Reading Peter Drucker’s classic,The Effective Executive, I came across this nugget, “A crisis that recurs a second time is a crisis that must not occur again.”

If it happens once, it is most likely the result of an error in human judgment. If it happens more than once, it is probably the result of a bad system/process. If that’s the case then you can fix it!

How do you fix a recurring problem? By creating a system… a process… a routine… a fixed way of doing something!

Drucker writes,

“A recurrent crisis should always have been foreseen. It can therefore either be prevented or reduced to a routine which clerks can manage. The definition of a ‘routine’ is that it makes unskilled people without judgment capable of doing what it took a near-genius to do before; for a routine puts down in systematic, step-by-step form what a very capable man learned in surmounting yesterday’s crisis.“

This principle is applicable in your personal life, in the home, in the workplace, in the church, and in most every other environment!

Figure out what works, write that routine down on paper, and do it the same way every time until and unless you find a better way OR discover that what you’re doing isn’t producing the results you’d hoped for!

The bottom line is that at some point you and the organization you’re a part of MUST create, write down, and follow routines for maximum effectiveness. The key to continued evolution is evaluation, but that’s for another post. In the meantime, figure out what it takes to reach success, write it down, and do it consistently!