Of the 500 000 new businesses set up in the UK every year, 50% – that is 250000 – fail in their third year.
There are a whole host of reasons why these businesses fail including lack of focus & planning, cash flow issues, inadequate support, low productivity, lack of customer, and entrepreneur burn-out. The list goes on.
All of these reasons have one thing in common. All of them are preventable!
How?
By holding up a mirror to the business using a big picture, top down business review process – ideally every 3 months. This enables leaders to act fast and ensure that no major issues or opportunities are missed.
The 5 Step process to reinvigorate your business gives leaders a different and seldom applied perspective on their business.
This helps them to uncover blind spots.
They are able to immediately zoom in on high risk and high issue areas.
Once these major problem areas are identified, leaders can take action immediately to re-invigorate their business; thus preventing business stagnation or in the worst case, business failure.
Re-invigorate your business today by identifying ONE single area of action for each of the 5 steps:
Step 1: Facing up
Who hasn’t ever avoided a really obvious course of action? For example, saying no to that friend who regularly asks for your help, taking the car for much needed maintenance or replacing a electrical unit on its last legs?
It is the same in business. There are areas that we deliberately ignore. These could include a less than collegiate team environment, not having a clear plan of action or lower than acceptable productivity.
We let things go on in the hope that nothing bad will happen or the problem will go away by itself. It never does.
This step is about facing up to what needs dealing with right now.
It will take a weight of your shoulders and increase productivity.
Here’s 1 ‘HOW TO’ to get you started:
Power Question: What are you avoiding or putting off?
Address whatever comes to mind first.
Step 2: Cleaning up
Things that fall into the ‘cleaning up’ category are those we know need be gotten rid off. They are already somewhere on our to-do list. But because the tasks are not very exciting or appear to value add, we push them to the bottom of the pile.
These include
- decisions we put off because we cannot find the right information,
- processes that are inefficient and cumbersome, but oh so comfortable,
- business clutter of no longer needed data, products, services, marketing materials, paper piles in the office or technology.
This will free up creative and mental capacity, and improve focus.
Here’s 1 ‘HOW TO’ to get you started:
Power Question: What is bugging you on a regular basis? What is taking up unnecessary head space replaying like a broken record?
Address whatever comes to mind first.
Step 3: Jazzing up
When you notice that your house looks a little dated, like most people you would think about re-decorating to bring it up to date, wouldn’t you?
In a business context, the same applies. We often make do with outdated technology or skills. We even make do with selling outdated products or services.
Jazzing up is not about completely re-inventing the wheel. It is about, upgrading what you already have to bring it in line with industry standards and your business needs.
This will increase productivity, morale and, in a lot of cases, customer satisfaction.
Here’s 1 ‘HOW TO’ to get you started:
Power Question: What one thing or area would benefit greatly from being jazzed up?
Address whatever comes to mind first.
Step 4: Expanding on
Most businesses, especially entrepreneurial companies, miss a huge area of additional profit.
The question is what else can you do for this customer, with the product or with this service?
‘Expanding on’ is about re-purposing, not necessarily creating anything new. It about maximising what the business already has – in creative ways.
This could mean
- selling a slightly adapted product or service to a completely different market
- presenting a service or product through a different medium
- collaborating with another business with a complimentary product or service, thus cross selling to each other’s customers
‘Expanding on’ will have an immediate, and positive impact on the bottom line.
Here’s 1 ‘HOW TO’ to get you started:
Pick one of your services, products or skills. Then answer this Power Question: What else can I do with this?
Address whatever comes to mind first.
Step 5: Bringing together
We often regard tasks or processes as individual items on a list. The daily detail can feel overwhelming at times, especially for leaders in smaller businesses or solopreneurs.
Bringing together opens the opportunity to combine similar types of activities under one umbrella, for example
- outsourcing or delegating task to a virtual assistant or a specialist organisations
- offering your services or products as a package that gives higher value than each service or product on its own
- automating niggly, recurring and low value tasks that do not need to done by a human
This will immediately free up time, head space and energy. It will have a significant impact on productivity and allow leaders to focus on what is important.
Here’s 1 ‘HOW TO’ to get you started:
Power Question: What activities are similar, reoccur or take up a lot of valuable time?
Make activity groups, and then decide a strategy how to deal with them.
The great thing about this 5 step process is, it works for any size of business. It works for business areas. You can use it with teams in a workshop. And, it also works on an individual basis for personal development.
I would love to hear from you – in the comments below – what stood out for you in this blog today? What action are you planning to take as a result?
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