As a business owner, you have hundreds of competing responsibilities to take care of every day.
But if you spend all your time dealing with admin, cutting through red tape and fighting operational fires, you never find the time to actually look at your overriding business strategy.
Not revisiting your strategy can have a hugely negative impact on your performance.
What’s eating into your strategic time?
Keeping the business running is what gets you out of bed in the morning. But as the business owner, your to-do list is steadily growing, with more and more tasks being added.
A recent survey of small businesses in the construction sector found that 32%spend more than 10 hours a week dealing with red tape. And that’s before you factor in dealing with labour issues, customer queries, compliance duties and more.
But the reality is that working IN the business is definitely not the most effective way to lead.
Making time to work ON the business
If you’re continually wrapped up in the day-to-day operational issues of the business, that’s a recipe for poor strategic results. As the leader of the business, you need time to stand back, reflect on your performance and revisit your underlying strategy.
It’s this time working ON the business (rather than IN the business) that helps set goals, track performance and drive the company forward.
But how do you achieve this?
Here are seven ways to find that strategic thinking time
Systemise and document every repeatable operational process. When you have clear standard operating procedures (SOPs), this makes it easier for your team to handle daily tasks consistently, without you having to supervise and micro-manage.
Promote your rising stars to manage daily operations. Empowering your staff to make decisions removes you as the bottleneck and frees up strategic planning time. Put your rising talent into more responsible roles and focus your own time on strategy.
Use modern cloud software to automate repetitive tasks. Automating your accounting tasks, invoicing, scheduling and marketing workflows significantly cuts down on your manual admin. Embrace automation and refocus your time on high-value tasks.
Learn to say no to work that belongs to someone else. Many business owners unconsciously take back tasks their team should own, either because it feels faster or because old habits die hard. Get disciplined about redirecting work to the right person the first time. Every task you do that someone else could do is time you’re not spending on strategy.
Create a weekly leadership rhythm with a structured agenda. Without a regular operating cadence, strategic priorities get crowded out by operational noise. A short weekly leadership meeting — even if it’s just you reviewing key numbers and priorities — builds the habit of thinking like an owner and keeps your most important goals front of mind.
Appoint an advisory board or engage an expert business mentor. It’s vital to get an objective view of your business performance. Regular strategic reviews with external professionals keep you accountable to your commercial growth goals.
Batch your communications rather than responding on demand. Constantly reacting to emails, calls and messages is one of the biggest drains on a leader’s day. Set two or three fixed windows for checking and responding to communications, and let your team know your availability expectations. This protects large blocks of uninterrupted time for higher-level thinking.
Working with you to refresh and rejuvenate your business strategy
We’re here to be your objective coach and strategic mentor. Book some time with our team. We’ll explain the key ways we can help you refresh your current business strategy.
