Better, Worse, or Same

Better, Worse, or Same

As Jim Sullivan points out in his book Fundamentals, there are three questions we can ask ourselves at the end of each business day.

Today did we:

• Get Better?
• Get Worse?
• Stay the Same?

We think these are great questions to ask toward the end of the year. This past year did we: Get Better? Get Worse? Or Stay the Same?

We Got Better

If you Got Better, you did not Stay the Same, nor did you Get Worse. You won!

We Got Worse

If you Got Worse, you didn’t Get Better or Stay the Same. You lost.

What will we do tomorrow and in this upcoming year to make it a win?!

We Stayed the Same

If you Stayed the Same… you didn’t lose, right? Well, no… You did lose… How? Why? Well, while staying in one spot sounds good, the rest of the world is moving forward. Your competition and your customers are moving forward. If everything else is moving forward and you’re staying the same, you’re falling behind.

Stop, Start, Continue

An additional way to assess is to make a list of the things that worked and were successful over the past year. Also, consider what didn’t work. Make yourself a Stop, Start, Continue list.

• Stop – What didn’t work. Stop doing things that haven’t been contributing enough. Cut these out.
• Start – What to try. Begin doing things that you haven’t in the past, and
• Continue – What worked. Keep these programs going from previous years, these things work well,

Now that we have a sense of where we’ve been let’s take a look where we need to go.