The Importance of Watching the Ball

Preseason training has started for the upcoming cricket season and we have been focusing significantly on a number of key attributes necessary for success. Upon reflection during the last week it has come to my attention how important some of these processes and ideas are in assisting not only myself in my day to day life but how it is also something important to get my clients to focus on within their businesses.

The key concepts we have been working on are:

1. Getting the basics done right;
2. Building from a solid base; and
3. Getting consistent processes and continually striving to improve them;

These ideas, although simple, are vitally important in everyone’s day to day lives within a business. As an extremely keen cricketer, the basics that I need to get done are to watch the ball closely and to keep my eyes level. However, when I translate this into my work life, it means ensuring the core business services and products I am working are being done well. I must constantly ask myself:

Am I ensuring that I am getting in touch with my clients, communicating with them about where everything is and more importantly meeting the timeframes and deadlines we set?

Beyond the basics, are we building a solid client base? Again, using a cricket analogy, I need to ensure my footwork is quick and solid, ensuring I have a strong base to either move explosively whilst fielding or deriving maximum power when batting. Transitioning back into my work world, we try to ensure we are not reliant on one business to continually drive our growth or more importantly, too reliant on one entity to prop up the cashflow or business profitability. Similarly, my solid base from a technical standpoint, allows me to move between business clients and ensure that I provide the best service possible without being fearful of a mistake, which may cost the business significantly from a profitability and cashflow standpoint. In that way I don’t have to compromise on values and still deliver the same outstanding service that we pride ourselves on.

Finally, come the processes and systems. Cricket as is business can be extremely complicated, but individual and businesses that do things well usually bring things back to a very simple processes and strive for consistency in continually excelling at these specific things. With my cricket I know I play my best when I get in to a consistent process. This means I am consistent in my approach from the week leading up to the game, all the way to game day in applying the very simple principle of just watching the ball. Despite having these very engrained processes, trying new things and looking to further improve them is something that does not disturb me as it will hopefully make me a better player.

By ensuring within the business we consistently do the small and sometimes innocuous processes well such as; learning our clients birthday, children’s name and even interests it allows me to build into bigger and more profitable relationships for everyone. It also gives our clients a consistency of delivery that when they engage with how businesses, this the level of services or product they can expect every time. By continually fine tuning our processes it will allows us to be more efficient and allow us to grow and thrive.

How well are you watching the ball in your business?