Do you have a Resilient Business?
Having a resilient business means you are prepared. Prepared for whatever situations you are faced with in the future. When we look back at the impact Covid-19 had on businesses, it certainly brings it to the fore. The pandemic, has made this term important, yet it has been around for a while. We need business to see what is ahppening right now in their business, and see the future.
REVIEW + REFOCUS = RESULTS
Habits you need to build a successful and resilient business
You need a business that is dynamic and responsive, one where the leaders reflect upon the stress, make decisions and change direction (if needed).
In your business do you have the following habits, where people say “it’s how we do things around here”?
Habits that show:
- How we formulate strategy
- How we embed our culture
- How we understand our Economic Engine and make decisions about what we do and don’t do.
- How we run effective meetings and manage the work of the team
- How we implement strategy
Running a small business can be difficult if you don’t formulate great habits.
“67% of well-formulated strategies failed due to poor execution.”
Quoted in HBR 2017 article and references Bridges 2016 study, yet during our work it appears to be an almost universal weakness in business.
The common barriers to successfully implementing these habits are:
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Poor Communication and Misalignment
The number one reason is a lack of clear communication from the leadership team to the rest of the business. Poor communication means misalignment and a lack of understanding for those who need to execute the strategy – not a good start!
Here we also find that if communication is poor, then people are not engaged; a key aspect of a successful, resilient business.
Embedding culture is the most important work a business leaders will do. The culture of a business drives a sustainable competitive advantage for your business that cannot be duplicated. A well-formulated strategy may attract more customers, but it is the culture that keeps your customers returning. Business leaders need to consciously and consistently work to communicate and re-enforce the desired culture.
Lack of Focus
A business can quickly go off track, becoming distracted by perceived opportunities or overly focused on perceived threats. Or simply the owner gets bored! It is important to define what they do so they can be clear about what they will not do.
If there are too many objectives generated in the strategic planning process, people feel overwhelmed, and nothing gets completed. The Leadership team must make tough choices to eliminate non-critical actions and provide a focus for all teams and individuals on what is important NOW.
Getting this focus is what you are going to refer to as the business’s Bullseye. Some call it the sweet spot or core focus. In Good to Great, Jim Collins calls it ‘the Hedgehog’. In Japan, they have the idea of IKIGAI. The business’s Bullseye is the intersection of what they are passionate about, what they are good at, what their customer needs and what they can be paid for.
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Lack of Accountability
Setting clear goals helps focus energy, reduce confusion, and support decision making.
Setting of objectives is the first step here, and then following along is measuring those objective achieved. Clear accountability is essential for driving strategy implementation. Leaders, teams, and individuals need to be clear in their roles and held accountable for the delivery.
Setting objectives is what your business is all about. Asking yourself, and the leadership team, “what do we need to do in the next month, 90 days, year to achieve our gaols?
From here the structure of what your team are accountable to is revealed.
Poor Meeting Discipline
Often leadership teams meet, and strategy execution gets mixed up with day to day tactical operational issues. There needs to be a cadence and discipline to holding strategic meetings, ensuring that strategy is reviewed and on track. Think of this cadence like the constant pulse of your business.
The regular, never changing timing of doing the strategic work. Committing to the cadence provides predictability, discipline, and structure, giving your customer the ‘space’ to do the ON work.
Failure to Adapt
Your business strategy should provide direction, focus and guidance, and should also be adaptable. In an ever-changing world, if a business fails to respond to changing market conditions, it can quickly become irrelevant.
Business resilience is all about being on top of what is currently happening, and that in turn allows you to take action if you need to adapt.
Just like the Vision, Resilient Business Goals support communication and motivation across the business.
No Measurable Results
Clear and measurable results provide meaning, motivation, and accountability; key elements to keeping strategy on track.
The way we use objectives and key results to implement strategy provides your customer with meaningful results.
Building organisational habits to implement your strategy successfully will give your business a huge lift. All five of these are not trivial, nor is there a quick fix. With the support of a business coach, you can overcome these barriers and successfully implement a strategy for healthy organisational habits.
If you are an SME owner who has aspirations:
- To build a resilient business with solid foundations
- To grow
- To look at succession (of roles, ownership, etc)
AND, if you are looking for someone to partner with, then maybe you’d like a coffee catch-up with Merinda. During the catch up she can ask questions so she can understand more about your business, explain a little about the ADAPT coaching she works with, and give you some tips for your business.
This is a no obligation chat. Contact her today to arrange a suitable time and place.
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