Are you spending your day putting out fires that are popping out of nowhere? Are you always trying to fix something that’s not working in your business? Or, are you working on fire prevention enabling it to be more valuable and sellable down the road?
Let me tell you what I mean... If you’re spending your day putting out fires, the fire itself is not the problem. If you find yourself always fixing your business, you haven't put the right structure in place.
You haven't put the right systems in place to be clear on what your ideal customer or employee is that will represent your brand and fit in and align with the culture of your organization.
You might not even have a well-defined culture for your organization. There may not have an onboarding process for your team to make sure they are trained properly and show them your unique way of doing business.
If you don't have all these systems in place, you're consistently putting out fires and fixing your business. Systems are all about saving yourself stress, time, energy, money, and sanity. A lot of business owners I speak with say, oh my gosh I just don't have the time to put the systems in place.
Slowly, the time becomes a day that turns into a week, and the week into a month and the month into a year, and before you know it, it's 5, 10, 20 years later and you're still a hamster on a wheel in your business. This is because you never took the time to put the systems in place.
If you don't have the right onboarding system and hiring system and processes in place for aligning people into your culture or you don't have a culture, then you're consistently hiring, onboarding, and losing people, because they don't stick.
These are the fires I’m talking about. You are spending more time, energy, effort, and money replacing people who don't fit.
Now let's talk about working on fire prevention and preparing your company. Get clear on your vision, your company’s core focus. You and your employees know exactly what these look like and where your organization is going. You know how you want to show up in the world and how you want to show up in your industry.
Now, you’re clear on your vision and your core focus or mission, You've created a culture to properly align the people to represent your brand and represent your company.
You have systems in place. The team is now working on the systems and the systems are working for the company. You're clear, exactly clear on how everything works, who reports to who, who’s responsible for what.
You're having your weekly meetings. Your communication is solid. You are using behavioral assessments in your hiring process, and in your sales training, so people know how they need to adjust to communicate better with both the customers and their team.
You’re not putting our fires anymore but you're preparing your company for one day to hit that destination, whether it be a franchise, to sell, or transition, or whatever it may be.
Now, you have to ask yourself these questions. Are you consistently fixing your company and putting our fires, because you haven't taken the time to do everything right in the beginning? Or, are you preparing your company to one day be sold for a lot of money?
This is a very important question for every business owner. Depending on how you answer that question, will determine whether you need somebody like me or not.
So think about it. If you need a little help getting clear, feel free to reach out. If you have any comments or thoughts or questions feel free to put them in the comments below. If you have somebody else, you know, that thing might need some help in this area. Feel free to share this video.
If this business tip resonates with you, click on the link below to book a free strategy session to discuss how you can apply this strategy to your business and the power of coaching.
Check out our other Business Tips to Work Smarter not Harder
Learn strategies to improve your productivity by working on the most value tasks instead of the most urgent
Learn strategies to create recruit and keep motivated employees aligned to the vision and mission of your business.
Newsletter
Get news updates from ActionCOACH and learn about events, opportunities, Business Success Stories, and other inspiring articles.
© 2019 All Rights Reserved