Good Observation Skills: the Basics of Military Strategies and Improvements in a Small Business I Part 4

Our natural way of making progress is based on observing individual facts from a chaotic environment that apparently seem random and irrelevant. The same observation ability is also part of a military process to deal with uncertainty in dangerous environments as described in the previous part of the article.

Let’s see how this reflects in making improvements in a small business.

In autumn 2016 I started to work in a small restaurant as a commercial worker.

I got into the job knowing it was an opportunity to improve the restaurant activity, especially because it was a start-up. I would use this experience to create my course for small business owners.

I had neither a specific goal with a deadline, nor a plan about what to look for in the business because I didn’t know actually what to look at beforehand. This means I had an intention that was unspecific and non-measurable according to business standards, but specific enough for me.

In addition, I was hired to be a commercial worker, I was expected to perform as commercial worker and I had information “ONLY” as a commercial worker; nothing more. I used the commas because you will only need just as much information as a commercial worker in order to have IMPACT and improve a business.

This means I was trying to improve a business from a position that is not associated with common standards of success or authority in the business industry.

So, I trusted that I would observe whatever was relevant RIGHT NOW and that needed to be observed because I knew every situation is unique and different, meaning there is NO STANDARD way to start improving a business.

When problems are constantly coming from everywhere and you run in all directions, then you don’t know yet what works, what doesn’t, what business concepts apply and what standards don’t apply to your specific situation at a certain moment in time. That is why you MUST be detached from general accepted business concepts, rules, practices and labels. This means you have to adopt the kids attitude because this is what I have done:

I know nothing and cannot do anything, but I grab myself on everything around me because eventually I will start walking.

This means that in order to have an IMPACT and improve a business or grow it and make your life easier and happier, it is enough to start out with a VAGUE, general idea about what you want to do, about the motivation for being in your current business or job.

You don’t need any specific or big vision, no plan, no strategy, no assessment, no specific deadlines or goals. You don’t need to be specialized in anything. Specificity and long term plans are also good, but ONLY when you are aware of their importance and have the necessary clarity about what needs to be done.

No matter how small, big, shallow, stupid, unspecific or unclear your idea or motivation sounds, your only responsibility is to be AWARE of that vagueness and own it because in time, it will add up and it will become more clear and more specific each day. In addition, you will see improvements and proofs and measurable and real RESULTS at a very small scale and that only you can see and notice. If you see these very small details and happenings that are not measurable and dont bring immediate results on the surface, these are that RELEVANT facts in your business that you probably you dont see RIGHT NOW. In addition, your approach to USE them will determine if your reality is real or just an illusion.

That is why I think that improvising and starting out with urgent problems is an asset if you use it properly, at the right time. This is a sign that there is something that you do right and you have to build on it.

When started working, the only CERTAIN (but UNSPECIFIC according to business standards) thing I counted on was my observational skills, my ability to identify patterns, organize information (chunking) and make analogies.

With this UNSPECIFIC knowledge about myself that I was aware of, I started to keep a journal and record random details according to what criteria I personally considered important when buying food as a client.

So, every morning I was waking up at 5 am just to record what they seem to be random, isolated, single facts and observations, make assumptions behind them without knowing exactly how they would improve the business.

The first that were coming into my mind were the customers’ behaviours, requests from my daily interactions with them. Since I already knew clients’ opinion was important I was trying to keep track of them too (grabbing myself on everything around me without dismissing anything).

I was not taking notes every day, but I was reviewing the activity every day. I was writing only things that grabbed my attention and seemed curious or useful, such as:

2 categories of products: fresh and frozen
Saturday, one can choose between carbs and no carbs foods
Did sales of guacamole, hummus and crackers increase when sales of menu degreased? (particulary in the restaurant)
It rained on Wednesday and it was an official holiday. Clients might have cooked.
Do they have other alternatives for food?
More people come and eat at our location and less place orders on the phone.
I think people like to see the products when they buy. They also ask on the phone what we have.

As you can see I was just picking up INDIVIDUAL elements that were part of the WHOLE business without knowing in particular if they would be useful and how. There was NO customer profile. So, the restaurant was already in the DESTRUCTION phase (discussed in the previous part) which allowed me to PICK here and there, random information that could be useful later on.

So, I was not rejecting small or random facts just because they didn’t seem to have an IMMEDIATE utility for increasing sales or for improvising any kind of solution. I was not jumping to conclusions by SIMPLIFYING reality saying things like:

we are a small business and this is how it is or I am a commercial worker and I am not relevant to make improvements in the business etc.

So, in the meantime (while observing clients) I couldn’t help to think about my activity in the restaurant because it felt stressful because I had to run in all directions as there was no order for doing things except the one that made sense in that moment. In addition to the lack of order and priorities, every day there were new challenges coming up which amplified the situation.

In addition, because I hadn’t uncovered any pattern that could help me explain the activity or make sense of it, I was also looking in other parts of the business and I was recalling APPARENTLY random facts from my activity of serving clients, my interaction with colleagues, random discussions with the business owners, those few seconds that i was in the kitchen. So, basically I was trying to recall every information i could remember or “grabbing myself on everything around me”.

At this point of running in all directions, I remember the small business owners I used to work said:

I have a small business, we are not corporate, I have to do multiple tasks in my business, I am not a manager, nor a visionary.

The stuck point and overwhelm settles in when the business owner SIMPLIFIES reality (we need multitasking) and GENERALIZES it (we are not corporate).

This means what I mention in the previous part of the article: attachment to labels, concepts, business standards and rules. This is the first barrier to SEE, to OBSERVE what the relevant facts from your business that can help you to find solutions RIGHT NOW.

Maybe a busy day in a small business doesn’t seem so big deal, but the point is that ALL these SMALL activities are happening in the same time, not in a logical and organized manner. In addition, they occupy the attention of the mind which leads to diverted attention and multitasking as pointed in the 2nd part. So, if your job or business looks similar to this, there is no wonder that most people will never take the time to THINK about SPECIFIC visions, long term plans, step by step instructions, specific strategies, planning and deadlines.

In this situation, a small business owner looks like he is “buried” inside and by his own business. The last think they are going to do is to SIT and THINK when they desperately trying to get out. So, they are in that “war” situation: chaotic activity surrounding them at 360 degrees and handle as much as possible. It is that DESTRUCTION phase.

However, this is an opportunity to pick up those details, individual facts and see how they fit in the business as a whole.
It was a chaotic activity because I was running in all directions. This was definitely an anomaly that I had to figure out. At this point, the majority of small business owners consider it something normal.

Unfortunately, this is a state of mind that becomes a goal and hence, you end up dismissing facts that can improve your business and solve your urgent problems RIGHT NOW because your mind considers it normal to stay at this very level.

So, you only solve problems as they come without you trying to see what you might miss.

Next, you add to this “normality”, the tendency to think thorough labels (“I am not a manager”) and you believe you need a specialization and experience in order to improve a business activity. This might be true if you want it run like an expert. But, you dont need to be an expert in order to see things and get clarity and some order in your business.

As a result of the fact that I was taking the time every morning to watch the movie of my own activity and of the business the way I was seeing it as a commercial worker, in about 2 weeks my mind identified a pattern.

The pattern came from my main activity which was to serve clients. In the beginning, the only thing I could perceive was that it was stressful because it was crowded and I was running in all directions like everyone else in the restaurant and it was challenging to keep up with the fast pace, especially because I am not the multitasking type.

As a result, I identified 3 sub-activities in the serving process:

1 serving clients that were eating in the restaurant

2 serving clients that were buying food to go

3 taking delivery orders from clients on the phone and putting their food in paper bags.

But, clarity comes from chaos and once you identify a pattern and VERBALIZE it (1, 2, 3) you already have clarity which is organized information about the chaos you are performing into. If you don’t identify this pattern and VERBALIZE it, no matter how simplistic it seems to be, it will stay at the chaotic level and you will end up running in all directions and feel overwhelmed and things keep adding up.

Once I identified these 3 overlapping activities, the solution became obvious that we needed a 2nd commercial worker to ensure the work flow and serving process during the lunch time.

Challenge: it was obvious that the restaurant didnt afford to hire a new employee.

While I was thinking about our daily activities and business, this is the point when I noticed that our busy activity was actually between 11 am and 2 pm and that about 75% of daily sales was coming from this hour interval: from lunch.

This meant that the restaurant was not permanently full. Adding this observation to the equation, it totally changes the perception about reality and helps to explain why sales were relatively low.

So, we have 2 important observations so far: 3 overlapping activities and 75% of sales coming from lunch.

Because I was spending every day recalling the business activity, I had added a 3rd observation:

Our clients were coming in their lunch break from work or personal business. So, they are in a hurry, they eat and they live.

This means that our clients are constraint by time. They dont come for relaxation, although the restaurant ambient was relaxing and was used in their marketing campaign.

Since we have one person who performs 3 overlapping activities, we delay phone orders because I have to serve the client in the restaurant. Or I delay the client in the restaurant because I am on the phone to take delivery orders.

As you can see I kept OBSERVING individual elements from the business that added up and started to bring more CLARITY to the problem we were facing.

One day on Sunday when the restaurant was empty most of the day, I was sitting and thinking randomly about the business and our daily activities. Then the solution just popped in my mind:

It is Sunday, I am doing nothing and I am bored which means we dont need to hire a new employee, we just have to relocate the human resource. We would close on Sunday because anyway almost nobody is coming during this day and i would split the 12h from Sunday on the shifts of my colleague during the week. So, in my free days I would go to work for 3 hours between 11 am and 2 pm. The restaurant was paying us for working the same hours, so this improvement didnt cost the restaurant additional money.

So, we made this change: we closed on Sundays and we started working 2 workers/shift instead of one.

Eventually, after OBSERVING and adding individual facts from the business, the CREATED solution also came up.

This means that Boyd’s observation process “from specific to general” that is used as a mindset tool for military strategies is also relevant for improvements in small businesses because at its core it has our own natural ability to find solutions, learn and make progress that we have posed since we were children.

In this article I describe how Einstein’s Relativity Theory supports our innate abilities for making progress and how it influenced the creation of improvement.

Mihaela Dragan