Are you thinking small enough?

Business owners are often pushed by us to think bigger and bolder.

However we had a Strategic Planning Day recently where we had to push a business owner to think smaller, much smaller – that is, about a smaller number of working hours. 

The Planning Day was with a business owner who runs a financially successful business, but the reality was the financial success was coming at a cost to his time and enjoyment.

It was getting harder to do the basketball coaching he loved, his holidays were only a week or two at best, and there was really no time to do the fun stuff in his business anymore.  

Are you thinking small enough?

By analysing a breakdown of his activities we began to identify the problem areas and the tasks 
that were chewing up his time. 

We then set a challenge…

“ If you only had 4 hours a week to run this business, what would you spend that time on?“

That one exercise shone some light on what was really important to keep this business performing. 

Some of the big time suckers were really not needing to be done by him at all. In fact, it was probably only habits and fear of letting go that kept him holding on to jobs that should have been done by others in his team. By focussing on the processes, tools, training and systems that would enable things to be done efficiently, and done right, the first time – there would be no need to expensively throw more staff at the problem.

This solution was all about systems, people and culture change. It was also a classic example of the “monkey bar theory” which is about being prepared to let go of your safe grasp in order to allow swinging forward.

Could you do with some help to think smaller in your business?

Sharp Accounting is a local accounting firm in Ballarat. Sharp Accounting nurture business growth by adding value through collaboration and shared knowledge.