(Originally published in the Sunday Star Times and on Stuff.co.nz)
There’s nothing like a new year to give you a new focus.
For 2017 I thought of ten points to concentrate on.
Following on from my first five points (you can read here), here are the rest:
NUMBER SIX
What is your Uber or are you a taxi driver? We hear so much these days about innovation and disruption. As Victoria Crone famously said (at Nurture Change in 2015) “the best person to disrupt your business, is yourself.”. So what will you be doing in 2017 to disrupt your business and yourself?
NUMBER SEVEN
Make the most of people you know or could know. I have been really lucky meeting some of the people I met in 2016. Are you making the most of who you know? It truly is a ‘3 degrees of separation’ world nowadays. Whilst meeting new people can seem to be a drag sometimes, when you meet the right new people, you get a rush of excitement and motivation and connectedness. I am not saying go after a hit list of people you need to meet, but make the most of every opportunity to meet someone who is an interesting human being. You never know what the future holds and how they might be the key in helping you grow, or perhaps consider how you might be of assistance to them.
NUMBER EIGHT
Have a plan. It amazes me that when I start with new clients (who are a great representation of ‘every business out there’) that less than 1 in 15 would have a current written business plan. You hear all sorts of statistics on what percentage of companies have a business plan and in my 6 odd years of business coaching, the numbers I hear quoted seem an absolute over-statement to me!
Of course, if you are a client of mine it is likely you have a business plan or we are working on one. The best business plans have 2 core components – they are succinct and they are alive. Whilst you want to likely “stay on target” for the medium term, business plans need to be nimble, so update them as you need to. Nobody went out of business making necessary changes to their business plan versus sticking blindly to what they set in stone several months earlier. One thing I personally want to put a bit of time into in 2017 is creating a life plan too – for practical reasons – and I expect it will be an experiment that is very worthwhile.
NUMBER NINE
Delegate more. It is likely you are spending time doing things you should not be doing. You either love doing these things (and if that is the case, sometimes there are motivational arguments for occasionally doing such things), or you are not good at delegating or you are stupid. By stupid I mean you are probably too cheap to pay someone else to do it. Your time is really valuable as a business owner or senior manager. Your time is worth your annual salary plus the annual profit you make divided by 52 weeks and 40 hours. Do the maths. Your time is worth way more than a few bucks an hour!
NUMBER TEN
Constantly learn. It is so easy to learn new stuff these days. Two things… If you do not learn new stuff, you will likely wither up and die (business and performance wise) – doing the same old over and over loses its gloss especially in today’s age of shiny new things. The other thing is to be careful what you learn. There are so many gurus and thought leaders out there, often saying the opposite thing. You need to be discerning with what you learn, how you learn and who you learn from.
Do what you want with these five tips and last weeks five but I hope that you get at least one good focus point for 2017 to be more successful in business and your job…
Zac de Silva is an award winning business coach who owns www.businesschanging.com as well as being the co-founder of the Nurture Change Business Retreat in Fiji. If you like the questions that Zac poses, check out www.accme.co which will get you thinking on how to run a better business.
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