Overcoming Business Frustrations

We define business frustrations as a series of specific recurring events in your business over which you feel you have little or no control.

Every business has frustrations. From small “hiccups” that hinder the flow of work, to fatal flaws that can have a devastating impact on the bottom line, and everything in between.

As it is with every challenge you face, the question is really about how you deal with it. You can ignore the frustration all together; you can abdicate and hope that somebody else will take care of it; you can apply a quick band-aid fix… But all of those options would be doing yourself, your team, and your business a great disservice.

I’d like to share this story about Debbie who owns a printing and design business. Debbie was having trouble finding the time to develop systems and processes because of constant interruptions from clients. She was getting so many project status requests that she couldn’t focus on the strategic work she wanted to do. Debbie told me that she was feeling frustrated by the fact that her customers weren’t relying on her support staff. She hadn’t taken any proactive steps toward fixing this situation because she was afraid that her clients had gotten used to working with her and she didn’t want to jeopardize the level of service they’d come to expect.

What Do You See At The End Of The Road?

A Quote from Stephen S. Wise…

Vision looks inward and becomes a duty.
Vision looks outward and becomes aspiration.
Vision looks upward and becomes faith.

Are you managing your business on a day-today basis, hoping that a little luck and smart decision-making your business will succeed? A good business surely needs a little bit of both, however, what if you wanted to be a great business? What does it take to get to the next level of performance in your business? Great athletes know what it takes to be an Olympian-quality performer. And so it goes that the high-performing businesses – those that are studied in business schools – also know and have something in common. They have a vision. A vision of where they see their company in two years, five years and ten years.

The nice thing about having a vision is that it gives you a visual. With strategic thinking and a solid implementation plan, you can begin to visualize your success at a different level. And when you can see it, chances are, it is achievable.

To help you create your business vision, putting some serious thought to what your Primary Aim is, is crucial to forming your vision. Your Primary Aim is your innermost driving force or the source of your vitality and your commitment. It is that which, more than anything else, gives you a sense of direction and purpose, motivates you to your highest levels of energy, and sustains you over the long haul. Once this is understood, you can then harness your Primary Aim to begin to create a remarkable business.

Another consideration and one that can have multiple benefits is visualizing how you see your business serving your community. Are you a green company? Do you have a product or service that can translate into supporting a need in the community like working with seniors or kids? Creating a strategic objective within your business vision of being a community partner will be rewarding both personally and professionally.

Now a vision is only as effective as it is understood within your business environment. If your employees don’t have a mental picture of the business you’re working to become, or your vision, how can they help you get there? This understanding can be transforming when it comes to motivating your employees, creating a customer experience that brings brand loyalty, and building a team that is unified and effective.

Damn It Jim I’m A Doctor, Not an Engineer!

Ok, so even if you aren’t a “Trekker” you must have heard this line multiple times – usually ending with him telling something he isn’t!  it’s one of those timeless quotes that  gets used time and again and stays with us,……but why use it here??

If  McCoy new one thing, it was that he was a “technician”…he knew how to heal people and that was it. He didn’t pretend to understand how the engines worked (That was Scottys job) or how the communications system worked (Uhura) or how the science station works (That was Spocks job)…so why is it that owners of businesses seem to think that they can run a business without having all the skills sets needed?  There are multiple hats that EVERY business owner needs to wear and skill sets they need to have in order to create, build and run a successful business.

I don’t know if McCoy ever went through a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis but I think if he had, then he may have come out top of the class.  I mean this man knew what he was, and more importantly, what he wasn’t!

Why is it then, most business owners repeatedly put their business in harms way by trying to be all things in their business????

The diverse amount of skills required to build and run a successful business are mind-boggling…..take a look at the list below and these are just the “core” competencies!

Leadership Skills

From our early child hood we like to follow leaders and have structure in our life to know what’s required from us. The best run businesses are not only marketing led but have strong leaders at the helm who know what they are doing.

How Is Your Time Management?

Time management is a skill that a lot of us struggle with. Even with the best intentions and the latest technological gadget that is supposed to streamline your work and improve efficiency, how often have you left work planning all the things you need to do in the morning because you didn’t get to them today? Busy business owners are just that: busy!

What kind of work is keeping you busy?

You must make a very clear distinction between the strategic and tactical work. Strategic work is the work you do to define the results you are there to produce. Tactical work is the work you do to produce the results strategic work has defined. When you think about your day, what percentage of your time do you spend in each area? Where is the greater value for your business?

Six Weeks To A Better Bottom Line

This Article actually appeared in the January Edition of Entrepreneur Magazine…its one of the best I have ever seen written on how to improve your bottom line numbers but beware..its is NOT for the faint of heart!!! Read on…….

“You have to be pretty lean now, but there are opportunities to grow if you are in a position to take advantage of them,” says Edward Marram, a senior lecturer at Babson College’s Arthur M. Blank Center for Entrepreneurship in Wellesley, Mass. “It’s a good time to evaluate your business, find ways to conserve cash and improve. Then look at where other competitors aren’t making it and go after those opportunities.”

But taking a cold, hard look at your business–which has absorbed so much of your blood, sweat and tears–can challenge even the most tenacious entrepreneur.  So we asked business-building experts to help us develop a six-week shape-up plan. They told us what to look for, how to set goals and measure progress and, most important, how to get to where you want to be.

Think of them as your personal trainers and set aside the next six weeks to exercise their principles. You’ll build business muscle, lose resource-draining fat and speed up growth. But first, you’ll have to step in front of the mirror and face those flabby, underperforming areas.

Team Development – What’s Your Strategy?

Most experts in team development agree that teams will go through five different stages. How fast a team moves through each stage will depend on the team members, their individual skills, the work they are expected to do, and the type of leadership available to the team.

Bruce Tuckman deemed the four main stages of team development in order as Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing. Later, as self-managed teams became common in business, he added a fifth stage of Adjourning/Transforming. Thomas Quick called the five stages for teams: Searching, Defining, Identifying, Processing, and Assimilating/Reforming. Whatever term is used for the stages, teams will go through all five during their developmental and working processes.