From my experience, very few businesses have written down goals, know what to measure and track the results on at least a weekly basis. Now I don’t know if you have ever played a sport or game, but imagine playing and not knowing the score until the end? Until after the final whistle.
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So why do this in your business? I’ve met a number of businesses that rely on their accountant to tell them their results some six to nine months after the year-end.
If you’re serious about driving your business forward you’ve got to be really good at being results focused.
I always use the dashboard analogy with my clients. Think of your business as the car with the dashboard giving you constant data to allow you to make decisions along your journey. How difficult would your car be to drive without a dashboard? You’re driving down the road and suddenly you see a speed gun van without a clue how fast you’re travelling. That’s not going to end well!
Action...
Identify Your Dials
- What are the really important dials you need on your dashboard? From above you identified what the business goals are, what actions/results drive those goals?
Measure
Decide how you are going to measure them and how often you can update them? Ideally, it needs to be at least weekly so you can affect the score whilst playing the game.
Achieve your business goals
What are the current results and what do they need to be to achieve your business goals?
Bring it Together
Create a way to bring all the information together, how about a Google sheet?
Share Your Dashboard
How can you share all or part of your dashboard with your team? Take them through the measures and discuss what actions could be taken to improve and drive the business forward.
Reward
Implement a simple reward programme for the business hitting a result. This can be as simple as ‘fish & chip Friday’, something I’ve implemented across many of my clients.
“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get the same result” Henry Ford – Founder of the Ford Motor Company
So, what do you do now?
If you’ve read this far, you’re clearly not happy with your business. As I see it you now have 3 choices:
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Choice 1
Do nothing! And surprisingly many won’t do anything different. They’ll carry on seeking for the magic wand! Or better still bury their head in sand in a vain hope something will happen.
One of my clients and now good friends, Adrian, has a great saying (he’s from Yorkshire, so it’s even better in his accent!):
“Only s**t happens, everything else you have to make happen yourself!”
Choice 2
Take action by implementing some or all the actions above.
Great stuff and good luck, you’ll be well on your way to very quickly having a much easier business to manage, you’ll feel rejuvenated and start to really enjoy your business again.
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Choice 3
Take our Business Efficiency Test to find out how efficient your business runs and what improvements you could make today. It will cover all of the mistakes mentioned above and many more.
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