Small Business Growing

Small Business Strategy: How to focus on the right goals (Part 11)

We have been discussing a doable process for taking your small business to the next level of growth.

The idea is simple:  If you enter a strategy discipline in which you plan, execute, learn, and adjust, you have the potential to have a far more successful business.

We started with Vision and have been working our way through a set of easy steps toward getting an integrated strategy.  I invite you to read the previous posts (starting with the first in the series)  to put the next few in context

Right now we’ll talk about how you can “know” which goal areas to focus on as your top priorities.  I say “know” because who can absolutely know the future?  That’s the thing about strategy.  For your strategy to work, it needs to be viewed as a work in progress.  Not tweaked constantly, but assessed and adjusted as we learn what is working and not working.

To be working on the right goals, there are at least four things you can keep in mind and put into play.  You will get better at each as you actually practice them and use what you are learning to work and rework your strategy.

The first is Observation.

All around you there are signs and signals regarding what is critical to your business success.  We just have to learn to be good detectives so that we can readily see these clues. We tend to see the world through our own set of perceptual filters.  These filters can screen out vital indicators of what our strategy ought be.  Simply put, we tend to do what has been done previously.

Good strategy on the other hand, requires that we learn to see our world in fresh and different ways. All of this translates into being able to “observe ” what is going on around us and ask  – and answer – the right questions. Each day as you work in and operate your business you are surrounded by an environment that is rich in information.  As effective strategy makers we just have to start tuning in to all the information that is readily available.

Exactly what need we observe?

You can answer this question based on what is important in your business and industry right now, but here are some examples of what to start looking at with a fresh perspective:

• Your service delivery process

• Your customer interactions for clues about what they are really thinking, and how they are judging the experience of working with your business

• Your industry’s trends and direction

• Your key competitors..what they are doing…and doing differently than you

• Your employees/associates..how they work with your customers, for example.

There is a lot to “see” but we often don’t see it because we are not really observing with any scientific sense of learning.  Understandably, we tend to see the obvious because we are not looking with fresh eyes. We have a few other things to put into play to get from observation workable strategy.  Good strategy comes out of seeing what others don’t necessarily see.

We have to observe, but we also have to make sense of what we see.  We’ll discuss “Sensemaking” next time, as we put together the four fast ways you can know that your goals are on target.

In the meantime, do take a moment to check out a tool that will rapidly take your customer interactions to a whole new level.  If customer relations are an important part of your small business, this is worth a quick look.

Small Business Strategy: How to determine the right goals (Part 10)

As a small business owner, especially in an environment where you see uncertainty, how do you know exactly what primary areas should be the focus of your few, important yearly goals.

In our world of small business, most of have more to do than time to do it, so how do you make good judgments on where to focus.

I want to talk about what to focus on in this post, and next time around we’ll talk more about how do you determine what the goal and strategy should be in that area.

As you look at your own business, no one knows better than you what you need to do next to grow the business.  But there is great research to help us, and some time back Treacy and Wiersema (The Discipline of Market Leaders, 1995) discovered that exceptional market leaders typically focus on three areas.  Their research is a good start in giving us more to consider in answering the question, “What should be the focus of my primary goals, looking out over the next year?

The three area they found to be of most concern to market leaders were Customer focus, Product leadership, and Operational excellence.  Hard to go wrong in giving these our attention.

So much of our strategy and goals has to do with asking and answering the right questions.  Here are a few to consider:

Customer focus:
- What is the customer experience like in buying our product and service?
- How are our customer expectations changing?  Where are their expectations going from here, given the competitive landscape?
- How do our customers see us?  How they actually see us, not how we might wish they see us!
- Given our answers to these questions, what part of our customer experience should we focus on?

Product leadership:
- How is the product or service we sell changing, and what do we need to do because of that?
-  What product/service enhancements will our customers be expecting?
- What will they not be expecting that we can offer, based on our internal capabilities?
- Overall, how competitive is our value proposition? …and…
- What needs to change, if anything, in what we offer our customers?

Operational excellence:
- What is the most significant, and doable, operational improvement we could make over the next year?
- Do we have clear, simple, and repeatable systems that deliver our product/service?
- What is the area of our operations that is most impactful on the customer experience, and how can we make it better?

Next time around we’ll talk about easy ways to figure out how to determine priority goals in these areas.  In the meantime, we invite you to receive all of our posts by getting a free subscription to Small Business Growing.  Please see the subscribe link above, or just send us an email.

And if customer focus is an ongoing concern, take a quick look at a method we use to build very strong emotional connections to build repeat and referral business.

Successful Small Business Strategy : Assessing and Adjusting (Part 9)

Laying out a strategy for your small business is one thing.

Making it work so that your business succeeds is something else.

To be successful with strategy we must engage in an ongoing process of assessing how well our plan is working, and then adjusting our approach as it needs revision or change.

Sometimes we are exactly on target with our strategy, but usually strategy..at least strategy that is reality-based and actually works in practice..requires an ongoing adjustment to get it right.

This really goes to what strategy is.  It is our theory that “a” will lead to “b.”

Based on our best judgment, including whatever evidence we have from past experience, we lay out a road map.  But the terrain of our actual journey day-to-day does not always conform to what we want it to be.

Things happen..setbacks, unexpected challenges, customer problems, less business coming in, employee issues, strategies that are not as spot on as we had hoped….you know, all of the “stuff” that is part of reality.

Without a constant assessment of what is working and an adjustment to enhance our strategies, our best laid plans get overtaken by the  flow of real-life problems.

Based on the fact that nearly all plans require this dynamic review, how do you assess and adjust?

As with nearly all aspects of planning, what works best is usually something that is simple and doable.  Of course, we don’t always get to those few simple strategies that actually work in one brilliant step.  It takes time.  The more you engage in a practical strategic discipline, the better you get.

Most of us in small business are “assessing and adjusting” on a daily basis.  We deal with problems that must be dealt with, resolve issues that come up, and make adjustments in our behavior as we see the need.  But in this series I am advocating a much more proactive approach to your planning which requires that you  – and your team if appropriate – have routine times when you critically examine your plan.

Whatever the time interval, the point is to take time to review your plan and do two very specific things:

• First, assess the effectiveness of the results you see from your strategies.  Just ask some simple questions:
- What is working well and on track?
- What is not working and leading us in a wrong direction?
- What evidence do we have in answer to both of these questions?
- What is the biggest insight and implication from what we have seen so far, as we put our strategies into play?

• Second, adjust based on the answers to the questions above:
- What should we keep on doing, just as planned?
- What should we change or “tweak” based on the evidence we are seeing?

Of course, there is artistry in making these judgments. Keep in mind that some strategies do take awhile before you can reliably judge their effectiveness.  Some small business owners are”jittery” in their approach to planning.  They “over-tweak.”   You do have to let a strategy  play out long enough so that you can make a good judgment on how well it is working, or not working.

Something as simple as periodic “reality checks” is one way of structuring in your assessment.  Maybe it is weekly, maybe it is monthly.  It depends on situational factors.  At the very least, consider a quarterly review of your overall plan, as part of your annual planning discipline.  At least once a quarter you do a solid review where you spend time doing whatever assessment and adjustment is right for your business.

Remember that at its core, assessment is looking at things with an honest eye, and seeing what is actually happening, not what we would have hoped.  There is a part of human nature that will trick us into interpreting based on what we want to see.  This is an internal perceptual bias that we must be conscious of so that we can at least tone it down, and take an honest look at what our strategies are producing.  Not an overly pessimistic or an overly optimistic look…just one that gets us as close to the truth as possible.

Good strategy can grow your business.  And when you get hooked on a highly proactive approach to designing, assessing, and adjusting your strategy, you will take your business to a whole new level.

One critical aspect of your strategy is how you show value and build relationships with your customer/client base.  Before you leave the site today, take a moment to look at one of the fastest and easiest ways ways to create an effective referral and repeat business strategy. Click here and check this out.

Small Business Goals: The Power of the Few, the Danger of the Many (Part 8)

Never underestimate the value of a few well chosen, strategic goals for your business.

In the same sense, never underestimate the damage of having too many business goals.

We have been working our way through the big picture items including Vision, Purpose, and Values.

If you have done due diligence on these, you are in a much better position to move from the bigger picture to a few specific strategic goals for your small business.

As small business owners and associates we live in a world where there is typically way more to do than time or resources to do it.  The art of effective planning is to do our best in identifying where we will focus resources and effort .  This post is simply a reminder to stay aware of the need to focus down to the critical few areas that offer the highest potential gain for your business.

Of course, this is easier said than done.  All decisions on where to concentrate are trade-offs.  We  don’t know the outcome of our planning scenario until we work the plan, and have opportunity to see what kinds of results our efforts are generating.

But to get to the place where you do have a few well-crafted, very important and energizing goals, we can start with something simple like asking questions about what is truly important to achieve in the year ahead, given where you are with the business now.

• What would make the most difference?

• What goal(s) would potentially take your business to its next level of success and.or growth?

• What critical problem is most threatening to your future?

• What opportunity has the most promise?

• What would give you just enough edge over your competition to make a real difference?

• What is the area of your current business operation that has potentially fatal flaws that must be turned around?

In answering these questions you can look at your Operating Systems,  the processes that produce the product or service you sell.  You can look at your Marketing and Selling Systems, the processes that get the word out and get the product/service sold.  You can look at your Customer Relationships, the processes that create and sustain an emotional connection with your customers/clients.    You can look at the quality of Team Work, the way in which you and the rest of your organization interact and perform work together.

Many small businesses operate with a kind of “the plan is in my head and I’ll just get it done” type model.  It is a “stuff just happens” kind of approach.  I understand it completely.  Most of us in small business are stretched, so who has time to engage in “formal planning.”  But my argument in this series is that you can take your enterprise to a much more dynamic level by doing just enough planning to move out of a reactive “do it as you go” kind of mindset, to a more “this is what we intend to achieve in the year(s) ahead” orientation.

One critical step in getting from the first approach to the second is to identify the critical few goals that your business most needs to get busy on and achieve.

Take that first step if you currently do not have a planning discipline in your business.  Set just a little “think time” aside and take a shot at identifying three of your most important goals, looking out at least one year.

You may find that even this simple first step will start to move you toward a whole new and fresh way of thinking about, and working within your business.

Unshakeable Foundation for Small Business: Making Your Values Crystal Clear (Vision Part 7)

You can set your small business apart in a big way by taking the time to clarify the values your business stands for.

And you don’t have to be a professor of business ethics to do this.  You know what is important, so you don’t need to think this is something for big corporations with huge budgets and high priced consultants.

It starts with a little “think” time in which you do just enough soul searching to define a few things that are important in terms of the values you believe and strive to apply as you conduct business.

You give that some thought, and you put on paper a few points that summarize the moral compass you follow when running your business.

Keep is simple. As you occasionally think about how you are applying those values, you may come back and tweak or refine what you initially declared.

You know what is important to you when it comes to what you stand for in business.  But here are a few basic “pump priming” questions to consider.

• What deeply held values motivate my treatment of customers and employees?

• What are the life values that reflect the best in me?

• When my business is at its’ best, what values come through most clearly?

• What do I simply and deeply believe about the moral basis of my business?

Remember, you don’t need to be Aristotle or Augustine to answer these questions.   You just need to connect, or reconnect, with the best within your own heart that motivates you to do the right thing for everyone your business serves.

You can share these values with others, and even use them proudly as part of your business message and brand.  But before you experiment with that, I respectfully suggest you just spend a little time thinking it through.

Don’t wait for a life crisis to reconnect with what you truly value.

Take a few minutes right now and define those values.  When they are time tested and worth your best efforts, they will guide you through all of the decisions we as small business owners make every day.

If you’d like to take a quick look at our real estate business values, we certainly invite you to do so.  Just scroll down to the video titled “Our Values and Commitments.”

We don’t offer this as an example for anyone else.  It is just one way to approach it.  Making the values authentically yours is what is important.

And….if you value returning customers, take a look at this approach to sustaining great customer relationships.  We use this tool all the time and it is inexpensive, fast, easy, and effective.  Let us know if you’d like to know more.

Why You Exist As A Small Business: Adding Purpose To Your Vision (Part 6)

If you have either reinvented or recrafted your vision of the business, the question becomes “What is next?”

Does a nicely formed Vision stand on its own, needing nothing else to support or complete it?

Obviously not.  A vision is just one critical part of a road map on where your business is going and how you think it should get there.

But there are a few more pieces that you should spend time on, to give vision the wheels to roll forward.

Let’s talk for a moment about Purpose or Mission.   Vision is your felt sense and declared assertion regarding where the business is headed and what you want it to become.  Purpose is the concise statement defining why your business exists.  It declares to the world your prime imperative…your central reason for doing what you do.

You may find shades of difference or various ways to “slice and dice” the concepts of Purpose vs Mission, but don’t get hung up on that.  I suggest you simply give some time to think thought your answer to the question, “Why do we exist as a business?”

Sounds like a simple question, but as you start reflecting on this, it can take you into some interesting aspects of what your business is all about.  In working with organizations on this issue, I have seen individuals and teams be all over the map in terms of how easy or how challenging it is to answer this question.  The complexity -  and very often the conflicts and competition – within large organizations can make this a challenging question, not just to answer but to put into practice.

But you as a small business have the advantage of not having as many potential cultural and political issues to face in addressing purpose.  Let that be one of your great advantages.

In working on this question you would typically consider your customers or clients as primary inputs.  How does your purpose serve their needs and wants?  If you can engage your customers in some way, or use data from your own or other customer research, all the better.

Some small business owners use a finely crafted purpose as part of their branding and marketing strategy.  If you have a purpose you are proud of, why keep it a secret? Purpose statements  can be thought of as one form of promise we make to our core constituencies, customers being primary among them.

If you have a team, do you define purpose on your own, and declare it to the rest of your organization?  Or do you engage the team in answering the “Purpose” question?

My bias is to engage the team, on many levels, regarding most organizational issues.  But each business culture is different so no one could make a blanket statement that will apply in all situations.  We’ll talk more about team work and building teams in other SBG posts

One other aspect of purpose is worth remembering too.   Businesses operate in an ever changing environment.  Business survival requires change and adaptation.  Revisit and rethink your purpose from time to time.  It may not change much.  Then again it may need a serious overhaul.  Businesses that look the other way in the presence of  a need for change get left behind.  Your values may remain constant over a lifetime, but purpose can shift.

If you have defined Vision and Purpose you are already quite different than most small – or large – businesses.  If you have come this far, don’t stop now.  Fill in the rest of road map.  We’ll discuss Values next time.

And…if you would like to learn about a superb tool to build customers and clients for life – check this out.  We use this system in our business and it is a winner.

Your Small Business Needs A Vision: Here’s How (Part 5)

We are continuing the Vision Series, and now we’ll focus on how to take something as potentially “fuzzy” and hard to define as “Vision” and make it real and tangible.

Before that, just a few reminders on why Vision is critical to your business.

First, it can dramatically impact your inner world.  When you connect or reconnect with your own ambitions and motivations you are running on high octane fuel.  When you spend time thinking through and coming to your own conclusions about your business vision, it stirs your soul and brings back the creative entrepreneur that started the business. It probably won’t be a “spiritual experience,” but proportionate to the emotional and cognitive energy you spend considering where you want the business to go, you will see a lasting  impact.

Second, if you have a team, this is the perfect opportunity to engage other members of your enterprise in a meaningful and respectful way.  Who wants to work with or for a business with no vision of where it is going?  We’ll take up the issue of building great teams in another Small Business Growing series of posts.

So, how  do you get your vision on paper.   Reality does not happen in perfectly scripted segments.   The synthesis does not usually come to you in one blinding flash, although we do occasionally get those deep insights when everything seems to come together quickly.  But typically we will experience a more gradual process.

The truth is, because this is a highly creative process, the vision can “come to you” in many ways.  As you put your mind and commitment to this, there is no telling exactly when you will get that one insight that will help the whole thing to come together.  So stay open to what your mind will “offer up” once you get into the process of asking yourself the right questions.

One of the tried and true ways of arriving at your vision is simply to “see” your business functioning at its highest and best level at some yet unrealized future point, maybe several years out, or longer.   You project forward in time, and imagine your business doing its best work, succeeding in its competitive space, maybe incorporating several innovations that put you ahead of your competition.

One way to jump into this is to see the business performing as you imagine in your best scenario of the future, along these lines:

“Five years down the road, and my business is functioning at the top of its game.  My highest and best aspirations are being fulfilled.  I am on track and making progress.  This is what I see….

I have used variations of this process many times over the years, and typically I find that people pull forth creative insights that surprise them..when they let their imagination go, and stop being hung up by focusing only on potential constraints and negatives.  Not that we should exclude the potential roadblocks and challenges.  But we also need to learn how to see beyond potential obstacles.

When you do this “visioning” process you are allowing all the “good stuff” to come out… your hopes and dreams, aspirations and goals.  This is the content that becomes the foundation for something that will stretch your business, but is also based in what is doable.  Remember, you refine and adjust this vision over time, based on the learning that takes place as your walk through the process of growing your business.   I suggest you not be discouraged if you don’t suddenly have the most brilliant vision ever conceived.  Let  it refine itself over time.

The imagining of your enterprise at a future time, and filling in the details of what you see, is one way to get into your definition of what the future holds for your business, and the descriptive statement which becomes your vision.

Here are a few questions to “prime the pump” and get your creative energies flowing.

• When my business is performing at the top of its game, at a level that would put us on the leading edge of our industry, what do I see?  Describe what it different from your current reality.

• When we are serving our customers at the highest level, what do I “see?”

• When we are enough ahead of our competitors to be seen as among the best in the business, what am I seeing that is different or better than where we are now?

• If the quality of our product/service is superb, what kinds of conditions do I see?

These are all questions to help trigger an image of your business at some future time, performing at a level sufficiently beyond where you are currently, so as to be worthy of your commitment and your disciplined efforts.

Spend some time on this, or any other questions you find more relevant to your business vision, and we’ll continue in the next installment of this series.

Five Big Reasons Why You Need A Vision of What is Next (Part 4)

We will get to the “How?” of creating a vision, but getting there well does involve the “What?” and the “Why?”  We’ll discuss the “Why?” now.

As small business owners and associates, we live in a world with the ever-present reality of getting things done yesterday.  Time is of the essence, and there is more that needs to be done than we have time to do.

The operational realities of getting the work done impel us to live in the here and now.  We typically must deal with the short term, and this has the impact of crowding out the long term.

And “vision” is about the long term.

That said, our present reality is the result of things done previously.  If we don’t think about and define our preferred future, our business gets shaped by only the here and now.

No doubt, our business is always shaped to some degree by external forces, some of which we can’t control.  But, we can increase our level of influence on both the present and the future by a deliberate defining of our direction and intent, in the form of our vision.

Here are at least five major reasons why you need a vision of what is next for your business.

1 – Vision sets the stage for the other elements of our business strategy.
Vision gives you the context to put together the other parts of your plan..  How would it be possible to plan and then execute for a better tomorrow without a point of view on what that better tomorrow looked like?  Vision is the point of view that lets the other components of your plan fall into place.  By “other components” I am referring to specific goals and other strategy elements that give you a full plan of action.

2 – Vision clarifies what is worth sacrificing for.
Making business decisions often involves delayed gratification.  We sacrifice now for something better tomorrow.  Vision helps us know what we should do now so that something better can come about later.

3 – Vision communicates to others that we have a future.
Vision says to our key constituents that we operate our business with the long view.  Customers in particular typically want to know that businesses they choose to support plan on being around, and make decisions based on a view of the future.

4 – Vision gives us a working road map to follow.
Good plans are one part deliberate and one part spontaneous.  We have a “plan” but we must respond to the unexpected.  Vision points us in the desired direction, even though we know there may be detours along the way.

5 – Vision has the potential to call forth the best in you, and those who work in your business.
Most important of all – an honest vision gives the business, and the people who are a part of it, the opportunity to work toward something bigger than one’s personal agenda. Nothing wrong with a personal agenda.  We all have self-interest.  But vision enables self-interest to be combined with the overall good of the business.

If you know and believe why vision is vital to your business success, you will find the actual doing of vision – the “How?” – much easier.

Feel free to leave a comment on any other “Why?” factors that you think are important.

Next, we’ll talk about how you actually take something as potentially lofty and hard to define as “vision’ and make it down-to-earth and practical.

Your Business Vision: Get It Out So It Can Be Free! (Part 3)

We are working our way through a foundational set of ideas on crafting a vision for your business.

There is lots to talk about when it comes to your business vision.  Your inner sense of where the business is headed is something we as small business owners live with day to day.In this series, I am offering thoughts to stimulate your thinking on your own vision.  The vision for many small business owners can be something that stays inside their psyche.  But getting it out in the open can do great things for your business.

To get it out and “free” you don’t need a text book perfect vision, or something that you agonize over.  Just get something out there that you can begin to work with.

A down to earth working understanding of vision is simply the yet unrealized, but hoped for state that is what you aim to achieve for your business.

At its best, when you have done “due diligence” on your vision, it is your succinct statement of what you want the business to reach for…to become.  It is your commitment to the direction and destination that you are moving toward.

You may not have a formal written vision, but you did start the business with an idea of what you wanted it to become.  Your hopes and dreams may have included several different dimensions of your life…something better for your family, economic advancement, more creative opportunity to use your talents, or other things.

For many the “vision” was more of what they wanted to leave, rather than what they wanted to create.  Anyone who has worked in a dysfunctional organization can appreciate the feeling of wanting the freedom from the politics and other negative conditions that exist in typical organizational cultures.

All of those things are important, but your business vision summarizes the direction and future state of your business.

From “in your mind” to “out in public”
The vision is “in your mind,” and often not written, and maybe currently it is not part of a well tuned strategic plan, that serves as a road map to where you are going and how you will get there.

The work here is to let what is “in your mind” come out, so that it expresses your deepest ambitions and dreams for the future of your business, in a more explicit way.   When you work this process, it can take you to new places.

Please consider this:  the nicely worded statement of a wonderful future state is not the point.

Sure, that is good.  And if you have a poetic streak you can “wordsmith” something very nice.  But what is important is the internal impact of doing a little soul searching, and the external impact this searching has on your business.

Your vision can take may forms.  It can be:

•  a description of what the business will become

•  how it will be viewed by customers

•  how well it will perform, what it will achieve.

An inspirational quality, but don’t get hung up
The vision is usually cast in language that has inspirational quality.  Part of its intent is to move others to share your passion for something that is worthwhile and compelling.

But you are probably not a professional poet, so don’t worry about that part.  Do the work and you will get to something that is good and right for your business.

Some would argue for a vision that is “over the top” while others believe a vision should be absolutely measurable so that everyone will know it when it is achieved.  You decide what is right for you.

We will pick it up right at this point, next time.

And, if you business involves customer/client relationships, read about a simple tool that can help make those relationships powerful sources of repeat and referral business.  Or, click here and we’ll send you information.

Reconnect With The Visionary Who Started Your Business (Part 2)

Medium and large corporations spend a lot to help them define or refine their organization’s vision.

But if you are a small business owner, you may see “vision” as one of those slick “corporate” things senior managers do at nice retreat locations. 

Maybe you have been at those kinds of retreats at an earlier time in your career.  Great plans are formulated and lots of enthusiasm is generated, but after the retreat not much changes.  It happens this way at many, if not most, planning sessions.

As a small business owner you don’t have to go that route.  One of your great competitive advantages is not having a large bureaucracy that is seemingly change resistant.

You can define or reinvent your business vision, and then go about the work of bringing it into reality, step by step.

Many small business owners start with a vision.  But the realities of survival and growth, and just getting work done, take over.  The original inspiration can get lost.  The passion and sheer joy, (along with the terror!) of starting your own business, can become diminished or even get lost, and with it the first vision that got you airborne.

I’d like to suggest that we as small business owners always need a vision of where our enterprise is headed.  It is one of the most practical and powerful things you can do as a small business owner.  If your vision is alive and well…and absolutely real to you, day to day, please take this as encouragement to keep going.

But if that does not describe you, and if you are open to consider the role of vision, we hope this short series will be of help.  We are going will talk about vision and its role for small business owners, to include the “What?”, “Why?”, and “How?” of vision.

We’ll start with the “What?” of vision next time, but for now may I offer this challenge if you are in the frame of mind to take a second look at the Vision issue.

Do a reality check on the current status of your business vision.  Take just a little time to reflect on these questions:

• First, what is your vision of the business as you look out several years?

• How has the vision changed since you started the business?

• Do you need to refresh or rethink the “Vision” question?

• Is the “Visionary” who started your business (you) still going strong, or is it time to re-energize?

In the next part of this series, we’ll discuss perspectives on exactly what is a “Vision.”