Business Owner Disciplines
Adding complexity without removing the unnecessary is insanity. We are biased toward this insanity as we stack the new on top of the old instead of reevaluating what we already have first. Our businesses are built by hand, brick by brick as it were, and the same people who laid those bricks are reluctant to smash them with a sledgehammer to start again. We continually build a constituency of stakeholders who are attached to the things we do every day. Products, services, processes, and vendor relationships were all created for a purpose but each of those also has a lifespan and those lifespans are shrinking in a fast changing world.
We need to coach our team and coach ourselves to walk around with a sledgehammer, eager to find the pieces of our business that no longer serve us and smash them with a vengeance. Building new pieces of what we do is the only way to adapt and innovate but we cannot build on a foundation of the outdated, inferior, or useless.
These things that no longer serve us are a heavy burden. We can either hire more people to help carry the load or we can lighten the load and focus only on what moves us forward. One path leads to inefficiency and poor financial performance, the other leads to impactful work and a thriving company.
So how do we train ourselves and our team to be better sledgehammer swingers looking for opportunities to discard the old in favor of innovation?
Fighting the creep of inertia inside your company is difficult and a task that is never complete but it is vital to your success. Create a culture that embraces change and make it part of your leadership process. Good luck to you and please wish me luck as well as I continue working toward this ideal in my own company!
Jarrod Musick
CFP®
Posted: 09/07/2020