Helping You (And Your Business) Sleep Soundly At Night

Anxiety. Everyone suffers from it in one way or another, and when it comes to running a company, whether it’s brand new or well-established, it shouldn’t be something to keep you awake at night. If you’re suffering from anxiety for a specific reason, such as speaking to an important client, or you’re concerned about something on the horizon, these are natural things to be concerned about, but it shouldn’t keep you up at night. And while we are unable to control everything, and it would be unrealistic to think we can control everything, but you can put things in place to make sure that you (and the business) can sleep soundly at night…

Business Transparency

Helping You (And Your Business) Sleep Soundly At Night

In the modern business, this has been a game changer, and as so many companies have been taking the traditional approach to a business model, such as thinking that being an enforcer rather than a contemporary gets better results, this is why so many leaders are taking the plunge into the holistic approach. Put simply, business transparency is about maintaining a clear cut vision through the entire organization. This can only be achieved by making the culture an honest and true environment to operate in, which is done by, firstly, getting the right staff. Secondly, it is done by you, as the leader.

There has been a clear divide between older working methods and newer ones, and that’s not to say that there should be an ageist divide, but it’s very apparent that younger working generations are demanding much more flexibility in every aspect of their work. For those that are used to the “sit down and get on with it” approach to working, it can prove to be quite jarring, and if you’ve got a diverse culture of younger and older workers, it can result in a lot of clashes, so you need to address this in one way or another. And while hiring people of a similar age might sound like the right solution, it’s not, because there is no breadth of experience.

Instead, focus on the culture and promote transparency and honesty. What’s your role in this? You need to lead by example. It all stems from you. Finding out how you can better lead people in this respect will be the way to get the best results. You can find out what your leadership style is by taking some personality tests, or you can try and muddle through until you find the shoe that fits. However, this won’t help you to sleep at night!

Having A Great Service

The supply chain can always do with some improvement, and whether this is down to the whole process of distributing the product, or by examining the product itself and making tweaks to it so it chimes with the times, it’s up to you. But you need to be aware that in the modern world people are becoming increasingly self-aware and demand more from their product. It isn’t enough to simply thrust a product onto a customer and waiting for it to catch on, the whole experience is paramount.

Looking at every part of the supply chain and identifying if each part of it is going above and beyond the call of duty will result in improved efficiency, but also this needs to be addressed in terms of customer-facing roles, not just behind the scenes. On the face of it, literally, the customer-facing members of staff are your front line. The point of the business leader is to identify the potential of each employee and nurture this, either by placing them in the best role to utilize your company’s resources or by demonstrating the type of leadership that will help to speed up your goals. Serving the customer instead of serving your own needs has to be a priority, and if this is not in place, there can be issues further on down the road that will need a lot of addressing.

Keeping Your Tech In Line

It’s difficult to keep up to date with changes in technology if you’re not that way inclined, and as the CEO it’s hardly your responsibility to keep abreast of every single change. But it’s not about you staying up late every night reading Wired to see what’s new. But rather, you need to surround yourself with the right people who have that foresight to spot new trends. It’s not about you, and this is an important lesson a lot of startups face in the first few years. If you run a company, it’s about the right people that make up the whole unit, and as we know how much of a pain having tech issues can be on productivity and time, you simply need to be a guiding voice and have the right people keep their ear to the ground and pitch how to get ahead of the pack.

It’s the age old adage, it’s not what you know, it’s who you know! Keeping tech up to date segues nicely into the right protection methods; cyber security is a bigger problem with every passing year. And while the knowledge is half the battle, the means to protect yourself properly can be a princely sum on your overheads, not to mention the fines you can face if you aren’t found to be protecting your data properly. 4% of your turnover could be the fine if you’re found to be lax in being protective! Tech plays an increasingly vital role in maintaining productivity too, and if you have the measurements and analytical programs in place, you should be seeing exactly how your team is doing.

With CRMs becoming much less reliant on human input, it’s a perfect opportunity to upgrade your tech. If you’re up at night thinking how things can be done faster, it’s important to put in the time to look for the best protective methods.

Being Innovative

This is probably the biggest one that will keep any one of us up at night. How can we keep pressing forward and constantly evolve? If you are asking yourself this question constantly, are you actually working on pushing boundaries, or are you just worrying about the future? Again, the trick to being progressive isn’t to try and be new constantly, but surround yourself with the people who are the right types, those that are looking out for ways to be relevant. Business and creativity, depending on who you ask, are two sides to the same coin. And the best partnerships are the ones where one keeps the other in line so one can be level-headed and the other is bustling with zany ideas.

Innovation is all about doing little and often, but it’s also about the people. You can’t decide to sit down and come up with 50 great ideas, and granted, there will be 50 ideas, but they won’t be great. The mindset of innovation is as important as the creation of new ideas. A good rule of thumb is to think that maybe 90% of your ideas won’t be great, but 10% will contain little nuggets of gold. People who need to be creative, struggle with finding the balance between being “on” and “off” with their creative juices. Creativity in business is all about keeping the pencil sharp, which is why the little and often approach is far more productive than trying to come up with a great idea once every six months.

Helping You (And Your Business) Sleep Soundly At Night

The Economy

If you constantly worried about the economy, you would never sleep! And while it’s something you need to realize you cannot control, if you understand the range of potential scenarios you can better prepare how to keep the business afloat. A dip in the market will be a regular occurrence, and if you know how you can shield your business from the impact, while not altering your strategies too much, it’s effective planning. The bottom line is to ensure that your products or services meet the standards of your customers at an affordable price, while also making enough profit for your shareholders. These are the basics you need to have in place, and by having an agile approach to the running of your business, while planning for every possible outcome in the economy, you should be able to sleep better at night! The economy will peak and trough, and there is nothing you can do about this.

Yourself…

The one thing that may stop you falling asleep at the end of the day is if you’ve done everything right that day, or have you kept tabs on everything you needed to do. You might have a lot of to-do lists, and this in itself can make you feel overwhelmed. Being in a constant state of feeling that everything is urgent will leave you feeling exhausted, so have the right assistant to prioritize your workload or do it yourself. Your health is what will keep the company up and running, and if you haven’t got enough delegates, you will forever feel overwhelmed. So before you go to sleep tonight, make sure the most urgent tasks were completed today. The rest can wait until tomorrow… Now, sleep well.   

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