Deal with the sickness, not the symptom in your business growth
How to uncover the real issues that are consuming your energy, and how to stop wasting time on them.
What is your time worth? It’s not a trick question. As a business owner or manager, you likely have some idea that time means money. Hours of labour, consulting time, creating knowledge, pieces per hour; the business world revolves around the idea that someone trades their time, effort, and in the modern world, intellect, to produce something someone pays money for. And it’s relatively easy to put a value or price on that time.
However, somewhere along the journey of starting and growing a business, the lines get blurred. While you’re acutely aware that the business makes money based on the products or services it sells, your time spent in all the minutiae of running a business gets lost in the mix. You might draw an income from the business, but there’s no line item in the accounting reports that shows what your hours are worth in dollars and cents.
Stuck in the doing
This is a significant problem and you, like so many small-to-medium business owners we meet, are very likely neck-deep in the day-to-day running of the business. There’s a whole suite of tasks you’re bouncing between each day: dealing with suppliers, a staff issue, customer complaints, deadlines, IT problems, and everything that could be filed under putting out fires. Being busy with these issues leaves you with little time or energy to deal with the projects you want to tackle, such as strategic thinking and planning in areas that will grow the business. Dealing with these day-to-day issues creates a handbrake that slows controllable growth.
So, how much is your time worth? If you knew exactly how much your hours of endeavour were worth to the business, would you be spending as much time as you are on fixing computer problems and getting coffee? No, because you know that these day-to-day issues are lower-cost tasks or functions. As a side point, if you’re convinced that you do spend a great deal of time in task mode over the course of a week or so, make a note of the tasks you’ve been engaged in and roughly how much time. Don’t look at your calendar; that’s only half the story. The facts don’t lie. Now to remedy the problem and free you from the doing and move you into the thinking.
Look for patterns
At this point, you very well might argue that being caught up in the doing, putting out fires and solving issues is essential. Unfortunately, a common belief of business owners is “if I don’t do it, it won’t be done properly”. This is an assumption or belief pattern that has become so ingrained that it drives thought processes and dictates day-to-day operational tasks and activities. It doesn’t factor in training or implementing systems to have more comfort in letting go, and if left unchecked, these patterns stymie sustainable business growth. This can lead to fatigue, burnout, and disillusionment with your business aspirations.
Have the preparedness to let go and work out what the real value is in what you are doing, what you hold dear personally, and in the business.
These patterns help identify the fundamental and underlying issues that are holding you and the business back. They can be identified in the way we speak, the language we use. Listen to the words you use and look for themes and patterns that point to the real issue. Using words that describe feeling overwhelmed or disorganised with the day-to-day operational issues are the symptoms or outcomes that indicate the root cause or source issue. Identifying source issues based on the themes or symptoms helps you move toward managing your business asset where your energy is focused on dealing with source issues.
Dig deeper
Here’s an example. You know that you need to invest in IT systems to increase productivity or efficiency, but you’re reluctant. Every time someone in your team mentions the issues – we can’t keep doing it manually – you complain about the costs or lack of staff to drive procurement and implementation. You observe your language and notice these patterns. You recall that in a previous iteration of your career, a similar project you oversaw didn’t go well and left a bad taste. The symptom is the expenditure decision. The source issue is trust.
With that realisation and the source word of trust ringing in your ears, you can think about how you can shift your source word or mindset from a lack of trust to confidence. You can work out what will build confidence and plan accordingly. For example, you might start considering assigning a capable team member to the project or talk to your accountant (or CFO) about bringing in outside help. Whatever the case, knowing the source issues allows you to manage your energy, reducing headaches, and removing the roadblock that is stopping you implementing a critical system.
Flip the driver
This principle applies across the board in your role as a leader of the business. Instead of dealing with superficial issues, you need to be focusing on fixing root-cause problems so they stay dealt with, and your energy and behaviour produce totally different and more valuable outcomes for your business. Find the themes and patterns that reveal source issues. Flip them, so source problems become source drivers, and leave the day-to-day matters to the team.