Planning and succeeding…Cold storage…
Planning and succeeding…Step # 1 of three
A manager spending a joint sales day with a new representative was expecting a quick briefing on the first call that they were about to make. But instead of giving that status update and his plan of attack, the representative leapt from the car and headed toward the door. The astonished manager followed and what predictably followed was a sales disaster. On call number two, the manager addressed the failure to plan, but that first call was one that was never to be resurrected.
Transitioning our fondest wishes to reality is the stuff of success. That said, how many times have we established a goal and failed to see it turn out to be the hoped-for accomplishment? The steps that lie between goalsetting and that laudable ending point number just three:
Planning, Implementing and Evaluating.
Action toward our goal begins with a plan – one that realistically maps the path to fulfilling it; which assesses all the resources needed to succeed, and which also takes into consideration the impediments to accomplishing it. In short it addresses every aspect of how to proceed.
An effective plan takes time, thought and discipline, and is the most critical step in the path to success. Planning may not be an action step, but it’s essential to action. In its’ absence we’re just flailing like that newbie sales rep who rushed the prospect’s door with absolutely no preparation.
Next up: Those last two.
Cold storage…Not a good idea
It might be stating the obvious that all chemical reactions are altered by temperature. And it might be preaching to the choir to point out that our titration kit is used to conduct chemical reactions.
But it might not be a waste of time to remind ourselves that it needs to be protected from the extremes of temperatures. Oh, and it might just be that if we didn’t heed that common-sense advice, some of the squirrelly test results we saw recently might just have been totally bogus … and cold induced!
Keeping that kit protected from really cold (and hot) environments is critical to its’ accuracy. And even if we took it inside last night when it fell to minus whatever, it still gets cold sitting in the trunk while we’re driving to that next call. So, during the depth of the cold season, we need to take the time to bring its components up to room temperature before use.
Dropping those bottles in a bowl of warm water for a few minutes while we get the machine ready for service is the common-sense thing to do. By normalizing the temperatures of both the indicators and reagents, we can have confidence in the results we’ll see and save a lot of wasted time fretting over those bogus results.
Next up: The ABC’s of titration.