Does Your Business Have Headaches?

What do you do if you have a headache? When most people are asked this question, the answers are simple: Let it go. Take aspirin. Lower the lights. It seems most people are willing to live with an occasional headache when it first begins.

When asked the follow-up question, “And if it’s back tomorrow, and the day after that, and so on?” The answer begins to change. Everyone is slightly different in how quickly they arrive at the answer; but most eventually say they’d go to a doctor to find the root cause of the headache.

In business, headaches are experienced all the time. Just like an actual headache, the first instances are often ignored. The symptoms may be treated, but it takes time (often a lot of time) before the root cause becomes a consideration.

Stop and think about your own business for a moment. What headaches do you experience? What headaches do your employees experience? And what about your clients?

It’s not unusual for businesses to excuse headaches away. We often hear clients say things such as, “That’s part of owning a business” or even “That’s just the way it is in this industry.” And this might be true. It might be a part of your industry. It might be a part of owning your business as it is today. But it doesn’t have to be true tomorrow.

You can choose to design your business to be different. You can innovate the status quo within your industry and become an industry leader. You don’t have to accept a headache. You don’t have to treat the symptoms and hope it goes away. It won’t; on its own.

The truth is, most businesses are not designed to cure headaches. Instead, most businesses are designed to ignore them, to complain about them, and to ride out the pain until they hopefully fade. Most businesses are designed to deal with a problem and move on to the next. Without stopping to ask, “How do we make sure this doesn’t happen again?”

Imagine if your business was designed to cure, not ignore headaches. What would be different if your team walked around problems with curiosity, identified patterns, and uncovered root causes? How much would efficiency and productivity increase if day-to-day problems were eliminated or easier to take care of because the focus is on long-term solutions? 

This isn’t a pipe dream. It’s accomplished through business design. We’ve helped hundreds of clients change the way they think about and deal with business headaches. Which in turn creates a business of value. A business that is easier, and more appealing, to manage today. A business that when you’re ready to exit will attract more offers.