06 Sep Behaviours That Undermine Business Owners
Behaviours That Undermine Business Owners
The ironic thing about growing your business is that there often comes a point where the behaviours that helped you succeed now start working against you. Even worse, it can take us some time to become aware of that so we keep doing the same things and wondering why they aren’t working for us any more.
It’s a fascinating irony that often provokes strong eureka moments in my clients when they have these realisations. So much so that I’m going to be looking at some of these in more detail in a series of musings. In this, the first, I’ll be outlining the overall premise and sharing some examples of the types of behaviours I’m talking about.
It’s all about timing
When you’re starting out as a business owner, many of the qualities that drive you forward are exactly the qualities you need. You work hard and put long hours in because there is nobody else to do the work. You pay extraordinary attention to detail because your reputation matters and every new client counts. What’s more, you consider every opportunity because you are still discovering what works. Because it’s your business, you take responsibility for everything, and push through uncertainty because there is no guarantee that what you’re building will succeed.
And this works. You get clients, build a reputation, make money, and the business becomes successful.
But success changes the context. The business that once needed you to work relentlessly may now need you to step back, to spend more time on the business than in business.
The attention to detail that helped you establish your reputation can become perfectionism that slows everything down. It can sometimes mean that you micromanage rather than trust, which isn’t conducive to growing a team.
Being open to possibilities helped you previously as you were able to tweak and pivot, but doing that at a later date can turn into constantly changing direction, becoming too reactive rather than staying on course.
The next is a big one: that initial taking responsibility becomes an inability to delegate or switch off, or we just get used to fitting our life around the business.
When success changes the rules
One of the challenges of being a successful business owner is that there isn’t necessarily a point at which someone tells you that the rules have changed.
There is no boss saying, “You don’t need to work this hard anymore.” No colleague necessarily points out that you’re spending three hours perfecting something that was already good enough. Likewise, there may be nobody around to remind you that the opportunity you’re chasing isn’t actually aligned with the business you’ve spent the last five years building. This is my own downfall. I’m particularly good at noticing new opportunities and getting excited by them. At the start this is useful but as things become more established we are talking about the bright, shiny object trap where you fall prey to distractions rather than keep on keeping on track. In my defence, let’s agree that keep on keeping on track can sometimes get monotonous.
But I digress, because the point is none of these behaviours is good or bad, it’s just the context that makes them useful or unhelpful.
How to check the behaviours that undermine business owners
It can be quite straight-forward to ask yourself what has helped me succeed and get where I am, and is it still working for me?
Perhaps you’re in a position where you still need to drive the business ahead and it still needs your blood, sweat and tears, But perhaps you’ve reached a point where you can slow down, although learning how to do that can be difficult for some.
It might be that you may not need to perfect the next thing, but just launch it, or accept that this is a pilot or minimum viable product and allow yourself the spaciousness to get feedback.
You may not need more opportunities, but just double down on the ones you’ve aleady chosen. Or even just stay quietly on course!
Responsibility can be very alluring to some people. It brings attention, status and a feeling of achievement but there comes a point where we carry more than we can comfortably hold. You may need to put some of it down. If this is you, can you feel the relief?
Have you recognised yourself in any of these here, and realised that there is another way? if you think you’d benefit from my help in doing so, I offer business-informed therapy where can do just this.
There’s more to come…
Over the coming weeks, I’ll explore these patterns in more detail, including the point at which a useful behaviour can become a behaviour that undermines the very success it helped to create.
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