Often, growth and change requires training. Whether implementing new equipment, software, techniques or workflows, re-training is inevitable. When my wife got her new hairdo, she had to learn a new way of styling her hair. Mistakes cost her, and even at this personal level, these weren’t small costs. Especially at the outset, mistakes have led to hours of lost time from her life and wasted hair product, especially when she has to resort to re-washings and restarts. She has learned that, at least for now, she needs to give herself more time to prepare to go out.

Most of us who have implemented new solutions or upgraded to ‘new and improved’ have had to deal with this learning curve. Whether we choose to purchase training from an expert or do it on our own thru books, videos or other means, we realize that we WILL lose both time and money after implementing new solutions or upgrades to existing solutions. Also we realize that mistakes, sometimes many mistakes, will be made. Upgrading is almost assuredly a speed bump in our otherwise smooth workflow. Until we work out these kinks, we may need to pad our timelines a bit to keep from overworking ourselves or delivering sub-par work to our clients, and expect to lose a bit in revenue when time is lost to education and mistakes.

When we upgrade, we need to prepare ourselves and our businesses to deal with the costs of reeducation in both time and money.