“Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”
-The Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland
“Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out”
-Anton Chekov
Many small business owners find themselves in the position of wondering if they own their company or if their company owns them. The daily grind of delivering products or services, acquiring more business, and handling the endless problems that crop up can leave a business owner asking “What did I do today”?
Businesses can be so all-consuming that it can become too easy to get trapped in a perpetual motion machine running off of your own vitality and life force. It can even reach a point where it seems impossible to shift out of the rut that a company has somehow gotten itself into.
What's going on here?
If you are experiencing the above conditions, there are a number of possibilities to consider:
1.You could be leaking power from your company due to uncorrected business errors
2.Your business may suffer from a fundamental flaw in its core concept of products and revenues
3.You may be operating off of one or more unexamined premises that are not true
4.You may not have the right people in the right positions
5.There may be resistance to success originating with one or more parties
6.You may be influenced by external factors that, while not your fault, must be attended to
7.You or other founders may have changed over time and are no longer served by your present business model.
To give you an idea of how widely the above points can vary, I was once brought in to evaluate a small but previously successful human resources company. The owners were working themselves half to death, yet profits had stagnated. They asked me to investigate, and I began reviewing financial statements and interviewing employees. Somewhere in the course of the investigation we discovered that their Executive Director was moonlighting for another firm and siphoning customers away! You never know what will come up when you start asking lots of questions!
Of course, most companies don't have problems as dramatic as this example, but the point is that a stagnating business is an indication of something somewhere that hasn't been fully examined and addressed. Even if efforts have been taken in the past to adopt corrective measures, if the company is still bogging down the right areas have not been fully revealed and corrected.
The owners of companies can get bogged down personally and stop attempting to create positive changes. This is the point where things can really turn sour and become a big problem if nothing is done. As the owner of a small company, you must realize the following:
1.If your business is bogged down, there are one or more knowable reasons
2.If you fail to investigate and correct these areas then your business may eventually move into a crisis
3.If you successfully correct the issues creating stagnation, you will be more excited by your business and open the door to new abundance
Don't fall into the trap of just existing in your business, putting in your time and managing the best you can. This is your life. You have the right to demand an improvement of your circumstances.
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