You will harvest what you sow.
The thing about a business, a field or a garden is that to get what you want to grow there you have to do quite a bit of work.
At this time of the year you most likely are doing a review of how this year went. You have or are thinking about areas that need to improve. You realize you must get better, but you are not sure where to start.
If You Fail to Plan, You Plan to Fail.
Making changes that will improve your business is a conscious decision planned out for the area of your business where the work is to be done and where the reward or results will be realized.
The decisions will be:
- What is it that you want to do better?
- What will you have to invest or put into place?
- What will you need to do first?
- How will you maintain the effort?
- How will you know you have achieved it?
Quit Growing Weeds.
Weeds, on the other hand, just happen. They don’t need anybody to plant them. They just exist when nothing else is put in their place. Think of weeds as poor performance in any area of your business. Without any intervention the poor performance just keeps on reoccurring.
Think of weeds as worry, anxiety and despair over the lack of growth in your business — possibly even a decline in your business. Without any change this present and future condition will only get worse.
Think of weeds as employees with bad attitudes or lack luster performance. They crowd out all of the good done by other employees and they are a constant distraction to what you are trying to get done.
Inaction is an Action. You Will Only Harvest What You Sow.
If you do not change the poor performance of your sales counter you will continue to get poor sales. The most inexpensive way to improve your sales counter is to invest in targeted training that improves their outcomes.
If you keep taking parts off in dismantling that don’t sell, then you will continue to be behind in dismantling. As a result, you will hurt the performance of your sales counter and your bottom line.
If you do not realign your resources so that they can be invested in more or better inventory, then you will continue to see decline in the market place and in your business.
Leadership and Management
Almost all company problems can be traced back to leadership and management. Failure to make needed changes and to seek improvements are the root cause of business failures.
Leadership — Envisioning the Future
Leadership is the vision function that guides the company in the direction of growth. It determines what the needs are and how to achieve them. Leadership creates and changes the environment when it is needed for survival.
Management — Tending the Garden
You can’t just plant something and walk away. You have to make sure it gets off to a healthy start and then you have to do the weeding. Management is that function.
On a daily basis management monitors:
- What is working?
- Where are you coming up short?
- What resources do you need to improve performance?
- How are the staff performing?
Harvest — Bringing in the Yield
There is a season: a time when all the work and all the investments have done all that they are going to do or produce. It is a time to gather and realize the benefit of the planning, the work and maintenance, and investment that was put forth.
How would you describe your 2019 harvest?
How do you plan to sow, grow, produce and bring a better yield in 2020?
Robert Counts Chad Counts Rich Tyler Johnny Logel
Robert Counts, robert@countsbusinessconsulting.com; 512-693-6915
Chad Counts, crcounts@countsbusinessconsulting.com; 512-963-4626