In his Finding the Discipline Needed to Reinvent and Reinvest post, Paul Sparrow says that experts predict the next decade of innovation will be so packed with change that it will eclipse the 100-year period from 1869 to 1969. So, he recommends the following disciplines to grow your business:
- Understand your business strategy – All too often, business owners simply don’t take the time to understand the economic well-being of their company and of the market at large. It’s perilous to judge the health of your company on two snapshots in time, and not the trends that indicate whether the company is experiencing short-term or long-term growth. Or no growth at all. And, if your business is growing and the markets are favorable, the skids are greased. But even an unfavorable market can represent a solid growth opportunity, when taken in the proper context.
- Monitor business execution – you must build and document your strategic plan before you launch or alter tactics. And you must put the infrastructure in place to measure the ROI of what you create. Consolidating the “keyest” of key indicators into a performance dashboard is, well, key to being able to gauge which direction the needles are pointing, and to determine which levers you need to pull to keep them moving in the right direction.
- Be process-oriented – There are no shortcuts. This can be the hardest thing to instill – a level of discipline around process. Some who have hit a home run, just assume that they’ll find the same piece of luck all over again. Instead, refine through process.
- Build the right team – Creating the right business chemistry is essential. That’s because when it comes time to ideate about innovation, you need to have a careful balance of personality styles around the table. Consider some of the more innovative assessments. We recommend and assist client with using Myers-Briggs to help build high-performance teams.
Hmmm. So, we need to work on strategic planning and execution, improve our business processes, and empower our leaders. He just described how Exotek is ideally suited to help you build a better integration company. He just forgot networking with your peers.
