Optimize Your Business Growth
What does it mean to you to optimize your business growth?
Every business leader that I have worked with would answer this question differently.
It’s natural to have varying responses to the question I just asked you.
Imagine sitting down with five business leaders who are in the same industry. Each person would answer this question depending on the situation that they are currently working through in their business.
Here are five realistic responses each leader might say:
Would you agree that each response is a valid, well crafted response?
What would you say if I told you that each of these business leaders could follow one formula that would increase the probability of reaching their objective in the next 12 months?
Before I give you the answer, allow me a minute to remind you four factors you need to consider for your business growth efforts as follows:
Focus | Time | Energy | Resources
Four Factors You Need to Optimize Your Business Growth
1. Focus
How do you focus between strategy and operational execution in your business?
Many leaders tell me that their biggest challenge is fighting to do valuable, important work versus solving the most pressing, immediate fire in their business.
How do you balance creating a killer operations or marketing strategy with the daily grind?
It’s harnessing the ambition and desire to innovate, invent and add a new offering against keeping the lights on and current production running smoothly.
2. Time
How much time do you allocate between strategy and operations?
How consistent are you in allocating the right mix of time into each area of your business?
What is your plan to ensure you are investing your time versus spending your time at work?
These are three simple questions that if seriously tackled, could provide you with an immediate upgrade to your strategic planning, along with improved operational excellence and effectiveness. Before you are triggered by the need to defend your current expenditure or investment of your time, let me ask you one more question:
Imagine that a time genie showed up and could grant you one of two things, which would you take right now?
Time Freedom - or - Financial Freedom
How closely does your choice align with your main business and personal goals?
3. Energy
Energy is comprised of two key ingredients. Physical capability plus a connection to your deep “why”. While time is not renewable, energy is a renewable resource. That should inspire you to examine the level of energy that you and your team bring to the business each day.
Energy requires the Producer and the Leader to be on top of their personal leadership practice. You can decide where and how much energy to apply between strategy and operations.
The opportunity for you here is that energy can be leveraged.
Energy can be multiplied to create dynamic results in your business. Think people and seasons. Your business moves through various seasonal demands which require different levels of energy.
Energy Boosters:
How do you and your team prepare for the different energetic seasons in your business?
How far in advance do you plan for the seasonal demands that are coming?
What lessons did you learn from the last season that can be proactively applied to the next season to produce greater results?
4. Resources
When I meet with business leaders to explore how we can help to grow their business, most of the people I meet with state that they have a resource problem. Many feel that they currently lack the resources to create new projects or see the current projects to completion.
Some feel that they don’t have a firm grasp of how to correctly allocate their resources to grow the business.
After further discussion, I usually discover there are ample resources available to the leader.
The missing ingredient is often taking the time to periodically evaluate the resources and whether they are appropriately being used in the different areas of the business. This could be your biggest opportunity waiting to be realized.
As trends and client demands progress and change, so should your resource allocation. Fear and emotion create communication and analytical obstacles to deciding if certain resources could best serve the health of the business in another area. Next, the leader has to create plans to shift resources, which invariably may bring forth seemingly tough decisions to be made.
In every instance where we have helped clients create and action their plan, positive gains followed after the moment of decision and action. Many leaders rhetorically ask me, “Why didn’t I do this sooner?”
The answer lies in having a process to get outside of your business and objectively seek out the best strategy that will give you a better return versus what you are getting from the current way of doing things.
What is your process to create the space to objectively look for opportunities to optimize your business growth?
Who is on your business growth counsel, board or team?
The Sustainable Business Growth Formula
What follows may be a reminder, or it could be a new insight on how to optimize your business for growth.
Either way, take some time to think about how applicable our formula is to your current business operations.
Where do you feel you and/or your team excels in the formula?
What part of the formula calls out for further investigation or introspection on your part?
Where can you immediately focus in the formula for greater results today?
Where can you focus in the formula for greater results tomorrow?
RG + SD - AO = NOI
Each element in the formula above is denoted as follows:
- Revenue Growth (RG)
- Service Delivery (SD)
- Administrative Obligations (AO)
- Increased Net Operating Income (NOI)
How to Optimize Your Business Growth
Here are three simple steps that you and your team can implement so that you can profit from the equation:
Define
1. Create a list of activities in your business that correlates to each element of the formula. Be specific for each element.
Assign
2. Assign a percentage score to each element showing where your focus, time, energy and resources are currently allocated. This step is always revealing for the business leaders we work with. For greater results, ask your team to help with the scoring.
Shift
3. Write down three immediate things that you infer from this exercise that can be actionable when you get back to your office. Imagine the positive and immediate shift that can take place in your business growth from this exercise.
We have our own list of common activities that the majority of our clients undertake to get the most out of our sustainable growth formula. If you want to figure out how to apply the formula in greater detail to your business, we are happy to compare notes with you.
Scroll below to find out how we can meet to compare notes and help you optimize your business growth in one conversation with Shane.
30% of Your Business Growth is Hiding Within Your Business
From our experience, 70% of what you see and know in your business is obvious to you and your team. We know that all business growth opportunities comes from the 30% of your business that is not obvious to you.
It is like what you are seeking in within your grasp, but for some reason, you cannot identify what it is, or how you can capitalize on the opportunities around you. This is a normal phenomenon.
We help our clients expose the business growth opportunities that seem hidden right now. They are there waiting for you to take advantage of them, but you require an objective, outside perspective to help you uncover which opportunities are right for you at this point in your business growth.
Take a simple step today to work with Shane in a private session as noted below.
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