The Perfect Recipe for Success

It is difficult to pinpoint why any business is successful within their industry. Many businesses offer the same, if not exactly the same, product and can have a varied success and failure rates. Success isn’t built on luck, but built on understanding what factors are positively contributing to the business and what factors are negatively contributing to the business. This type of understanding isn’t limited to a business’s bottom line as it is easily relatable to an everyday recipe from the household kitchen, Chocolate Chip Muffins.

When making Chocolate Chip Muffins from scratch for the first time, it is difficult to pinpoint why your recipe may have failed or succeeded without understanding what each component of the recipe does and how all the components of the recipe come together. The baker needs to understand that there are many ways to mess up a recipe and it is important to follow the already established successful recipe. An example of this is adding extra chocolate chips because you love chocolate. Without the proper understanding of what it takes to cook batter through and through the recipe will be ruined with the addition of extra chocolate chips. In contrast, the recipe’s success is built on knowing that all parts of the recipe are measured out precisely, the mixing is timed, and the cooking instructions are achieved. The baker knows that the prepared recipe has been tried and tested to ensure the success of future muffin batches and only one ingredient should be changed at a time.

Businesses need to take the same approach when adjusting to the ever-changing environment. Businesses need to understand what components of their “recipe” are successful and what components need to be adjusted. It is wise to change the “recipe” in small increments to prevent adjusting the wrong factor causing irreversible damage to the company. The performance of the company will be reflected by how successful the company “recipe” is at adapting to the changing environment. The changes made to the “recipe” need to withstand the test of time and support the business for continued success.