Is It Time To Redesign Your Business?

Your business is perfectly designed to achieve the results that it’s currently achieving. Over the years that’s become our motto because it’s absolutely true. We often hear from business owners who want different results, but they feel stuck and can’t see how to move forward.

Sometimes the business isn’t growing. Or sales are growing, but profit is not. Or there are quality control issues, or they are having trouble hiring or training employees. And too often, business owners look at these problems and think they have to solve them alone. Or they think that these problems are simply problems that all business owners have and are, “just a part of owning a business.”

And of course, many business owners do have these same issues, but it doesn’t mean that they are not solvable. Or that they should be accepted as inevitable issues that won’t change. Instead, these are real roadblocks to growing your business beyond its current state.

You might have been told that the reason you’re struggling to overcome these issues is that you’re making excuses. It’s an excuse that costs and wages are rising. It’s an excuse that you don’t have enough time to do all the things you want to do in your business. And they are excuses, but that doesn’t make the issues that you are facing any less real. These issues are real barriers. They are getting in the way of achieving the vision you have for your business.

Typically, you’re not just going to use willpower to power your way through to achieve the result you’re missing. That’s nice in theory, but it’s not what creates the change that you are seeking.

While we can’t solve every issue that you may have in one insight, we can provide you with a few tried and true tips for problem solving that you should know:

1. If you’re not getting the results that you want, it’s time to change your point of view. When you look at a problem for too long it’s easy to get stuck. Instead, try looking at the problem in different ways or try to get a different perspective. This might include discussing it in a different setting. Explain it to a mentor or coach and find out what they see. Ask someone on your team to describe the issue to you. Check with your industry peers, or research articles that speak to the issue you’re dealing with. Seeing the problem from other perspectives can change the way you think about it – which can change the way you approach resolving it. 

2. Don’t just focus on the result that you’re missing. Take a long hard look at the activity that creates the result you are getting. Walk through the process being used, talk to the people who are doing the work, and determine if there is a point at which different action should be taken. Sometimes a small change can create a big result. And don’t try to change everything at once, take small steps, identify changes needed, put them into action and quantify the results of the changes and work together to continuously improve.

3. Use a process. If you’re one of our clients, ask your business coach about Solutions Based Thinking or Crisis Coaching. Both are step-by-step processes that can be used to think through an issue. You might be thinking, but we need to be creative, a process won’t work. And we understand, it seems odd to think that a process can help you be more creative. Yet when you don’t have to try to figure out where to start tackling the problem, you’re actually freed up to be more creative. That’s the beauty of a great problem-solving process, it takes the heavy lifting off of the problem solver, providing them a way to systemically and creatively work through to solution.

Remember our motto from the beginning of this insight? Your business is perfectly designed to achieve the results that it’s currently achieving. The second part of the motto is… So, if you want different results, redesign your business. It’s that simple. But it isn’t always that easy, so we encourage you to reach out for help if needed – from us, from another resource, but just know that you don’t have to accept business problems as inevitable, and you don’t have to struggle through resolving them alone.