27 Jun Your business wins when you stop doing the things that don’t matter…
Think of the different steps to success in your business as a ladder.
Only when you let go of one rung can you climb to the next. If you never let go of the rung you’re on, you are stuck, and your business is not moving forwards. When you let go of the rungs one by one you begin to move up the ladder of success.
This sounds so easy, doesn’t it?
What it means in simple terms is that you have to adapt, change and use the time you have wisely in order to enable your business to grow.
Most of us like the status quo – things stay the same, it’s our safe place, we know where we are and what we are doing – and staying with the status quo ensures that we keep doing those same things over and over again.
This is bad news for your business, as sticking to the status quo can lead to irrelevance and ruin for your business. When your competition adapts and changes and spends time on the right things, they will climb their own ladder to success much faster than you.
Most business owners will blame time for the status quo situation, saying things like ‘Well, we would like to make that change or implement that new technology or hire that new person or take on that new business, but we don’t have the time.’
But you will have time – when you are EFFECTIVE with your time and when you STOP doing the things that are unimportant to your business.
Peter Drucker, author and influential business leader, is also very knowledgeable about the importance of time management to business success.
‘Working on the right things is what makes knowledge work effective. This is not capable of being measured by any of the yardsticks for manual work.’ – Peter Drucker, The Essential Drucker
Drucker talks about optimising your time and the importance of effectiveness, of choosing the right things, the important, goal-focused things, in which to invest your time.
In your business, choosing WHAT you do matters more than HOW you do it and, according to Drucker, choosing what NOT to do matters even more.
Drucker calls this ‘planned abandonment’, or ‘abandoning the behaviours and activities that derail you and lead to activities that are a waste of time and effort and which are not good for your business.’
It sounds like common sense, but it is not common practice.
Do you have a ‘stop doing’ list?
Have you ever written a list of the things that you need to stop doing to achieve the strategic goals and aims of your business?