… to change the way that you do things in order to get (better) results~!

This is the essence of management – acting quickly once you have sufficient data on hand to indicate an improvement in how you operate.  Appropriately following up based on the information that you receive from your organization – transforming it to a learning organization – will lead you …over time…to the goals that you have set for you and your firm.