Own a business long enough and you’ll develop an acute form of blindness — a myopic mindset that doesn’t stop you from envisioning your goals, but does render you incapable of recognizing the exact issues preventing you from reaching them. You have a nagging feeling that you could be reaching further and doing more, but you can’t seem to pinpoint the choices that are holding you back.
This is where a bird’s eye view of business comes in handy — step back far enough and your focus sharpens and patterns emerge. I’ve experienced this myself, and after working with over 15,000 privately held businesses as part of The Alternative Board, I can say with certainty that some business pitfalls are universal. Whether you own a restaurant chain or a law firm, there’s a good chance one (or all) of these factors are stalling your progress:
1. You haven’t documented and shared your strategic plan.
A survey conducted by The Alternative board found that 91% of business owners could experience higher revenues with the help of a strategic plan. Put simply, a strategic plan helps unveil a business’s true purpose and longterm goals. It helps you understand exactly where you want your business to go and gives you the step-by-step directions that will get you there. If you feel like you’re floundering, your lack of a true strategic business plan could be to blame.
In fact, just by defining your goals, you make reaching them more likely. A study conducted by psychology professor Dr. Gail Matthews found that subjects were 33% more likely to achieve their goals after they’d committed them to writing. Matthews also discovered that sharing goals with a friend or colleague boosted achievement rates, likely because the act itself makes individuals feel accountable and more committed.
Ask yourself if your strategic plan is as detailed as it could be. Is it current? Written down? Have you shared your plans with your partners, executives and even friends and family? If not, taking these steps could help your business reach its full potential.
2. You suffer from lack of alignment.
Do your key decision makers and those who report directly to them share the same sense of purpose? Are they able to communicate with each other clearly and resolve interpersonal conflicts as they arise? These relationships are a key factor to your company’s success, and if they aren’t functioning well, neither will your business.
Scheduling regular team meetings can help clear the air and allow information to be communicated more effectively across the command chain. So can rewarding positive behavior like tactful conflict resolution and respectful, professional critiques. Don’t wait until something goes wrong to teach your employees how to communicate properly and align themselves with the business’s mission. Make your alignment factor a part of your company culture that’s reinforced every day.
3. You do not have the right employees:
Remember the common cliché from the 1950s movies: “Roy is the best <blank> in the business”? Well, the truth is that Roy probably isn’t really the best in the business. He might be the best at <blank> who lives nearby and applied for a job at the company. My point is that there is often a misperception by business owners about the caliber of their employees.
Maybe your employees have great technical skills. But do they also have the attitude, work ethic and interpersonal skills to make your organization shine? If you haven’t done so for a while, you may want to take a really hard look at your staff and ensure that your employees are a great fit for their role and that they have not become complacent.
As Jim Collins says in Good to Great, good companies that aspire to be great “start by getting the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats.”
4. You have not done an honest SWOT assessment: Have you taken a look in the mirror recently?
Not of yourself…but your business. I mean really take a hard look in the mirror – to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.
Are your strengths really strengths? Or, have your competitors caught up? Do you have new strengths to build on? Strengths can be know-how. Andrew Arden, owner of Arden Construction, expressed his Company Strength as: “The owner’s knowledge of quality construction methods.”
Weaknesses can be more challenging. We touched on staff quality above. But, do you have good staff and bad process? If the only list of weaknesses you have came from you, the business owner, this is a mistake. We have seen from giving thousands of business assessments that managers often identify weaknesses that the business owner does not see. Be sure to seek their inputs in the process.
Opportunities are either weaknesses of your competitors, which you do not currently exploit, or opportunities based on technology changes, market changes or other emerging opportunities to improve your business. If you haven’t take a good look at your competitors recently – and especially emerging competitors – now would be a good time to do it.
Threats are external factors, outside of your control, that put the success of your business at risk. Threats often emanate from emerging strengths of your competitors. Or, they may be changes in the economy, the political climate or other external factors.
What you ultimately want to achieve from this process is to arrive at a strategy that allows you to apply your greatest strengths to areas of weakness in your competition – and to establish a true competitive advantage.
5. You are not focused on a Driving Critical Success Factor.
As a business owner, you probably feel like the Red Queen from Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking Glass.” At one point, the Red Queen’s says, “It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.” The Red Queen has to stay perpetually active otherwise she will fall behind.
Business owners can relate. The good news is, there is a better way. One of the most important things that we ask business owners do is to prioritize. We first have them developer their Critical Success Factors (CSF) – which are the most important factors to achieving their company vision. We then ask them to pick one of those and identify it as the Driving Critical Success Factor (DCSF).
Do you remember this scene from the movie City Slickers?
Curly: Do you know what the secret of life is?
Mitch: No, what?
Curly: (He holds up one finger.) “This.”
Mitch: Your finger?
Curly: One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and everything else don’t mean s***.
Mitch: That’s great, but, what is the “one thing?”
Curly: That’s what you’ve got to figure out.
The DCSF is that “one thing”.
How does your DCSF address the Red Queen syndrome? It provides the beacon to keep coming back to as you evaluate opportunities and make decisions.
6. You don’t have anyone to turn to for advice.
When asked about the importance of advice, Sir Richard Branson responded, “I believe in never asking just one person but in getting as much feedback as possible. Opinions always vary. By asking several people what they think, you get many angles and can weigh them all. This way, you are never considering just one person’s opinion, so no one piece of advice is ever truly bad.”
Getting a fully balanced view of your business means relying on unbiased feedback from an educated group of experts — not just employees who may shape their opinions to earn favor. One UCLA study analyzed group decision-making research going back as far as the 1930s and concluded that, “numerous studies have found that group decisions are not only superior to those of the average member, but also to those made by the very best individual decision maker in the group.”
Are you making important business decisions in a vacuum? Or are you discussing your concerns and goals with a group of unbiased, experienced peers?
Fulfill the Potential of Your Personal Vision
Our experience working with thousands of business leaders has helped me understand that while these six common issues may be to blame for holding back all types and sizes of companies, no two owners define their business potential in exactly the same way.
Small Giants by Bo Burlingham provides some great examples of business owners who defined their own personal visions of success and fought to reach their full potential. One of my favorite examples is the story of Selima Stavola. Selima moved to the U.S. with her GI husband in 1945 and started designing clothing to help support her family. Her designs were so unique that major fashion industry executives and investors were soon courting her, but Selima decided to have her own two-person business instead, designing clothing only for the clients she chose.
Selima could have easily grown her business to take on more employees and more clients, but these weren’t the standards she used to measure her own success. Before you can be successful, you need to define for yourself exactly what success looks like.
Let that be the prompt for you that helps you begin mapping your strategic plan. If you can sum up your personal definition of success in a single sentence, then share it by commenting on this article. Let’s see exactly how unique those visions can be.
