Why the costliest business problem is what never got done

The problem easiest to miss in a business is not a mistake somebody made. It is something that should have happened and did not. A mistake shouts, while the thing never done stays quiet, so it can cost you for a long time before you see it.

The rule: anything missing is a problem

The source states the rule in one short line: “An omitted anything is an outpoint.” An outpoint is anything in the picture of the business that does not fit with how it should be, and the missing thing is the first kind of it.

Notice how wide that rule is. According to the source, the missing thing can be a person or an object, a moment in time or a form, the order in which things are done, or even an entire scene. If it belongs there and is absent, it counts.

So it is not only an action nobody took. It is also a person who is not where they should be, a step that got skipped, a piece of information nobody passed along.

Suppose a garage owner spends two months trying to work out why customers do not come back. Nobody in his garage ever calls a customer after the repair. That is not a call made badly. It is a call that never existed.

Or suppose a studio owner looks into why her projects keep running late. It turns out she has no approval step at all. The step was not done badly; it simply did not exist.

Why what is missing is so hard to see

Here the source gives an explanation that takes the blame off you: “This is easily the most overlooked outpoint as it isn't there to directly attract attention.”

Think about that for a moment. A mistake announces itself: a customer complains, something breaks, a number drops. What was never done announces nothing. Nobody can complain about a call that never took place.

The source offers a deeper reason as well. According to the source, people were trained to react to what is in front of them, and they do not react in the same way to what is absent.

So this is not about carelessness. Missing what is absent is not a flaw in your character. You are simply working the way everyone works: noticing what is there, and not noticing what is not.

Suppose a business owner gets three complaints in a year and deals with all three. Meanwhile forty customers who never came back, and never said a word, are never counted at all.

Now take the same owner after he starts counting how many customers did not return. That number comes out ten times bigger than the complaints, and that is where the real problem was.

What shouts is not necessarily what is costing you money. Most unhappy customers do not complain. They simply do not come back.

Not doing is as serious as doing badly

The source adds a judgement about gravity here. According to the source, in crime omitting is as bad as committing, and yet nobody seems to treat omissions as real crimes.

Bring that into a business and it becomes simple. Failing to call a customer back is every bit as serious as doing a bad job for them. Either way you lose the same customer. The difference is that the first one does not feel like a mistake.

Suppose an installer is asked for a quote and never replies. He did nothing wrong, and the customer went to a competitor.

Or suppose a consultant has an excellent meeting and forgets to send a summary afterwards. The meeting went well, and the follow-on simply never happened.

The time that was never written down

The source picks out one kind of omission in particular, since it turns up more often than any other: a time that should have been noted and was not. The source calls it dropped time, and treats it as a special case of missing information.

In a business it sounds like this. The customer said he would get back to me, but when? We sent a quote, but on what date? He is always happy, but when did you last check? Without a date, none of those sentences tells you anything you can act on.

Suppose a business owner keeps a list of open quotes with no dates next to them. Some quotes on the list are already eight months old.

The opposite is the same owner after adding a date column to the list. A third of the list is deleted that same day, and what is left turns into a list of things to do.

The booklet gives this chapter two short exercises, called identify and measure. In the practice section at the end you will also find one called the absence list.

So when something in your business is not working, do not look only for what was done wrong. Look as well for what should have happened and never did. Sometimes that is exactly where the real problem is.