There's no doubt that life as a small business owner is challenging. Confidence levels have fallen, profitability has been stretched and cash flow remains a challenge for many businesses.
The beginning of a new year is a great time to get a checkup on the fitness and health of your business as strategic preparation for the year ahead. Business owners and their management team have the opportunity to perform an annual “checkup” on every aspect of their business, get rid of the “unhealthy" behaviors and performances and address the “unhealthy” things in their businesses, and start with a fitness plan to ensure a prosperous new year.
Here are ten top tips to ensure a healthy start to the new year from your strategic thinking business coach.
- Review your business performance. An honest review of the business over the past year can show what worked well and what didn't. By looking at the successes and the failures over the past year will put you in a far better position to plan effectively for the new year.
- Begin your strategic thinking and planning. Review the past year performance, set the goals that you want to accomplish in the new business year and develop a strategic action plan to achieve your goals.
- Commit to being more organized in the new year so that time is not wasted looking for things you need and to improve work flow.
- Clear your desk and eliminate clutter. Discipline yourself to keep relevant information on your desk when needed so you can improve your concentration on the task at hand and not be distracted by other items that makes your mind wander.
- Clear your computer. Delete all spam and junk emails that you do not need. Act on any urgent messages and organize the rest in appropriate files.
- Back up your business records to guard against a potential devastating impact on your business. You could back up your data onto a disc, or use a professional data back up company to store it for you
- Develop a system, if one does not exist, and commit to a follow-up system with your accounts to manage your accounts receivable.
- Commit to good cash flow management. Develop strategies to consider alternative methods of funding, which can guarantee your business has a flexible and ongoing supply of working capital, enabling you to put your business plansinto action.
- Commit to creating an environment that encourages the professional development of your staff.
Business Growth Can happen in two different ways.
Here is a short story to demonstrate the point:
If an adult wants to grow, we traditional have two way we can do it.
The first is to take in a lot of calories from high-fat foods. There is no need to focus on healthy nutrition or exercise. Pile it in, and you will grow. The second is to maintain a protein-rich healthy diet combined with exercise and strength training.
One method is good and one is bad.
Unhealthy growth can lead to weakness, agility loss, impaired reasoning, loss of motivation, and death.
3 Tips to make sure your businesses grow healthily
When someone is serious about physical training they must begin with a plan detailing resources available, specific objectives, and ways to avoid mistakes and improve. A detailed strategic development plan is a must for a company’s growth. Great plans are living. This means they are flexible and consistently improve based on new information. But don’t begin until you count the cost. For who would begin construction of a building without first calculating the cost to see if there is enough money to finish it?
You wouldn’t begin a new workout routine before you made sure your resources were in place, time was available, and you knew each exercise intimately. For business you must have established procedures, well educated and trained staff, and sufficient tools that work well with one another.
When people are focused on diet and exercise they measure everything: calorie intake, protein intake, net carbs, fats, sugar, reps, weight, body mass, time, etc… This list goes on and on! The question is, why do we not put the same amount of attention to analytics in our businesses? Data analysis is less about where you are than about using it to determine where you want to go. It is key to healthy, steady, and sustained growth.
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