Getting the best out of yourself

We cover a wide variety of subjects during our emails, including Marketing, Business strategy, Developing and leading teams. However, as always, if you want to implement your strategy effectively, the impetus must come from you.

One of the most common complaints we hear from business owners is that they’re so busy “working in the business” that they do not have enough time to “work on the business”.

Invariably ‘urgent matters’ take precedence over ‘important priorities’, given the former tend to be driven by someone else, often customers, but also employees, suppliers or other stakeholders and invariably come with a deadline.

We have created a few ideas to help you to become more effective.

1. Give yourself time to look after the business. Build yourself some time into your diary to step back from the day to day activities and focus on ‘the business’. Think about your longer-term goals and how you are going to achieve them.
2. Prioritise which customers you focus on. Dealing with customers’ issues and getting sales has to be done, but are you spending your time on the right customers and the right sales?  Who are the customers that could represent the best growth potential? How much time are you spending with them?
3. Who drives the agenda? Is it always you who drives new initiatives and activities in the business? If the answer is yes, ask yourself why? If you have a team, are you spending enough time with them?  Are you developing them?

If any of these sound familiar, then it could be time to rethink your priorities? Look at the key issues you are dealing with now, and assess whether in one year or five years which, if any, of them you would look back on as having had a significant impact on the longer-term success of the business?

A business owner or leader should generally focus on those things that will have the most significant impact and that only they can do.

In many cases, we find leaders and owners working on urgent issues; this may be for a number of reasons such as a lack of capacity elsewhere in the business, a perception it will be too difficult to hand them over – or that the customer will not be happy dealing with someone else, or a lack of confidence in the ability of others to do them right.

In many businesses, a core reason can be traced back to a reluctance on the owner or leader to ‘let go’. The acknowledgement of this and putting in measures to address it will be a key step forward and help you to “work on the business”.

Let’s meet for a virtual coffee

We are offering a free one-hour virtual coffee and the chance to discuss any area of your business where you feel our help and support would be beneficial with a member of our team. Click here to book your free meeting.