Drowning in Detail

How do you keep your sanity?  Those of you who are small business owners know the seemingly endless barrage of challenges that come your way every day.  Managing those details to make your business successful is an essential trait of an entrepreneur, in addition to the ability to think ahead, plan, and execute strategies to grow the business further, make more money, and build a better lifestyle for you and your family.

Managing all that “stuff” is one of the challenges that can make or break the business, and in some cases our own spirit.  To do it successfully requires the ability to prioritize so that we give proper attention to the most important tasks.  It requires a clear knowledge of where the business is headed so that our actions take the business in the direction we intend.  It requires extreme discipline in getting up every day to do what we do even when some of the tasks required aren’t our favorite things to work on, or that we aren’t very good at.  It requires persistence such that even when things don’t go as we plan, the odds are in our favor that our efforts will eventually succeed.  How small business owners bring these qualities to their business every day is essential to their success or failure.

The threats to our businesses and to our own well-being are in the volume and complexity of the challenges faced every day.  The temptation is to try to be a super hero and fly from task to task with eternal energy and lightning speed putting out the fires, wowing your customers, and winning the admiration and follower-ship of your team.  But we aren’t super heroes, and that attempted behavior always ends badly, usually at a high cost to our business, our health, our relationships, and more.  The allure of trying to be great at “multitasking” has also proven to be a poor way to perform, because the constant changeover time between tasks actually ends up wasting more time than we think we are gaining.

So how can we manage to build the successful businesses we want?  Here are some basic tips that have proven effective:

• Block out periods of time to focus on the important functions you need to complete.  Maybe you need to spend one hour per day on followup calls and email, an hour on employee issues, two hours on marketing and sales, an hour on book work, etc.  Block everything else out, and deal with the distractions on your timetable.
• Have a clear view of your strategic plan or direction so that everything you do adds to the progress you planned.
• Measure something in your business.  Reviewing your numbers, your “scorecard”, helps to ground you in the reality of where the business is at, so that you make better decisions than you would if you let “gut feel” be your compass.
• Delegate.  I know how tough this may be for you, letting go of tasks that you know intimately, and that you are afraid will get screwed up if someone else does them.  But building a valuable business requires delegation, and it is well worth finding ways to shed certain tasks if it leads to more income, lifestyle, wealth and equity for you.
• Find a coach/mentor/advisor to help you stay your course, focus you on the most important things, and hold you accountable for accomplishing the strategies you’ve set.  When you’re drowning in details, having someone to throw you a lifebuoy that sets you back on track is invaluable.

When you are feeling bogged down by the details, working hard but getting nowhere, consider implementing one or two of these important tips to get your business moving forward again.