Is there something missing from your business?
If there is, would you be able to recognize it or know how to determine exactly what the issue or problem really is – and then how to solve it?
Every business, no matter how large or small; no matter how successful or challenged, has something missing. Whatever that something may be prevents greater success and profit from happening.
Sometimes you can put your finger directly on what it is. Other times, you can’t. And often, what you think it may be really isn’t the key, core element of what is holding you or your company back from success.
So how do you find what’s missing in your business?
My guest this week on Talk Business With Howard radio was Mark Schaefer, author of Return On Influence and The Tao Of Twitter (both must read books for CEOs, presidents and business owners). Mark had the honor of studying with the man considered to be the inventor of modern management, Peter Drucker. According to Mark, Peter Drucker could “cut through the complexity of any situation and distill it to its essence.”
As a CEO, president or business owner, that’s precisely what you need to do with your business – “…distill it to its essence”- especially now, running a business in this uncertain, slow to recover economy and fast changing business world.
How do you do that?
By looking at the bigger picture…
1) Through your approach
2) Through your mindset
Mark used the analogy to think of your business as a puzzle. When leading a company you are constantly putting together the pieces of the puzzle.
And how do you put together the puzzle? By looking for and finding the missing pieces.
The same is true in your business. Whether it’s hiring the right people for the sales team, putting together a winning presentation for a potential new client, reviewing monthly profit and loss statements or countless other examples of how you can every day put more and more pieces of the puzzle together about your business – and how to make it better.
Don’t focus so much on the problem, Mark explained, rather focus on what is missing. To look for what’s not there in your business that should be there.
Mark concluded this segment of the show by saying that to put together the pieces of the puzzle with your business means to recognize the power of asking the right questions rather than having the right answers.
So often, as business people, we worry over having the right answers when we should be concerned about asking the right questions.
No matter what you are up against in your business day, always be asking questions – to the sales team, to prospects, about the monthly profit & loss statements. Keep asking questions! Only by asking the right questions will you find the right answers. When you think you’ve asked enough questions, ask one more. And one more after that. And one more after that.
Ask questions until you have found the missing pieces of the puzzle. Only then, will you find success. And your business will grow.
Thank you, Mark, for taking time out of your busy schedule to join me on the radio show.
The replay of the conversation I had with Mark is available at the top of this blog post. Well worth your time to listen to what Mark has to say about marketing, social media, social scoring and Peter Drucker.