Good Observation Skills: the Basics of Military Strategies and Improvements in a Small Business I Part 1

Priorities in a small business are to handle things, be multitasking, improvising, solve urgent problems, survive an overwhelming reality where 1 million problems and activities happen at the same time, try to keep up with the fast pace and variable activities, it is difficult to anticipate what comes next, there is always a NEW problem, challenge that comes up.

Overall, a small business is a chaotic, highly disorganized environment where the business owner is surrounded at 360 degrees. To me this looks like a war situation: difficult to handle, difficult to anticipate, surrounded at 360 degrees, problems pop out of nowhere. There is no wonder that the word “strategy” comes from the military world.

But wait: what strategy?! Small businesses don’t know what that is, don’t have a direction, a purpose, priorities, a business plan. So, with no direction, being surrounded at 360 degrees with problems and activities and without being able to anticipate what comes next and the only thing one knows is the FIRST reaction, IMPULSE of improvising when one faces a problem. In this situation a business owner is in an UNKNOWN, UNPREDICTABLE situation which means his business is RISKY and has a high degree of UNCERTAINTY with a business owner that is unable to ORIENT himself.

In this situation, of course planning doesn’t make any sense, of course drawing a strategy seems useless and of course having a purpose, a direction is out of the question when the business is struggling with survival.

I totally understand this as I used to work in a small restaurant where having a vision, business planning and strategy seemed something just for corporations. When I got hired as a commercial worker, these concepts seemed totally useless in the face of URGENT and MULTIPLE problems, activities happening at the same time and that needed to be handled right NOW.

I was a person with no business experience that started working in a small, chaotic, disorganized business. So, I was in the UNKNOWN because I really didn’t know how business problems (besides my daily responsibilities) should be approached.

I had read some business books before, but when I got hired concepts such as: “customer profile, business model and strategy, what business are we in?” seemed totally useless. My mind couldn’t make any connection between concepts and the whirlwind of our daily work.

So, a small business owner and a soldier in a war area have one thing in common: surviving in an unpredictable, chaotic, risky environment.

That is why OBSERVATIONAL skills are essential in this type of situations as you need to keep your eyes wide opened and be able to pick up on small CLUES that will help you decide what your NEXT move will be BEFORE problems popping up.

Observation skills are relevant in a small business because they help identify various INDIVIDUAL components in a business that you observe and RECOMBINE them in order to get new solutions, ideas or improvements.

Example of small, individual elements in the restaurant:

clients don’t finish the food in their plate, clients that call for delivery orders frequently ask “What else should I buy to get free delivery?”, most of our clients are women, clients read the label with ingredients before they decide to buy etc.

These are obvious observations that I noticed when I worked as a commercial worker in a small restaurant and that I used for increasing sales.

The 3 first observations meant that most of our female clients (who represent the majority) cannot finish one menu in one sitting. One full menu (made out of 3 dishes) is too much for them. Together with other observations, I recombine them and got the idea to create a new menu made out of 2 dishes that was less in quantity than the main menu, but it was still enough for a woman at lunch. This led to an increase in sales.

This means that individual elements have to be put in a context in order to generate ideas, solutions for improvement. In MY PREVIOUS ARTICLE I show a specific case study about observing individual elements and put them in a context to generate solutions.

Before generating solutions, you MUST first observe and acknowledge the small, random happenings in your business in order to use them for improvements. And this is where the majority of small business owners fai:

they reject on the spot every small information that seems random, irrelevant and that doesn’t generate an immediate solution. This means they lack observation skills.

Let’s take a look at some contexts where the OBVIOUS plays an important role:

Have you ever wondered why comedians make us laugh and why magicians amaze us and drop our jaws?

They ALL play with the same thing: the OBVIOUS. Comedians emphasis it and magicians hide it. As a result they SURPRISE us, just like children.

Why do we laugh at the obvious? Because we never see it.

Since we don’t see it, why are we surprised when the obvious gets hidden? We are surprised because somehow, at a certain degree our mind acknowledges its presence, but we never pay attention to it, we don’t see it. That is why when it is emphasized, we laugh at it and when it is missing, we notice not the GAP, but the lack of logic because of the gap, because of the missed, hidden obvious. Hence, the picture doesn’t make sense. So, it comes as a shock.

It is not the missing of the obvious INDIVIDUAL element that shocks us, it is the lack of logic in the BIG PICTURE of the environment, of reality. Sometimes this could be translated as lack of appreciation or gratitude or even staying the comfort zone.

For example: Has it ever happen to you that you ran out of toilet paper and you didn’t notice it before using the toilet? It creates some discomfort when you don’t have it, but when you do, it seems just NORMAL, there is nothing special about it.

In the restaurant case, if clients finished the food in their plates all the time, nothing happens, no discomfort or disruption. However, because I EMPHASIZED this observation in a wider context, it contributed to increasing sales.

So, there are 2 types of observations in a system, an environment, in a business:

1. NORMAL that do NOT disturb us if they miss from the context, such as “clients don’t finish the food in their plate”. But if we EMPHASIS them in a context, they can produce easy results.
2. NORMAL observations that disturb us if they miss from the context, like when my colleague at work got angry and upset and just quit her job on the spot and never came back. When she was at work, it was normal and she was part of the environment to make it work. But, because she left, the business owner had to quickly find someone to replace her. This was a bit of discomfort for her.

So, actually in NEUTRAL situation, our mind perceives the obvious, but we don’t place value on it, we don’t use the obvious as a resource to make progress. It is there and that’s it. We see the big picture, but we miss its individual parts, meaning the obvious and also how they are connected to complete the big picture. The role of an individual part is to complete the big picture, our environment as a whole in order to create for us a COMFORTABLE staying and experience because there are other flashy, big stuff and problems that distract our attention.

So, when an idea or solution pops up, it seems spontaneous and it becomes obvious. And then you wonder:

“how come that I didn’t see it before?”

See you in the second part,
Mihaela Dragan