Ep 255 | The Start-Stop-Continue Exercise

Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off podcast, where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. Let's get into it. Today I want to talk about an exercise, not a physical exercise, but an exercise that we could actually run with our business or in our business, in our relationships. We could run this individually. We could run this with our families. And it can be run pretty much at any time, but I'm focusing on it today because we're nearing the end of the first quarter, which means that we've had some time to, to take action around whatever our business plan entailed. Like if you were business planning towards the end of last year, you kicked off this year running a business plan. You've probably executed some elements of it pretty well, maybe some components of it you haven't done as great on, or maybe are not even applicable anymore. Well, as the first quarter is nearing its conclusion, it's time to run what I would call is the start, stop, continue exercise. Start, stop, continue exercise. You've all probably heard of this before or run a variation of it, but I find that running this exercise, again, not just in my business, but in my family, in my personal world, you know, as an individual in a number of different places within my life, I find that running this exercise is such a beneficial one. It helps me, it helps my team, it helps my companies improve their performance. It helps increase collaboration. And so I really like Start, Stop, Continue because more than anything, it pushes towards achieving whatever that goal may be. So here's the way this works. Okay. Here's the way this, this, this happens. What you do is you ask yourself these questions around what should I start? What should I stop? And what should I continue? And again, the timing of when you answer this, or I'm sorry, you ask these questions may vary. I mean, you could do it regularly, but I like to do it at like kind of natural breakpoints or chapters, like the end of the first quarter. In this example. So let's start with start. Okay. I want you to ask your team or ask yourself or ask your family, what do we need to start doing right now? What should we be? What should we start doing right now? Is there a tool or is there a resource that we should start using that would help us achieve our goals? Lastly, what strengths have we been underutilizing that we need to start using to our advantage? What strengths do you have that you currently are not leveraging that you need to start leveraging? So bottom line, start. What should we start doing right now? Next is stop. What do we need to stop doing right now? You know, what's going on in our business right now, for example, that, you know, we've put a lot of effort into it, we've given it a shot, we've tried different options, it's just not paying off and we need to stop doing it right now. Maybe a different way to ask that, what are we doing right now that's holding us back? What do we do that takes up a lot of resources that doesn't produce significant results? Lastly, is there a tool or process that isn't working the way it was intended to? and we need to stop it. So we, we, we talked around start. What do we need to start doing? We talked around stop. What do we need to stop doing? No surprise. As we get to continue, what are we doing right now that we need to continue doing? What works well right now that shouldn't change? Now, I love to ask this, these questions, the start, stop, and continue questions. I ask myself these questions and I use it as kind of a, a thought-provoking exercise, like a thinking time exercise. But I'll tell you what, asking these questions of your partners, of your employees, even of your clients, you will get amazing, amazing information and insight. I want you to think about asking, you know, let's say your operations manager, someone who's responsible for maybe more implementation than they are necessarily being the visionary. Maybe they're more of an integrator. And you ask that person who's carrying out or executing on the vision, hey, what do you think we ought to start doing? Now usually this is a person that's just simply executing, is not always thinking about what we need to start or stop. They're just executing. They're in execution mode. But who better to ask, what should we start doing? And oh, by the way, What do you think we ought to stop doing? What isn't working right now in your opinion? And then lastly, what do you think we ought to continue doing? Imagine the, the insight you will get when you have someone that has a unique vantage point, at least one that's different than you. How about in your own family? I want you to picture yourself sitting down at the dinner table tonight, and I know this sounds weird to many of you, and yeah, a lot of what we do here at No Days Off is weird. Uh, if you've been listening for a while, You know that I believe we have to get weird if we want different results. If you want different results with your family, maybe you need to do these weird type of exercises, like sit down at the dinner table and ask your kids and ask your spouse, hey, what do you think we as a family need to start doing? What do you think we should stop doing? And maybe, maybe the most interesting question of the bunch, of all the things we were doing right now, what do you think we ought to continue doing? I can tell you when I ask my family this, you know, what should we start doing, I get some great answers. Of course, many of them are unreasonable or unrealistic, but what should we start doing? And I could keep asking questions until I get something a bit more realistic. What should we stop doing is fascinating, right? Because usually it's not, you know, the answer I may get at first is what maybe so-and-so should stop doing, not what should we stop doing as a family. But as you ask more questions, hey, what, what should we as a family maybe stop doing? Maybe there's something going on in your family, like in my family, where maybe I'm the only one that loves to do XYZ and the other 3 in my family, they don't love it and they haven't expressed it yet. So I'm giving them the opportunity. What should we stop? And then the most interesting one within the family, because it provokes some deeper thought. What do you think we're doing right now that we need to continue doing? Fascinating questions to ask. So this start, stop, continue exercise. Is a real, very simple exercise to conduct. And you're just gonna ask a variety of open-ended questions around each one of these respective parts to get your team, to get your family, to get yourself thinking a little deeper. And some of the questions I gave you today, you could build upon those questions that get you to the level of thinking required. So focusing question for you today, how can you leverage this start, stop, continue exercise within your business, as well as within your personal world. When can you start taking action around this? Do me a favor. I would love if you in fact, uh, go put this into play today with your team or your family. Let me know how it goes. You know, tag us on social or whatever it may be. Give us the results of the start, stop, continue exercise. Tell us what you learned, what you're willing to share so that others can, you know, hear why they should be doing it themselves and get in the game with the rest of us. That's all I have for you today, the No Days Off Podcast. Thank you so much for listening. And remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it.