Tag Archives: debbi fields

day 2536: Bold Moves – Part 6: Predictive Analysis

“Commit your actions to the Lord, and your plans will succeed.”

Fast Company Magazine recently ran an article about 10 CEO moves that changed business. We can learn from each of them.

She’d been honing her craft for 20 years before she decided to set up her own business. She didn’t have a business plan, she just knew that if she sold $50 worth of her baked goods in one day that she would be able to repeat that daily and grow from there.  She was being predictive and maybe she was just using one data point, but she was establishing what we would call forecasting and predictive analysis.  By the way, Debbi Fields, sold $75 worth of cookies in the first day and went on to build an empire with Mrs. Fields Cookies.  But more importantly, she laid out a way of thinking that became the way restaurants and other companies that make and sell perishable items run their businesses.  When we have a plan that is granular and actionable and then we stick with it, learning from each day of business, then we can begin to predict what tomorrow might bring.  It won’t always be right, but it’s so much better than guessing.

What can we learn from Debbi Fields?  God teaches us to plan with Him daily (give us this day our daily bread) and commit our actions to the Lord and then our plans will succeed.  What if we were to think of our work (work we do daily to bring glory to Him in how we do it) and we begin to think about the metrics of what we can do and how we can make them predictive?  Let me try an example. What if one of the gifts we have been given is to bring advice and counsel to others?  It is likely that this is a reactive action as in when someone comes to us we give them advice, not we go and give others advice who don’t ask. That’s fine.  But what if we know and can feel God moving through us in those conversations and we know that we are bettering others when we counsel?  How could we be more proactive and increase this activity?  What if we were to set aside an hour a week that we told those on our teams, or others that we work with that will be “open time” that you want to give back to them?  In college these were prescribed to professors – “office hours” (most professors approached them as drudgery).  But what if we had our “open time” and we looked forward to it?  We gave up something else that we used to like to to do, just to be available to others?  Here is what I think we’d find.  We’d find that this becomes the most valuable, productive, enriching, and energizing hour of the week and before long, we’d figure out how to make it 90 minutes or even more frequent.  Proverbs tells us to commit our actions to Him and the plans will succeed.  What actions are we really committing today?

Reference:  Proverbs 16:3 (New Living Translation)