What doesn’t bend - breaks.
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result”
There was a point in time, where this saying reflected how I was running our business. Like so many of us, I was so busy working in the business, getting stuff done, keeping the wheels in motion – or the plates spinning. I was like the hamster on the wheel – running flat out but getting nowhere.
It was over a Christmas break one year, that I decided something had to change, I had barely survived another crazy season start – September, October, November, December. I hated Christmas - as the mother of 3 young boys, it hurt to say that I hated the most magical time of the year for them. Yet again, I had gone through another season start, barely holding it together – I was doing the same thing each year and expecting a different result – it was insanity. I was sick of working flat out, stressed out, barely holding on to my sanity and my marriage. I couldn’t do another year of this, something had to change, but it wasn’t going to happen on its own, I had to make that change but the big question was ‘what’ and the next question was ‘how’.
I took the time to reflect on the situation, the business, the daily operations and my role in it. I sat down and wrote a list, a list of all the things that I could see were the bottlenecks in our business. I didn’t worry about how to fix it or who would fix it, I just concentrated on the ‘what’. I wrote a wish list – what would I like the business to be, look like, feel like, how I want it to be perceived by our customers and by our employees, and if I had a magic wand – what would the business look like in 5 years time.
But I had wanted this before, I had wished for it before, I had to do something different. I had had the best of intentions previously; I had copious amounts of notes from conferences and seminars of ideas and things I wanted to implement but yet never got around to doing. I needed to be held accountable. I needed someone to help me create a plan of attack and then help keep me on track – keep my eye on the prize. And that is when I stopped the insanity and engaged a business coach.
A business coach didn’t do it for me, I still had to do the work. They don’t make you do it their way, they plant seeds that you water, feed and grow – or they fertilise the seeds you’ve sown but you still have to water and nurture them. They help you grow a beautiful ‘garden’, well structured, maintained and admired, that rewards your hard work with an abundance of blooms/fruit. A garden that is growing wildly, is still growing but it is a mess, untamed, unruly, unsightly, unloved, and decreases the value of the property!
So, at this time of the year, when we take stock and reflect on the year that was, and look to the new year to be, I implore you to ask yourself the following questions : What do you want your business to look like? What has caused you the most pain this year? and most importantly - what will you do to get the change you want.
Remember – what doesn’t bend, breaks.
