It’s common to consider yourself busy. That’s your life. As a business owner/entrepreneur you’ve probably been busy for decades. It started when you decided to own your own business. You put in long days and nights working on everything from cleaning up, marketing, sales, operations, negotiating bank loans, hiring and training new employees, to tracking cashflow… but are you busy and effective?
When people ask how you’re doing, invariably the answer is “busy!” If you are sitting still you get antsy and feel guilty. When you go on holidays you’re checking your messages and counting the days until you can be back at work.
But are you effective?
The Merriam-Webster definition of effective is: “… producing a decided, decisive, or desired effect.” Being busy doesn’t enter the definition at all. You can be busy and effective… or not. You’ve likely seen some business owners who weren’t busy at all but were very effective. And you know the flip side.
Busy or Effective?
If you want to be more effective in the future, what do you need to do? As a typical employee, you may need to be more organized, more disciplined, busier. However, as a typical business owner, you need to be more thoughtful, reflective, focused and strategic. It’s important to be less busy, and you need to invest more time working ON the business, not IN the business. You need to lead more than do. You need to spend more time on relationships and less time on paperwork, and need to learn from the past, imagine the future, and ask yourself, “What is the most important thing to do right now?”
Marshall Goldsmith wrote a great book, “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There” in which he reminds the reader over and over, that the very activities that made you successful early in your career will work against you as you grow into more responsible roles.
It turns out that being “effective” is a moving target. When you think you have it nailed, you change your role and become more responsible. How you are more effective changes too. As a business owner, you want to:
- Set and communicate goals
- Increase clarity and reduce chaos
- Focus on results, not activities
- Use your brain, not your brawn
- Help others to be more effective through coaching, encouragement, feedback and clear expectations
Being effective as a business owner means helping your people to be more effective. If they are effective, you are too.
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