|
Even though you have been running your business for a few years as a
business owner or as a corporate CEO, it is unlikely that you planned
your business to specifically deal with the slow economy, the
high energy prices, the declining consumer confidence level, and the
continuous negative headlines from the daily media. Maybe it was
complacency or maybe it just crept up on you over the past 12 months as
you were focused in your business dealing with day to day operating
issues.
As you now look at your monthly financials you start to realize the
business axiom that you either grow or you die – there is no status quo
in running a business. It seems to be very lonely in these turbulent
times. You may now wish that you had a clearer sense of direction for
your business, that your managers would be more motivated and inspired
and could develop a happier workforce, that you had been doing a better
job communicating with your customers and internally with your staff,
and that you had been giving more attention on an ongoing basis to your
eroding profitability. And you also now recognize that it is becoming
harder and harder to have the knowledge to keep pace with your
competition with all the changes and innovations that are accelerating
each year.
The first step to dealing with these difficult issues is to realize
that they do exist, that they do impact your business. Denial will only
lead to the death path for your business and more rapidly than you will
ever expect unless you are willing to take action and embrace change to
do things differently. Acknowledge that you are dissatisfied, picture a
vision for your business without your dissatisfaction, and then
proactively take some first steps to help you move towards your vision.
This mindset of acknowledging your dissatisfaction, creating your
vision without the dissatisfaction, and taking first steps to new
activities is the process to break the barrier of resistance to change
and will allow you to achieve results you had not previously imagined.
This is a formula for change that not only applies to business, it also
applies to your home life, to your community life, to your spiritual
life, to your sporting life; it is a powerful formula to change your
mindset and to deal with difficult issues.
Today’s tough economic conditions leads many business owners and
CEO’s to try to ride the wave out and deal with their business problems
on their own, particularly if they have had a number of good years when
the economy was growing and consumer confidence was positive. Excuses
for not doing anything now will not save the business; taking
responsibility for introducing actions to generate measureable results
is necessary for success.
Without prior experience to deal with today’s business situations,
how do you take appropriate business building actions? Over the past
20-30 years a new category of business support has evolved and there
are now certification programs for business coaching and executive
coaching to guide business owners and CEO’s through established
processes designed to grow businesses that is consistent with the
corporate goals, no matter what are the market conditions. Maybe not as
fast or as profitably as in strong economies but certainly will grow in
a way that takes into account the slow economy. And these processes
will position the company to be a market leader to leverage the
improved economic conditions when they occur.
An important value of the business or executive coaching role is
that the coach is not doing the work; the coach is bringing proven
processes and prior personal experiences to educate the business owner
or CEO on a weekly coaching basis. A sporting analogy is that the coach
does not dive into the pool and swim for the student; the coach
provides advice, critiquing, provides new training ideas, holds the
student accountable to the effort that has been agreed to make the
student a better swimmer, and will be honest and open in counseling the
swimmer in their true performance improvement.
As much as there is the temptation to try to get through today’s
conditions on their own as the “lowest cost” way of survival, the
business or executive coach must make sure that the coach under
consideration is committed to, and has a track record, to being a
profit center and return a positive ROI on the investment cost when the
coach is brought onto the team.
The coach must recognize that their job
is to work with the client to generate measureable results in every
week of the coaching process. By establishing specific business goals
between the business owner or the CEO and the coach, a new committed
team of business owner and CEO with the coach will be working together
to take the business to its next level of business and financial
performance. This success will be achieved through the business owner’s
passion, energy and belief in their product or service combined with
the experience and processes brought by the coach. In today’s business
world it is not necessary to go it alone.
|
