I came across this phrase many years ago when I was preparing to do a presentation at a development trust AGM. It seemed to resonate with me and so I have used it many times since. The source was attributed to an old American saying. Whether that is right or not, I don’t know, but I liked it anyway.

How many paths have you walked down after the rain that do not have one or more puddles? They may be large, small or tiny, but they are invariably always there. It is rare to find a path that does not have water lying after the rain.

But the real meaning is in life generally. Any path you follow and any road you travel will always have difficulties. Some will be bigger than others, but there is generally some difficulty that you must overcome. Sometimes it is just a puddle for you to step over or walk around. Sometimes it can be a flood making you think twice about proceeding.

Quite a few years ago, Helen and I were in the office and it was raining. Our office was on the first floor and so we thought nothing of the rain. Then it became clear that part of our road was actually underwater. Like many others on that day, we shut up shop and headed home. That proved to be more difficult than we expected.

We waded through the water to get to our car, which luckily was not sitting in any water. The direct road home had been closed by the police and so we took a more circuitous route, driving through flood water at times. We reached our home, only to find that part of our road had been washed away. We have a small burn that runs along the side of our road. It was not that small on that day. We picked our way carefully past the missing bits of the road and got home. Kettle on!

How often in business have you chosen to take a road that you knew would have some difficulties, only to find that there was one problem after another? Did you give up or was the pull of the goal enough to keep you going? Our goal on that day was to get home, get dry and get warm. And that’s what we did!

The same is probably true of just about anything in life if you think about it. But you know your goal and you push through no matter what. It’s when you don’t have a goal or that goal is too uncertain that you are tempted to give up. As long as you know where you are going and you have bought into that as a worthwhile goal, it somehow gives you the focus and the strength the overcome the “puddles” along the way.

So, the lesson for today is to know where you are going, to commit to that as a worthwhile goal and then you will see it through to the end.

That is sometimes not so easy with a business. I suppose for us we have always wanted to build up in terms of turnover, people and probably profit. We measure these on a regular basis as much as we prepare monthly management accounts. These take a bit of effort to prepare but we can be confident that we are on course. What is our eventual goal? Well, we probably will not reach that but like the old saying, if you aim for the moon, you may hit a star shooting star. We did alright and the fact that we had our goal and our milestones kept our focus and we achieved more because of it.

After all. Before you begin any journey, you need to know where you are going. Then you can plan your route, and while you may be forced to take some diversions, perhaps due to flooding, you know where you are going and so you can correct your path. If you don’t know your destination, how do you know what roads to take? At each junction, we knew what we had to do, and which road to take. Wandering aimlessly through life or business is unlikely to get you the best results.

So, 10 years from today, how old will you be? When you get up and leave your home that morning, where are you going? If you are in business, where is it, what is the turnover? How many people do you employ? What is the profit?

If you cannot answer these questions, do you actually have a serious goal or are you just hoping for the best? Are you on a road to “who knows where”?

 

 

Alan E Long

The Long Partnership

07770 738770