Losing focus?
Is it time to refocus your efforts?
One of the great frustrations of running your own business is feeling like you’re on a treadmill, or stuck at your current level of growth. This happens to everyone from time to time, but if you’ve been stuck for a while, here are some ideas to kick-start moving forward again.
Start small
When you’re in the thick of it, everything seems urgent and important. In my experience, this is never actually the case.
The reality is, small baby steps can make a huge difference to both how your business functions and your perception of progress. Yet it often seems, when you’re lost in the fog, that taking even one small step can feel like a huge waste of time. You might feel there are big projects that need completing before things can change.
Your internal dialogue will normally go something along the lines of: “If only I can get that done, everything will be better.”
This line of reasoning is a dangerous and unproductive way to think. It’s also not true.
The real issue here is focus: what are you focusing your attention on?
Get focussed
By all means, make a list of the things that need doing in your business, but then prioritise and pick one, just one, to focus on. If that one task feels overwhelming, then break it down even further until it feels doable.
One project 100% completed makes a difference to the performance of your business. Seven projects 92% complete is business hell. Don’t let biting off more than you and your team can chew, in amongst all your business-as-usual work, deceive you into thinking you are making progress. Until a project is done completely, it’s not done.
When that one task is completed, move on to the next one.
Start easy
It helps to order your list from the most difficult to the easiest thing to fix. Then work in reverse, starting with the easiest tasks first. This can feel like wimping out if you’re the kind of person who loves a challenge. Believe me it’s not.
Focussing on and fixing one small thing can make the most amazing difference to your business. Every small, easy job you fix creates a little more time and space for thinking more clearly about the bigger, more complex issues.
Eventually, you’ll get to a place where it feels absolutely right to have a go at fixing one of your major projects.
Take the long term view
Another mental roadblock many firms face is only focussing on the short term. Some business issues are constantly deferred, in the mistaken belief that you need to stay focused on producing income this week/month/quarter.
My recommendation is to make all decisions based on what is right in the long term. Yes, all of them.
By making long-term decisions, you will be focussed on the foundations for your future growth and success.
For example, in the short term it often feels ‘right’ to keep an under-performing staff member. However, the truth is the under-performer acts as a huge distraction for everyone else on the team, especially the business owner. Other people have to pick up the slack left by someone who can’t or won’t do their job to the level required, which affects productivity and staff morale.
If the issue with the under-performing staff member is a lack of skills and experience, you need to decide whether you want to invest in the training required to bring them up to speed. If you do make that call, you need to acknowledge that it is a long-term decision, and you will (hopefully) begin to see an improvement over the following months. However, if the issue is the staff member’s lack of ability or motivation, you may need to simply bite the bullet and replace them.
Often an extreme decision, like letting someone go, will be deferred because of the pain and disruption involved in the short term. However, failing to tackle the issue will just see you in the same situation a year down the track, as you continue to try and work around the problem. You’ll also notice that this will cause all sorts of other flow-on problems and you could even lose other, valuable staff members who are fed up with carrying the load.
In this case, keeping the under-performing staff member is a short-term decision with long-term consequences. As the leader/owner of your business, it’s crucial that you keep your focus on the right issues, take the long-term view and guide your team to do the same.
Focus on the future
Maybe it’s time to refocus and make some sound long-term decisions. There are no shortcuts to where you are headed. However, moving things forward in bite-sized steps, and taking the long view is the fastest way to building your amazing business.
“That’s been one of my mantras. Focus and simplicity.”
Steve Jobs
“My recommendation is to make all decisions based on what is right in the long term. Yes, all of them.”
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