Archives for Osama bin Laden

Last night US forces found Osama bin Laden and he and several other of the people with him are now dead.

The brave, well-trained armed forces members who carried out this mission have our sincere gratitude.

For many years people assumed that Osama bin Laden was in a cave in Afghanistan somewhere. That was the conventional wisdom.

As usual – when it came to something really important – the conventional wisdom was wrong.

Fortunately our forces didn’t only listen to “everyone”. They did their own research, and instead of in a cave in Afghanistan, they found him in an estate in a high-end neighborhood in a city in Pakistan less than a mile from a military academy.

If they had listened to conventional wisdom he’d still be alive and well.

What conventional wisdom are you following in your agency?

When was the last time you really thought about what your agency considers the best way to provide a quote, submit a policy, prospect for customers, hire new personnel, etc.? How many of your procedures have you truly analyzed in the past few years?

Many of the activities we do each day are fine as-is. In some cases it’s completely reasonable to do some things the way they’ve always been done.

The huge opportunities, though, lie in finding the ones that we should change. Where customers, markets, and/or our own staff would be significantly better off with a small tweak. Best yet, those tweaks frequently make things easier on ourselves as well.

So, as we celebrate the justice reflected in yesterday’s departure of the planner and organizer of the death of thousands of innocents, take this moment to plan the extinction of some out-of-date conventional wisdom in your agency as well.

You’ll be glad you did.

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