This week the focus has been on details and seemingly small things. Because they can make all the difference.

Let's end this week with a focus on speed. Especially the speed with which we can make small adjustments.

I wish I were a guitar player, but I'm not. I've just dreamed about it since I was young, but I've never learned to play. What I have learned is more about guitars than any non-guitar player should know. ;)

I'm that guy. I subscribe and watch all kinds of guitarists on YouTube. I've even watched countless videos on the little technical adjustments luthiers and experts at setting up guitars make. Some of these are minimal. Seemingly insignificant. But they make big differences in how the instrument performs.

So it goes with our businesses and organizations. We can make a minor tweak and it can completely alter the results we get. Improvements aren't always measured by the size of the change or adjustment. Guitarists can turn a tone or volume knob ever so slightly and get a different sound. They can alter how they pluck or strike the strings and again...the sound changes. For the better.

Speed is essential to our success because we're flying the plane that is our business. Liftoff requires speed. Staying aloft requires speed.

Before little digital tuners were invented - either the ones that attach to a guitar headstock or one that's on a pedalboard at the feet of the guitar player...tuning was more laborious. Slower. Getting a guitar in tune now is easy and fast (mostly). That's important because any tune played out of tune sounds...well, awful!

Think of the speed to make small adjustments inside your business as your ability to get into tune more quickly. It'll help you play better. It'll result in being able to perform better.

Selling you on the virtues of speed isn't so hard. I doubt I have to give that much attention. So let's focus on the smallness of the adjustment. I figure that's the constraint. To give small adjustments the emphasis they deserve.

If you purchase services or products for your enterprise then you've likely experienced cost creep. Suppliers deploy a common practice of incremental price increases. It's their version of small adjustments because it piles up, adding to their bottom line.

We push back because that cost creep drives down our profits. It takes our business in the wrong direction. That's why we deploy speed at searching for alternatives that may enable us to creep our costs down instead of up. It's the push-pull nature of how business works.

Think about what happens when you pull your car in to fill up with gas. Today the price may be $2.89 cents a gallon. Last week it was $2.77. Next week it may be $2.99. You don't likely think much of it because you need gas in your car. No matter the cost, you have to have it. And those price differences don't likely create much thought. A 4% swing in one direction or another is no big deal. If you spend $50 to fill up...so what if the next week it's 4% higher and it costs you $52?

You can't approach running your business with that mindset though. If you do, you'll find yourself swimming in red ink. That's why making small adjustments sooner than later is necessary. I rather choose to think of it as ongoing adjustments. Start and don't ever stop adjusting in small increments.

In business, we're basically on this constant quest to drive our costs down and drive our revenues up. That makes this speed thing easier to think about. We put pressure on our costs and expenses to drive them down. We work hard to invest our money in areas where we get the highest return. Simultaneously we're working to increase our revenues. That can happen with price increases to our customers or it come from higher value and higher price point offerings,