Top tips to help you navigate choppy waters

Running a business is certainly challenging with so many different factors to consider around resource, supply chains, the cost of energy and materials.

However, now more than ever, it is important that you spend enough time ‘working on the business’ thinking about strategy, ways to improve and customers, and not just ‘working in the business’ completing the ‘to do list’.

To help you to focus your priorities, we thought we would create some top tips to help you.

1. Engage and trust your team

These are the people who make your business the success it is. Don’t be frightened to ask them what they see and what changes could be made to improve the business. Sharing the workload at this time will be beneficial to you and beneficial to their development.

You can start this by asking some simple questions around changes in customer behaviour and what the implications of any changes are.

2. Be focused and effective with your time

It can be useful from time to time to step back from the day to day pressures, take control of your agenda and prioritise ‘the business’ and what it needs at the top of your ‘to do list’.

Try to spend your time in areas where only you can make the difference. Before getting involved in day to day activities, ask yourself ‘am I the only person who can resolve this issue?’

Here a few questions to ask yourself:

• Will what I’m doing make a real difference to the business?
• Am I the best person to be carrying out this activity?
• How does this fit into the overall strategy of the business?

3. Think about your business platform

The last two years has seen some fundamental changes to the business landscape and your business must adapt.

• Has the market structure evolved or changed? If so, have we evolved our routes to market?
• Do we have the right people in the business and are they doing the right things?
• Is our product or service offering still relevant and still meeting the needs of the business?
• Are we providing a good customer experience?

4. Make use of your management information

Reflection and analysis are often underestimated skills for business leaders, but nevertheless they are important components in your skillset.

Understanding and acting on your management information can drive fundamental improvements to your business.

But they are only useful if:

• They are focused on the key parts of the business and enable you to adapt and change your strategy as a result of reflecting on them.
• They provide you with the information that will enable you to improve the overall performance of the business.
• Your team are aligned with what they are focused on and act on them as well.
• You have a clear method of implementation and measurement of success.

Our team at BHP Consulting have all successfully run businesses, and we understand that every business is unique. Our practical approach to supporting our clients enables us to share our real-world experience to positively impact on the performance of your business. To arrange a call or an exploratory face-to-face meeting, please click here