How many things in your life would you describe as a drag?
If you’re not familiar with the term, a ‘drag’ is anything that’s difficult, unattractive, hard work, or takes too long. In other words, something you’d happily eliminate from your life if you could.
- When your clients work with you, do they experience any drag?
- Is your onboarding smooth and friction-free or does it feel like a slow shuffle through red tape?
- Do your sign-up or proposal processes move with pace and clarity or do they stall somewhere between “send us your documents” and “we’ll get back to you”?
- Are your AML or KYC checks labour-intensive for them?
- Do clients ever wait longer than they should for answers, updates or results?
Because, especially in the case of that last one, if they do; that’s drag and it quietly kills momentum, trust and advocacy.
The same applies inside your organisation.
What drag exists inside your firm?
Is there a team member who isn’t pulling their weight?
A system that doesn’t do what the salesperson promised it would?
Partner politics that drain more energy than they create?
If you’re causing or enduring drag, here’s this week’s bullet:
Pick one thing and make it the smallest, easiest friction you can name and ask: “If I eliminated this today, what would actually go wrong?”
What would we lose?
How would we suffer?
What negative impact would it really have?
If ten minutes later, you’re still struggling to name a real negative consequence, remove it. Immediately.
Business is hard enough without it being a unnecessary drag for you or because of you. The world rewards speed, simplicity and smoothness.
So this week, do yourself and your clients a favour, remove one piece of drag.
I could go on and give case studies and frameworks to validate my position but you’re a busy person, that would just be a drag.
To your success
Martin Bissett
