Without Losing Your Business Identity
A growing new business goes through a series of plateaus. Whether it’s $500,000, a million or beyond.
Your road to success requires you to realize the plateau you’ve reached and work to break through it.
Through my experience with industry organizations and speaking engagements, I’ve seen hundreds of businesses that have found themselves stuck at one of those plateaus, and have found themselves frustrated about why they can’t break through.
As a result, we find a lot of small, owner-run businesses that quicklybecome lifestyle businesses.
Their leadership may spend years trying to figure out how to evolve, but never quite perform the necessary steps to get there.
The three fingers that point backwards.
Let’s be honest. At the head of each of those “stuck” organizations is a person who’s responsible for the plateau and the inability to break through it.
I was once having lunch with a mentor who has an impressive and lengthy track history of business success. And as I presented him with my own problem and my own plateau his answer was, “Have you looked in the mirror lately?”
If you’re a business leader, you’ve been there.
Every consultant hired and every SWOT analysis performed, will probably, at some point, suggest it’s actually that person sitting at the top who’s causing the roadblock.
Flexing between tactics and strategy
As I’ve taken a step back during those times when I’ve fallen prey to plateaus, the idea of tactics vs. strategies always comes to mind. I’ve observed that a great leader knows how to flex from one side to the other.
- They know when their company has found themselves in a super competitive marketplace that’s begun to battle more on price than value.
- They’ve been able to take a step back and reinvent themselves and become something different. Maybe that’s by becoming a thought leader or by finding some other way to build a difference between themselves and their competition.
- They know when it’s time to force their leadership team to get out of their box or comfort zone and look at how a changing marketplace is more than a challenge: It provides opportunities they can evolve into.
Grounding strategies and visions
Strategies and visions are great things and can be exciting. They come naturally to some leaders.
The challenge is when to bridle that strategy so you can flex to the tactical side. You need to build great systems that enable you to go after that strategy you’ve created.
Great leadership allows the critical balance needed to determine which are the true paths and also find ways to accomplish them.
Good leaders facilitate the conversation among structures within the organization. This lays the groundwork for new strategies to be accomplished and without conflicting with other strategies already existing within the organization.
The “boring” part begins
Jim Collins, author of the book, Good to Great, made the statement that good business is boring.
Believe me, I’m almost certain that any leader who is a great strategic thinker has had that thought.
That’s why it’s critical to have those super, very talented, tactical people — individuals you can rely on and leverage when the company needs to get things done.
On our team, we have a tactical ninja who can plow through tasks and processes with precision and blazing rates of speed.
I’m working hard to know when the team can best leverage his strengths when the time is right.
That’s the part that might get boring for those of us who lean more to the strategic side. But that’s when the flexibility to make that leadership hand off is critically important to making the strategy work.
If you, as a strategic leader, are able to go out and develop team members that balance out your own traits, you’ll be better equipped to build a successful organization.
