I threw my back out bowling. Bowling. I've been training for months. Kettlebells, calisthenics, actual programming, 'cause I'm in my forties and I'd like to still be useful at sixty. Getting strong, feeling good about it. Then I go bowl with my team one night and somewhere around the third or fourth frame my back just goes, and I can't stand up straight. Flight home was brutal. Couldn't work right for days. Took me out, from the one sport where people are drinking beer while they play it.
The dumb thing is that I grabbed a lighter ball on purpose. Figured I'd take it easy, have fun with the team, not try too hard. The one time I deliberately chose the easy version is the time that put me on the floor.
And I've bowled many times before. Didn't stretch, didn't think about my form, didn't think about it at all, 'cause it's not that serious for me and it's always been more of a fun activity to do with friends. Nothing's happened the last dozen times so why would it this time.
That's the thing though. I warm up for the deadlift 'cause I respect the deadlift. I don't warm up for bowling 'cause I don't. And the stuff you don't respect is the stuff that's been around so long it's never given you a reason to.
Same thing happens in a business and it's worse there, 'cause the old stuff is usually the stuff everything's sitting on.
The employee who's been with you longest is probably the one nobody's given a real review to in years. The vendor contract from back when you started, nobody's opened since. The process everybody runs every day that none of you question 'cause it's always just worked. You stop looking at the things that have never broken. That's not carelessness, it's just how attention works. It goes to the new thing, the loud thing, the thing on fire. Never the thing in the corner that's been fine for nine years.
And then one day it's the thing in the corner.
The best operators I know take this further. They don't wait for the old thing to break. They go find the stuff that's running fine and make it a problem on purpose, 'cause fine is just the floor and there's always a better version. You can build that into how the business runs. A real SWOT on the whole thing every six months will show you things you've gone blind to, both the cracks and the stuff that's quietly ready to level up.
This week, do this.
You're probably not going to run a full SWOT by Friday, so don't. Do a mini one.
Make a list of the oldest things in your business. Not the weakest, the oldest. Longest-tenured person, oldest vendor, oldest contract, oldest piece of software you've never switched off of.
Pick the one you'd least want somebody poking at. Give it an hour. Ask the dumb question nobody's asked in years, is this still the best way we could be doing this.
If you want help programming your cadenced SWOT so you're SOP IS to regularly optimize come talk to my team at Owners Club.
