Solving the WRONG Problem...

However, if you’re still a bit curious... I thought I’d share a little more to give you the inside scoop…

So, a few years ago while I was the Managing Director of a high growth ecommerce startup in Latin America… Another lackluster month in results.

 The gloom ran over me thinking that the other country offices are doing that same things as we are but getting the results they wanted--growth! We were like the one kid still in high school who was at his or her prepubescent height –our growth spurt hadn’t kicked in.

I shook it off, and once again set the same goal, increase our revenue by 10% this month with a bunch of new subgoals, action plans, people evaluations, and a wide array of alternative solutions.

This time, I thought it was going to be different...

We would try yet another handful of tactics from the growth handbook…

After a site redesign, increasing our product catalogue, decreasing prices and offering new exclusive deals, we decided a new advertising channel. While we increased our traffic, our online checkout was hearing crickets instead of cha-ching. WTF is going on?! I thought.

A few years ago, I had this experience working at a high growth, international ecommerce site. We went through solution after solution to solve our problem of slow growth!  Yet, we were banging our heads against the wall until what we did next was a bit counterintuitive...

We decided not to solve our problem of slow growth. What?! Yes, that’s right, we stopped focusing on slow growth.

Instead my team and I soon realized there were some key issues in the market and what we weren’t doing as a company that was stunting not even our growth but our ability to get out of the gate.

First, before I came on as the Managing Director, the company had not done any market research. They used a copy and paste business model going from market to market.

Working with my team who was often on the street meeting with suppliers or on the phone with customers, we soon realized that the ecommerce was still in its embryonic stage in the local market and it was mostly a cash based economy--only 2% of the population had credit cards in an already small market. It was like selling someone on getting into bed before they even started dating or knew how to use their biological appendages. We needed to establish trust in ecommerce and in us not to mention do a little extra hand holding and education.

By adding a different payment method, testimonials, information pages around how ecommerce works , focusing on categories that did not require trust , and then ultimately adding a brick & mortar store , the company started to see upticks in growth. Many of those activities would not have been considered typical actions to drive growth.

So, why did this work?

We actually set the wrong goals.

Even before the country office got started, the company did not evaluate if this was a market ready for ecommerce that would achieve the same types of results that other, more advanced countries had seen. We were solving the same problem that other markets were yet that wasn’t our fundamental issue; so, the same solutions that they were employing didn’t work for us. We were solving the wrong problem!

So, why did we set the wrong goals and how could this have been avoided? I discovered a simple 10 minute method that can actually save hundreds of hours and driven massive impact in your business and life. However, we often jump into action or set goals but forget about this one important thing.

I'll share the secret with you in just a minute but this happens not only in complex businesses cases but even with simple goals such as ...

Failed Goal in Daily Life
“I want to read more books”.

So, last year, I created a specific goal to read 1 book a month and broke that down into smaller parts to achieve daily. I put together a quarterly list 3-4 books I wanted to read, set aside time, prepared my books, created the right environment, and even joined a book club, but life took over… I ended up prioritizing something else, forgetting, getting distracted, falling asleep, or just had to some domestic activity instead even though I’d rather be reading and the list continues …

I had even used all those other goal setting tools like checklists, daily logs, accountability partners, setting SMART goals, etc...

Yet, I kept setting this goal every few months and failed! Then after going through a little secret 10 minute method, I was able to adjust my goals and started consuming 6-8 books every week.

So what changed? I had been setting the wrong goal once again.

How did I discover this?

Wrong Problem

After re-thinking about my issue, and even asking the question ‘why do I want to read more’, I came to the true issue—I wanted to obtain more information, learn more, or just be entertained. I was trying to solve for how do I read books but not how to I obtain or learn this information.

Then, I realized that I wasn’t dedicating the time because I had all these domestic activities to attend to that I actually despise. So, a new solution to my drudgery work and my reading issue came to the surface… I discovered audiobooks! I ended up consuming audiobooks while cooking, cleaning, running errand, walking my dog and any other moment that I felt was mindless… and I was then going through 6-8 books every few weeks and actually looked forward to housework!

I just hadn’t defined my problem and thus was setting the wrong goal, and solving the wrong problem.

Wasted Resources

Business products fail, sales team misallocate resources or invest in the wrong activities, customers are unsatisfied despite an increase in customer service ratings, and the list goes on…

It is easy to jump into setting goals and getting into action to achieve your goals and being seduced by this momentum but then we might NOT achieve the real result we want.

In fact, before I learned this simple step, I would spend hours creating analyses, excel spreadsheets that turned out to be irrelevant or execute projects that didn’t have high impact despite achieving my goals.

The Secret Method

However, I learned this secret method. It was a little method that I learned 10 years ago that taught me to get better at seeing the results I actually wanted. It was just one simple step that takes 10minutes before setting your goals, which as a result of the method inherently become drastically better.

Curious how to set better goals by defining the REAL underlying problem ? After all, if you have a goal, you are trying to improve, change, or achieve some kind of result, you are going to spend a lot of time working to achieve your goal, so 10 minutes can save you tens to even hundreds of hours focused on the wrong thing and thus skyrocket your performance.

If you are curious or want to take your performance to the next level, I have a great little worksheet to guide you through the process of this simple step. If you are happy with the status quo and don’t think you can improve, this isn’t for you.