Business Relief Does Not Come From Doing Nothing.

I lived in Sacramento, California many years ago.  I was a single man with a young professional career.  I was not tied down socially, recently out of college and full of energy and career ideals.  I moved quickly through three jobs as I was searching for a valid place to build my career.  Jobs were plentiful.  The economy was vibrant.  Growth was easily pursued and business victories were common.

The working world was a fun place to go each day because so much was going on to create success and interest.  I, like many young professionals, spent a lot of hours during the week going to gyms and clubs to work out.  My main interest activity was racket ball.  I played a lot of racket ball after work to occupy my time.  The traffic on the freeways to my home was horrific after work.  To avoid that mess I walked across the street from my work location to hit the courts while I waited for the freeways to get cleared out of all the hustle and bustle.  On the weekends I ran long distant jogs around the city.

Sometimes I ran as much as 26 miles.  I would run from one town to another along some of the frontage roads.  I had some friends spotted in locations around those areas that would drive me back home after a long run.  We would go do something after I cleaned up.  This was a common pattern for my life.  When I would go running I noticed the first mile or so was the most difficult part of the run.  I would feel the most pain and have the most stiffness in the beginning of the run.  My mind would try to tell me today was not a good day to run.  The urge to quit was the highest at the beginning of the run.  As I ran longer into each individual distance run, I noticed a more peaceful feeling coming from my exercise.  There were times I actually felt very good during a good portion of the run.  It was almost like being suspended in a feeling of pleasure.  The rhythm and body seemed to be in tune with one another.  I remember I had the ability to generate a lot of physical relief from most of my runs.  This was a great example of how relief does not come from doing nothing.  Relief can come from doing a lot.

I no longer practice long distance running.  However, that experience taught me to understand how relief can come from working well, working hard.  Business relief is much the same.  Business relief does not come from doing nothing.  Business relief comes from performing well.  When our business models work well and produce well, we feel better.  Relief comes from doing something well.  When we exert energy and activities into our business models with good ideas that work well we feel relieved.  Business relief does not come from doing nothing.  It comes from productive success.

I know there are times when a break in action is very welcomed.  A business owner has a full plate to deal with every single day.  Sometimes the plate is too full to comprehend so the mind just looks for opportunities to shut down.  This is when an owner begins to search for relief.  The truth is, relief comes better when it is spurred on by doing a lot of things very well.  Doing nothing only offers a spell from the action for a little while.  It does not bring on relief.  It only provides a little break from the intense action.  Business relief comes from performing efficiently and producing great results.  One of the best suggestions I heard about owning a business was to keep busy working your ideas into a froth.  The commotion you build with the efforts you expel help you to turn your ideas into a reality.  This effort will actually boost your energy and help you supply higher levels of life to your business model.  When this kind of effort surfaces, you become a part of the business model and your relief arrives when efficiency meets great outcomes.  I had a great business mentor share this concept with me.  Many times I have witnessed this type of relief.  I can assure you that it does not come from doing nothing.

Is Your Business Well-Organized?

If your business model is operating at a fairly nice hum right now, you might consider making a move to increase your energy effort.  It might be time to perform some creative additions to your business model.  Maybe you need to step aside for a bit and work on becoming better organized.  Maybe your business has grown just enough to begin wagging the dog instead of the tail.  If you are experiencing this type of 'almost-out-of-control' feeling with regards to your organizational process, step aside and re-evaluate the systems you have in place and make sure they are organized and disciplined enough to handle the next level of growth your business model will experience.  You need to make sure you are not the one who is disorganized.  If the leader is disorganized, your model will never reach a high level of efficiency.  The efficient people you hire will quit performing at that level when you fail to perform at that level.  It will be a matter of time, but they will cease from trying.  You need to make certain you return the mobile phones to their charging stations.  You need to make sure you return the tools to the storage bin designated for tool storage.  You need to make sure the keys are returned to the location assigned for keys.  Every single little step of organized design needs to be respected the most by the leader.  Get this one down.  If you fail at this one, your organization will never become efficient.  Never.  Quit teasing yourself.  Never.

The leader sets the tone.  The leader sets the standards.  The leader provides the examples.  Everyone else follows the leader.  Your organization is what it is because of what you set it to become.  If it is disorganized, look closely into a mirror.  Be honest.  Even the slightest disrespect for organizational habits will manifest itself into something very large.  It will multiply.  If you are serious about placing files back where they belong, so will your staff.  They will enjoy being able to find a file when they go looking for it.  They better not find it laying carelessly on your desk.  You show them a great deal of disrespect when you do things like that.  Stop it.  It is not O.K. for you to practice disorganized efforts because you are the leader or you are the boss.  That is garbage thinking.  Get rid of it.  If you have trouble in this area of your leadership, hire someone to take care of it for you.  That is what personal secretaries used to do for us.  They were given the responsibility to organize us, schedule us, keep us on the path of right work, see to it promises are kept timely, remove our weaknesses from the view of the staff, buffer us from the little things we do not need to see, keep our focus aimed in the right direction and make sure we respect the organizational design of our business model.  If you cannot afford one of these people, learn how to do it yourself!  Just make sure it arrives.

Business relief comes from efficiency factors being met enough to produce nicely managed profits.  It will produce a very nice 'high.'  Having a well organized, well managed and sharply tuned business model is a joy to be centered within.  If your model is lacking this type of feeling, go to work on arranging it to become one of those models.  Create some extra time temporarily to re-organize what you do.  Make more efficient filing systems.  Set up creative places where you do the bulk of your business paperwork.  Make sure your system is designed efficiently.  Make sure you link common parts together and make sure you connect those parts in the best way they can be connected.  Do not operate your small business as if it is not large enough to become very organized.  If your small business is disorganized now, it will become very disorganized when it gets larger.  Trust me on this one.  Get efficient now while it is small enough to help you develop efficient habits.  You will not be able to flip the switch later when your business grows large enough to wag the dog instead of the tail.  Once your business jumps up in large increments, you will not have the time to get organized.  You will be too busy spending inordinate amounts of time managing a disorganized, growing mess that will not permit you to stop and breath.

Unfortunately, that growing disorganized mess will eventually begin to eat itself enough to return it back down to a slower level of performance.  The excellent service it can not provide will chase away enough extra opportunities that will eventually curtail the growing numbers and return them back to a slower pace.  Business models are like that.  They actually govern their own ability to grow.  Learn how to get better organized when the business is small.  As it grows, you will need to stop once in awhile and re-organize how you efficiently do your stuff.  That is exactly what great business owners do best.  They adjust their own routines to match where they want their business to perform.  They arrange the work, manifest its design, promote its direction and produce the right things they do to make growth happen well.  Great leaders and owners are excellent examples for this type of process.  It might be time for you to re-organize yourself in your business model.

Get serious about running long distances well.  Do not put on a sloppy pair of tennis shoes to run 26 miles.  Go purchase some really good skids.  Get some help.  Meet with someone else who runs 26 miles twice per week.  Get some advice.  Read some books.  Spend some time looking around at how other great models who are successfully working it out.  Examine the design of the top ten business models in your field of activity.  Look seriously and honestly at what they do differently than your model.  It is perfectly fine to emulate what winners are doing.  Do not break the laws, copyrights and licenses, but it is just fine learning how to manage your model in the similar fashion that winners are using.  The best techniques I have acquired to successfully place into my business model leadership did not originate with me.  They do not need to be my ideas.  They only need to work well.

It might be time for you to add some time, step aside and find a better way to do your business work.  Your results may produce better outcomes.  If so, I am sure you will feel some relief.  Relief comes from doing more effective work in a more efficient manner.  Business relief does not come from doing nothing.

Until next time...