One great benefit of working with a professional coach is having someone reflect back to you their observations of how you work and how you make decisions.  When you learn about yourself, it's a heck of a lot easier to manage yourself.

One of my clients is a very highly respected physician.  And he's created a great solo practice that has done very well financially, but one of the things he labors over is small decisions. He can have someone's life in his hands in surgery and make split second decisions that are perfect, but tiny little business decisions come very hard for him. He always wants to get as much information as he can so that he can do just the right thing.  In my days of Corporate America, we called this "Analysis Paralysis".

During one particular call, he was having trouble deciding between using digital photography or using medium format film to document results with patients. We had discussed this on an previous coaching call and he had decided that he was going to try the medium format approach; all he had to do was buy a tripod and some new lighting.

When he came to the session this time, he said that he had not made any progress purchasing the lighting or the tripod for his medium format camera. It occurred to me that this was a pattern for him; that he labored over these decisions; which lighting would be the best, which type of tripod would be the best. And by working with him over time, I also knew that usually his first decision based on the data he had accumulated was not what he would end up using over the long run.  Instead his pattern was that he had to physically use something, decide whether or not he enjoyed it and whether it fit for him and his practice.  He would then purchase something else that accomplished the same goal and go thru that process of trying it, using it and deciding if he liked it.

This time spent researching and analyzing each decision held him back in a number of ways.  As I observed this, one of the things that I asked him was, "I've listened as you make decisions, and I know that you spend a long time analyzing the data before you make that decision.  What if, since we know that you're going to have to use something before you can really decide to keep it or not..... What if we skip that 'let's analyze it to death phase'?  What if we step right over that and immediately use something, decide if we like it, and than make another decision?"

He was ecstatic about the insight.  He was blown away with this revelation of how he did his own work. He had always had thoughts about his "over analysis", but he had never had it put to him in a way, that made that much sense. 

We immediately applied this not only to the camera, but to another situation in his office, where we're jumping over the laborious analysis phase; jumping right into let's try one route, see if we like it, if we do that's great, if not we're going to drop it and go another way.

Final thought:

We don't easily see our own patterns in ourselves.  We often can't see what it is that stops us from having our business be easy.  A professional coach is a great way to help you spot your own patterns and design a way to make it all work.

Jerry Wistrom "Small Business - Made Easy"

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