If what you are doing isn’t working, or it is satisfying you in the short-term but not the long-term, you need to pay attention and change your approach. Take some time out of your schedule every week to consider whether your actions are creating positive results in your life. Don’t just blindly persist at something that is not working.

Mira started her business Ultrafunki on a small budget. She was designing and manufacturing limited edition handbags, and started out doing much of the production work herself. Her output was 15 bags a week after long hours of work.

After a string of publicity, Mira was forced to change her approach. While she wanted to keep the bags unique, the orders were coming in too quickly and for too many bags. Stores were waiting up to six weeks to receive fresh stock. When she received a short-notice international order for 200 handbags, Mira agreed it was time to get help.

After advertising for staff for three months with no success, Mira felt frustrated. She didn’t see herself as large enough to require a manufacturer. Finally, she decided to take the plunge and leverage the business to a new level. After contracting out the production, Ultrafunki started selling four times the number of bags. Mira now knows that changing her approach is an ongoing process. She is currently in the process of relocating and finding a larger manufacturer so that she can increase her output further.

Sometimes you need a fresh perspective to change your approach to a situation. When I began working in business finance, we had an inefficient system for collecting documentation from our clients. Frequently, we would complete a significant amount of work before discovering that the client was either no longer motivated enough to provide the documentation, or that the documentation showed poor loan repayment history. The result? A lot of time and effort wasted. Fortunately a new staff member solved the problem in her first week when she assumed she had to collect the documentation from the clients immediately. It seemed so obvious once implemented, but we were all too used to our old ways of doing things to see the solution.

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