Business Commitment #8: Take Regular Inventory

“You can’t manage what you refuse to measure.”

In business, just like in life, what you ignore today becomes the crisis of tomorrow. Early in my career, I learned this through painful experience. Assuming everything was fine because it felt fine was a shortcut to disaster.

When a business neglects regular inventory, it goes bankrupt. Likewise, when leaders fail to evaluate their own moral and emotional health, they risk spiritual and emotional bankruptcy.

Taking personal inventory isn’t just a business practice, it’s a discipline of self-awareness and growth. It’s about courageously confronting reality rather than comfortably ignoring it.

There are three parts to inventory: past, present, and future, including vision. Making a lot of money can cover up mistakes and create an illusion of health when, in reality, you’re only focused on the present. Many business owners get trapped here, working in the day-to-day grind, ignoring past mistakes, repeating them, and never planning for the future. In the end, the business runs them instead of them running the business.

The Core Issue

By “inventory,” I mean taking a critical, honest look at your current situation: Where can I improve? What am I holding onto that no longer serves me?

Start with the past, are you repeating old mistakes? From a moral standpoint, it’s often easy to spot patterns by looking at the problems around you. Am I blaming others instead of taking responsibility for a broken system I could fix? Am I being dishonest, manipulative, or selfish in how I lead today? Sometimes our ego doesn’t want us to truly do a self examination into our own behavior, if when asking yourself these questions you laugh or it makes you feel uncomfortable. You definitely need to slow down and take a harder look, its imperative to expand your mind and use critical thinking really evaluate where you are at personally as a leader. 

A true inventory requires stripping away resentment, fear, and emotion long enough to see the situation clearly and logically. Only then can you put an action plan in place. But you’ll never get anywhere if dishonesty, manipulation, or selfishness remain in the equation. These cloud your judgment and keep you from seeing the real issue. Dishonestly, manipulation, and selfishness create a delusional veil that your justified in everything your doing. 

Selfish leadership, in particular, destroys teams. A selfish leader worries only about their own well-being, not about serving the people around them. Over time, that truth becomes obvious. Teams fragment, trust evaporates, and you’ll notice a revolving door of staff every year or two. People are not dumb; they can spot selfishness quickly.

Avoiding inventory is ultimately an act of fear, fear of what you might discover. But that fear only creates blind spots. And blind spots are where leaders lose credibility, companies lose money, and people lose their way.

I remember a season when I avoided a situations within our organization because I felt like focusing ion sales was more important. Focusing on sales and not trying to address other issues such as additional people we needed or employees not performing well I was just covering up the problems and not looking at them and trying to fix them. I would have needed less sales because we would have had more profit had these issues been resolved.  What I refused to acknowledge eventually became undeniable, and the damage cut deeper than if I had faced it early on. That season taught me this: regular, honest self-assessment isn’t optional. Once I can begin looking at myself first where am I falling short, what have I been ignoring, then I can clearly identify others or individuals that may need improvement.  It’s essential for sustainable growth.

I once sat down with a manager who was frustrated that his team was constantly missing deadlines. He blamed laziness. But when we took inventory together, the real issue came to light—he was overloading them with unclear priorities, and a couple of his team members had never been properly trained. The failure wasn’t the team—it was him not finding this out sooner. By confronting his own leadership blind spot instead of pointing fingers, he restructured how tasks were assigned and retrained them on the daily processes they were supposed to follow. Within three months, the same team was not only hitting deadlines but outperforming expectations. The problem wasn’t his people—it was his unwillingness to take honest inventory of his own role.

Inventory, whether financial or moral, requires humility, honesty, and courage. These qualities are the foundation of authentic leadership.

Deep Dive

Regular inventory is more than counting numbers and stock, it’s a practice of radical honesty.

• • A true inventory means rigorously examining your actions, motives, and impact. Leaders need that same discipline, or they’ll drift into self-deception.
  • Issues left unchecked grow silently in the dark, draining energy and resources. But once you bring them into the light, they turn into opportunities for growth.
  • Real growth only happens when you stop pretending and start aligning your actions with your deeper purpose.
  • Accountability begins with clear, objective assessment. If you refuse to measure the truth, you can’t manage it.
  • Prosperity and progress always demand accuracy and discipline. Guessing, hoping, or ignoring reality has never built anything worth keeping.

In short: unmeasured problems multiply. Measured problems can be solved.

Practical Action Steps

• • Schedule weekly or monthly safe space “truth-telling” sessions with your team. These should be open, honest conversations without fear of retaliation. Start with this: What are your top three bottlenecks keeping you from doing your job? Ask them to be brutally honest.
  • Seek blunt feedback from mentors and colleagues who won’t flatter you. A true friend or mentor tells you the hard truth.
  • Audit finances and operations quarterly with full transparency, no excuses, no spin.
  • Assess your emotional and spiritual health as deliberately as you review your balance sheet.
  • Take a piece of paper and honestly write down where you are currently being dishonest, manipulative, or selfish (since selfishness often includes the first two). List everything you can think of this is for your eyes only. Then, from that list, identify the top three issues you’re facing right now. Look at them clearly and honestly, without emotion, so you can see them for what they really are.
  • Address issues immediately, procrastination is a form of denial.
  • Evaluate every choice against your core values, not just profitability.
  • Measure success beyond profit: team morale, culture health, and customer trust are just as critical.

Grounded Wisdom

• • If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. Accountability begins with inventory.
  • Clarity comes from cutting through fear and listening carefully. Inventory isn’t paranoia, it’s perspective.
  • Purpose requires reflection and alignment. Inventory keeps your actions in step with your highest calling.
  • Wealth and success are built on accuracy and discipline, not on wishful thinking or ignorance.

Brutally Honest Self-Reflection

• • Am I avoiding truth in any area of my business or life?
  • What blind spots am I tolerating that could become tomorrow’s crisis?
  • How often do I measure my decisions against my core values?
  • Who is giving me raw, unfiltered feedback, and am I really listening?
  • Where do I need greater transparency or accountability?
  • Am I using clear, consistent metrics to evaluate my leadership?
  • How does my approach to inventory reflect my spiritual and ethical maturity?

Final Word: Play the Long Game, Leave a Legacy

Regular inventory is leadership’s mirror. It doesn’t flatter you; it reflects reality. And reality is where growth begins.

Clarity is power. Leaders who face the truth, financially, relationally, spiritually, are the ones who endure. This week, commit to courageous honesty. Audit your books. Audit your motives. Audit your soul.

Your greatest victories won’t come from avoiding the truth. They’ll come from confronting it, learning from it, and acting decisively.