Chapter 11

How to Progress Even Faster

We’ve discussed previously how the business owner—you—are the bottleneck in most companies. If you were able to clone yourself, you would be able to more quickly execute on your business plan and your business would grow much faster and more successfully. Because cloning yourself is not a viable option, the next best thing is to dramatically boost your productivity, which will have the same effect.

For example, consider the productivity challenge faced by NASA back in 1970. A fault in the electrical system of the Apollo 13 spaceship produced an explosion that caused a loss of electrical power and failure of both oxygen tanks. Getting the astronauts home safely required new software to be written immediately. But there was a problem; such software would normally have taken three months to create. Through effective planning and productivity tactics, however, NASA created the software in just three days and brought the pilots home safely.

NASA realized an increase in productivity times 30. At such a pace, they could have accomplished three years of work in one month. In one year, they could have accomplished 30 years of work. Imagine what that would mean to your company if you could accomplish in one month what your competition would require three years to do. Although creating a sustainable increase in productivity that great is impossible, doubling your productivity isn’t, and it will give you a sizable competitive advantage and allow you to ...

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