Measure twice, cut once!

Recently I was asked by a good friend of mine - who is a builder/developer - to lend a hand to build a cubby house for his young daughter. Now to be brutally honest, I possess the same level of handyman skills as your average 6-year-old, however, as any good friend would, I begrudgingly smiled and accepted.

As we were working away cutting the various lengths of timber down to the correct size, he uttered the same phrase over and over “measure twice, cut once”. At almost every opportunity he would repeat “measure twice, cut once” again and again. After we had finally finished the day’s work, with beer and blistered covered hands, we fired up the trusty BBQ and started cutting the rib-eye into portions and without thinking I said, “measure twice, cut once”. “Now you’ve got it,” he replied.

This got me thinking!

It had become apparent to me that in his trade, it was vitally important to follow simple and basic rules in order to reach a successful outcome with minimal loss of valuable resource.

Likewise, think about professional athletes, they too train the same basic function day-after-day, month-after-month, year-after-year. It’s not that they don’t know what they are doing, it’s that they understand that stringently practicing the basics is vital to achieve a successful end result.

Regardless of occupation, this is true for us all. At the core of any function, there is a fundamental set of actions, that if followed religiously, will yield successful results time and (time) again.

Recently, there have been a lot of conversation about ‘cutting the fat’ and streamlining operations in challenging times, I would add to this sentiment that getting back to basics is also imperative. When you do the little things well, the things that are proven to yield success, you will dramatically increase your chances of a favourable outcome. So I ask, are you doing the little things well?