Four steps towards being a success

What’s all this jazz about being ‘trapped’ in your business?

Well, if you feel you are not progressing as you had hoped and planned; you don’t have enough time to do anything about it; you have no-one who could do the job as well and you are therefore no longer enjoying running your business – that’s what it means!

Okay, so what’s to be done?  There are four specific measures you can take to free yourself:

1. Beliefs:  Stop thinking you are the only person who knows how and develop a compelling vision to engage all your employees.  Delegate everything  - but do it well.
2. Purpose:  Think about what you intend to achieve with your business.  It will guide your decision making, clarify which course to take and which to avoid and will provide a focus to draw you on.
3. Systemisation:  Systemisation allows you to get things done through others so your time is released to drive business development and provide a reliable service to customers.
4. Engagement: If your employees are allowed to share in your vision they are easier to manage and will be more productive.   Engaged employees will take ownership of problems and feel encouraged to find solutions.

Of course, these four steps are interdependent.  Each enables the other three, and in turn is enabled by them:

·        Your belief that business leadership is about enabling people to be accountable, a clear and compelling vision and efficient, well-organised processes are all necessary for staff engagement to flourish

·        Productive, self-motivated staff, reliable performance measurement and clear objectives mean that you have the time to focus on developing the business and its strategy

·        A clear purpose, with a well-defined market and proposition, allows you to develop solid repeatable delivery processes and set relevant goals for staff...

However, if your beliefs do not include you as a business leader then you will struggle to define a true purpose.  If you have no clear purpose then how will you design processes to deliver it?  If you have frustrating, inconsistent processes then employees will not engage with the business vision.  Therefore it all starts with the leadership team’s beliefs about people, about what a business is and about the source of their self-worth at work.

The Four Step Programme©

The Four Step Programme© is the proprietary methodology that we use to help SME owners, directors and management teams make significant and permanent improvements to their business.  These changes re-energise the business; improving productivity, engaging employees, focusing business development, leveraging management time and making the business more scalable.

Within each step we select from hundreds of powerful, proven techniques to help you make the changes that are necessary.