Blog

If you’ve been stuck in the grind for a while, it’s time to take stock and assess if business growth is actually what your company is geared for. When you’re busting your gut to break through to the next level, business ownership can feel chaotic. Results that came quickly in the early days are harder to come by. You begin to wonder if success if further away than you thought.

Here Are Six Assassins Guaranteed To Kill Business Growth.

1. You Routinely Work 12-15hr Days.

It’s no secret that you’ve got to hustle to get a new venture off the ground. In start-up phase, entrepreneurs are known for their crazy hours. We wear sleep deprivation like a badge of honour. However, this intense period does not go on indefinitely. If you are a few years into your business and still regularly working extreme hours, something has definitely gone amiss.

There are many reasons why business owners continue to work punishing hours, but here are the three most common.

• No clear direction for the company. When a business owner can’t clearly articulate where their business is going, they get caught up doing anything and everything, because they don’t really know where to focus their efforts.

• Deal with the ‘urgent’ rather than make time for what’s important. The quick-response habits that drove business growth in the early days will not drive growth in the next phase. As the leader you must know, and focus on, the actions most important to achieve your business goals.

• Won’t delegate effectively. Ultimately, as the owner, you must know where your efforts return the biggest pay-off. It’s highly unlikely that place is at the delivery of service or day-to-day operations. You’re one person with limited time and resources. Delegate ruthlessly or you’ll continue to feel tired and overworked with little to show for your efforts.

2. You Lose Good Team Members.

There are many reasons why employees leave a business, but if the best people won’t stick around, it’s a clear sign that things aren’t going well.

• They don’t see a future for themselves in your business. Ambitious, driven people want to know there’s a path for them to progress; professionally and personally. If you cannot clearly articulate where the business is headed, then those employees will go elsewhere.

• They’re not doing what you employed them to do. This usually happens when the business owner didn’t have a clear idea of what they really needed – be it from a role or a personality perspective – when they hired the person.

• You’re not managing the non-performers. Nothing frustrates a high-achiever or top performer more than when they feel like they’re carrying the non-performers. Once resentment sets in, it’s quick poison for business growth.

• You treat them as ‘staff’ so you get ‘staff-all’ out of them. Your best and brightest want to know that they are valued and have an impact on the business. In fact, the Deloitte Global Human Capital 2016 survey, reported 82% of respondents believed workplace culture to be a competitive advantage.

• Rats leave a sinking ship. It’s impossible to hide an under-performing business, especially in a small company. Sensing the end is nigh, pro-active employees will take control of the situation and jump ship before it goes under.

3. Your Business Tries To Be All Things To All People.

How many times have you met a website developer who’s target market is ‘anyone who needs a website’? A Dentist who helps ‘anyone with teeth’? An accountant who’s trying to help ‘anyone in business’?

Even with a flame-thrower, you cannot boil the ocean. Businesses that are going places know who their ideal customer is and exactly what problems they solve for them. Rather than marketing to everyone, focus in on the segment of the market you serve best and leave everybody else to your competitors.

4. You Consistently Choose The Path-of-Least-Resistance.

When business owners feels overwhelmed and overworked, things are often done because it’s ‘just easier’ to do it that way.

For example, it takes time, effort and costs productivity to train a new employee on how to invoice a client. However, it’s something that ‘only takes me five minutes’, so rather than train the new employee and risk errors, you continue to do it yourself. But it’s consistently doing what’s easiest that prevents your business from growing.

If you have no vision for where you want to go and why you want to go there, you’ll continue to choose what’s easiest, rather than what’s necessary to achieve sustainable business growth and the daily grind will ultimately wear you down.

5. You Always Change Things.

Innovation. Disruption. Could there have been two more over-used words of 2016?

Change is important and necessary for business growth. Change for the sake of change, or changing constantly to in the hope that something will eventually take off, is the formula to get nowhere, fast. New ideas must have their foundations in reality. They need to be evaluated in terms of what they will bring to the company and how the opportunity aligns to the overall vision for the business.

6. Your Company Vision Lacks Clarity.

This is the number one reason companies fail to grow. It’s the rotten core. Without a clear vision for where you’re going, why it’s important you get there and the precise actions needed to achieve your goals, your results this year will end up pretty much the same as last year.

If you’ve been stuck in the grind of growing your business, clear a space in your calendar. Start with just a couple of one hour sessions each week. Make time to clearly assess what’s actually driving business growth and what’s holding your business back. Knowledge will empower you to address the challenges head-on and tackle them like a pro.