Are you tired of second-guessing yourself and missing out on opportunities? Well, worry no more because you CAN quickly assess day-to-day items without any stress!
The secret to success lies in four powerful pillars that will help you easily reach your goals:
- Business Overview: The first glimpse of new trends and potential shifts will come from clearly understanding what’s happening in your business and industry.
- Planning: A strategic plan is crucial to being able to move toward your vision, and this overarching way you do business will influence what ‘the best’ options are for you along the way.
- Accountability: Finding behavior and processes that go against the way you do work strengthens a culture that supports achieving your biggest goals.
- Execution: The ability to get the work done aligned with how you do business in the timeframe set requires focus, action, and flexibility.
Get ready to dive into the first two exciting pillars of success – Business Overview and Planning. And that’s not all.
In part two, I’ll reveal everything you need to know about Accountability and Execution.
It is important to recognize the feelings, the gut instinct, and the pull toward something new. It is crucial to be able to tap into the data you regularly use to assess and evaluate emerging shifts and trends to stay on track with your goals. The four pillars for business success are interconnected: business overview, planning, accountability, and execution.
Whether you want to expand your business, boost profits, or create a devoted customer base, the pillars of success are a potent tool.
Instincts are only as good as they have been developed. The next step may remain elusive without acceptance of what is happening. While many opportunities can be disguised as the right next step, the results may be lackluster or even create unexpected setbacks because we relied on a hunch too soon.
Each pillar highlights what you value. And what you value becomes the way you work together. Through action and results of your work, the more you can understand, the more you will achieve.
As a business owner, it’s essential to grasp the four pillars of success and use them.
You know more than you give yourself credit for. With all the information around, it is up to you to be curious about what is presented and find the right questions to remove obstacles and reach your goals. Not only can you establish and hone measurable objectives, but these pillars also provide you with context to the senses you get. An inkling about a changing trend. A subtle shift in customer interactions. Even minute changes in how your team does the work.
Each pillar can be looked at through different lenses: Realistic Overview, Now and Near, and Act to Plan.
The ability to thrive and create a dynamic and adaptable company comes from accepting exactly where you are at. Then, realistically evaluating and repriortizing what is happening now and near term. Finally, you need to act to make progress and collect data to make refinements to begin again.
“When your priorities are not priority… It is easy to let your actions accidentally hold you back. It is easy to go with the flow or procrastinate decisions.”
There are times we don’t want to see the reality of where we are at. True discernment is when you recognize if and when you are avoiding, sugarcoating, or even ignoring the truth.
Alright, let’s get started.
Business Overview
It lays the groundwork for your business, guiding your strategy, goal-setting, and success.
The business overview is the first glimpse of new trends, and potential shifts will come from clearly understanding what’s happening in your business and industry. Your business overview can, when as realistic as possible, highlight the inherent strengths as well as areas that can be improved. It is with this knowledge that growth and minimizing pitfalls can be discerned.
It’s essential to approach your analysis of your business with objectivity, acknowledging its strengths and weaknesses. By recognizing the effort and commitment required to achieve your objectives and foster growth, you will empower yourself to succeed. Entrepreneurs and business owners like you can utilize the company overview to map out the pathway to follow, ensuring a solid foundation for their business plan.
Grasping the essence of your business is significant.
All business levers do not apply to all businesses. While some seem universal, the way you use time, money, energy, and skills and think about margin will likely be a unique combination because of the way you do business. The core of why and what you do helps you understand and decide what will help you succeed the most.
The Realistic Overview of your business doesn’t have to be elusive.
It does take courage to do, though. It is easy to overlook, avoid, and downplay what we are not good at or believe we are weak at.
Let’s use the levers mentioned before and look at them in depth for your realistic business overview. Here are some prompts you can use to help you.
From a business point of view, TIME is a resource – the amount you have varies due to the technology and brain power allocated to business activities. Time does have a return on investment.
- What are the ways time is used in your company?
- How much time is currently being spent on non-income producing work?
- How do you value the use of your time? (Are you double booked? Do you have space to switch between activities and appointments throughout the day? Are your head and heart in the work you do?)
Money. The core resource to keep your business going is money. Enough to competitively compensate your team, invest in growth, and generate new/more business.
- What makes you confident (or not) in the amount of cash in the bank to cover core costs like rent, payroll, and services for a period of time?
- What are your money strengths? Weaknesses? Fears?
- What in business items that involve money do you shy away from?
Energy. This is also known as passion. The ability to do the necessary work and all the work possible is a lever that is downplayed. It is easy to say, ‘The work is being done. We just aren’t seeing results.’ That translates to an energy drain, an elephant in the room, that is being avoided.
- Describe the excitement you have to do your work.
- What is the routine you have that begins and ends your work periods?
- On a scale of 1-10 (10 being out of this world), am I and the team having fun? Describe why or why not.
Skills. The skills each person in your company brings are important to the work being done – timely and profitably to serve your customers.
- What do we say we will deliver? What do our customers think we will deliver?
- How do the skills that underpin the way we do work differ from our competition?
- What skills do we have too much of? Are we missing? Do we need to shift due to technology advancements?
Margin. At the end of the day, profit margin matters. It is the fuel to add people, invest in new technology, develop new products, and to be able to make an impact in the world. Being able to pay the bills – to keep the lights on – is important, yet there is always a yearning to do more than just keep going.
- Our profit is based on ______
- List each product and its profit margin.
- This is how we generate revenue:
These questions may seem difficult. At least some likely are.
So, remember, it is OK to ask for help! Schedule a confidential Business Basecamp with Jess or talk to one of your existing trusted advisors.
Your business overview is a foundational step to choose where you want to take your company consciously. For achievable goals. To see success materialize. To be more ready to handle the bumps and surprises that happen in business regardless of what has been mapped out and planned.
Planning
Your strategic plan acts like a compass for your visionary journey.
Navigating the way forward isn’t always clear. Just the other day, I met a person in the elevator carrying a plotter, one-hand divider, and a protractor. In our conversation, he shared that he was going to plan an ocean adventure. These are tools he needed in addition to calendars, weather forecasts, and supply lists to create a complete idea of where he was going and what was needed to get there.
Regardless of the plan, for Oceaneering, hiking, or business(ing), the purpose is to have a sense of what the journey could look like. Knowing that uncertainty, surprises, and problems will show up along the way to your ultimate destination. Time for planning is underrated.
The companies that survive market changes and disruption to thrive for 10+ years have learned that long-term vision is based on our experiences so far. It is what we collectively have access to that allows us to dream bigger. What actually materializes as each step is taken to achieve them may look different – as new information and experience are available to use.
The next best step is determined by holding the plan for the long-term vision next to the results of the action you have taken.
Developing a solid strategic plan is essential for businesses to achieve long-term success. This requires setting measurable, specific goals aligned with the company’s vision, identifying the necessary steps to achieve those goals, and anticipating potential obstacles. Determining the resources needed to execute the plan is vital.
As a champion of your company’s vision, you have chosen to embark on an ever-evolving journey to mastering your company’s unique set of skills. The experience and strengths of past performance and skills of your team will tell you the probability your team has of reaching the next success.
Successes, small and large, provide momentum to keep moving forward when it seems nothing is going to plan. The little voice that says, ‘It’s time to pivot,’ is rarely right. Sometimes, it is just an adjustment, the acquisition of a new mindset or skill, or rooting out the thing that is holding you back.
The Realistic Overview of your plan creates intention and focus.
With a well-crafted strategic plan, businesses can effectively respond to market changes and grow sustainably. The true north has been set; this is your long-term vision of success and impact. Knowing where you are, regardless of the situations that may arise, is necessary to keep going in the right direction.
The red pointer on your compass always points to true north. The journey we take could take us in any direction (around, back, through, under…), and because we are oriented to the true north, we know what direction we are going.
To be able to discern the necessary work to do and understand how much work is possible, reflect on these skills for yourself, your business position in the marketplace, and those of your team.
Communication and Counseling skills:
- Data collection and analysis. How well the information that is collected is incorporated into decision-making and problem-solving.
- Active listening. How your company senses trends from what customers and stakeholders share as well as hear, without judgment, the places of ease and disharmony with processes and colleague relationships.
Innovation and Development skills:
- Problem Solving. Solving a problem is different than finding the right solution right now to move toward your biggest goals. How are problems solved, and what is the scope or lens with which a solution is selected?
- Indomitable. How much does the company want to succeed? What traits show unyielding commitment to keep going, and how might those traits accidentally undermine progress?
Strategy and Execution skills:
- Completion. How clear are the end goals defined? How does each goal that ends set up the next goal for success?
- Focus and refocus. How easily do new ideas and problems interfere with movement toward your goals? What are the processes and tools that are used to keep attention on the current goals in motion?
Vision and Foresight skills:
- Recognize Assumptions.
- Steadfast Principles.
Acceptance of the skills at the level they are within your company is an indicator of how right a solution or decision is right now to maintain orientation toward success in the business.
Part one of the Four Pillars of business success has come to a close, but don’t worry. There’s more to come. If you want to be the first to know when part two drops, subscribe to the Red Direction newsletter right here. (in the footer)
But why wait? You can get started on your own path to success right now with Red Direction’s Strategic Intensive Program. This one-of-a-kind program will give you the tools and framework you need to Drive Solutions from idea to result.
Plus, if you act fast, you can catch the early bird special. Take advantage of this opportunity to take your business to the next level!
