A recent blog posting referenced Meredith Willson’s The Music Man regarding the value of yesterday; “If you pile up enough tomorrows, you'll find that you've collected nothing but a lot of empty yesterdays.” I would like to share my thoughts on the value of yesterday.
We can and should learn from yesterday but not live by it. The decisions we make every day should be based on the most current information we have. That doesn’t mean we have to second guess every prior decision made, but we should be challenging our processes on a regular basis. In order to make the best decision we need to remove all of the constraints affecting our decision. One of these barriers is the holding onto our past. We should come to work each day asking the question, “What is the best way to handle this task/project/process today?” How we did something yesterday, last week or even last year may have been the best approach at the time, but it doesn’t mean it is the best approach today. Keeping our past experiences in mind and using this information to make better decisions today should be our goal. Next time you are asked to change a process and you find yourself thinking or saying, “…we can’t do that…” or “…we have always done it this way…” STOP and THINK, are you holding onto yesterday or do you really believe the old process is better. Change is inevitable and can be stressful but change can be very rewarding. Without change there will be no improvement.
