The Value of 13

My wife and I were talking recently about a friend who lives in a cul-de-sac where the house number 13 was missing, the houses were built in the 80’s and I guess that, because 13 is classed as unlucky, the house builders skipped the number as it would have been a difficult sale. Not sure if this is something still going on today as attitudes have changed but she also went on to say that, for her, 13 has always been a luck number.

This got me thinking that actually 13 is a key number for business, firstly it is a quarter of a year and we in business and our tax offices use this 13 week period for collecting VAT and as managers we should be using the 13 week period as a review period to assess progress against our annual targets and reconfirm our targets for the next 13 weeks (If you use a month to do this review then you risk small anomalies affecting your decisions).

Another instance where 13 weeks is important is when you are considering a change to your business as this is the time period it takes to embed change, the period it takes from everyone affected with the change go from being uncomfortable, issue challenges and reactions to the new way to getting used to the change before full acceptance. This means that when implementing change we need to be mindful of this 13 week period, be patient with others as they learn to cope, be consistent with the need for the change, hear and address individuals concerns with the change and acknowledge the steps and progress individuals make to the changes required.

If you define and set this change in motion and do not guide the change through for the 13 weeks period after setting it in motion then that change will not achieve its desired outcomes, which leads to frustration, lack of faith in others, others not believing in any changes so net result being the business suffers. Remember others will not have been considering change as long as you have, it will be obvious to you but very new to them.

Yet another place where 13 is felt is, it takes 13 days for an individual to get a message, I am not talking about receiving a text or email message but a marketing, corporate message takes 13 days of repeatedly broadcasting of this message. So what does that mean? It means that any message you wish others to hear needs to be consistently expressed for 13 days before that message is fully heard and understood.

So 13 is of value to business, in fact it is key to a business achieving all that it wishes to.

Understand and use the benefits of 13 to benefit your business.