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THIS WEEK
What Juggling and Business Growth Strategies have in Common
ALSO IN THIS EDITION
What Juggling and Business Growth Strategies have in Common
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If you are in business, you know there are heaps of things you "should" be doing to grow your business. Open any business journal and you will find that you should be networking, direct mailing, fixing your customer nurturing process, writing newsletters, being active in social media and all of that while you are still trying to manage a team and deliver outcomes.
You can do time management programs to learn how to be more productive (there are stacks of great ones out there), but in my experience there is only one way to grow your business. Do one thing at a time until it becomes second nature and only then pick up the next thing.
Juggling is a great analogy for business. I remember when I was first learning to juggle you start with one ball and toss it from hand to hand. Once you get the feel of the ball and an idea of the motion of tossing and catching, you add in a second ball.
 You work with catching and tossing two balls until you get so comfortable that you can now add in a "space" – you create the space for the third ball. One, two, space. One, two, space. Only when you have this pattern embedded into your brain and body do you add in the third ball in to the mix. You can't add the third ball until you create space for it to be there.
No juggler ever starts to juggle by throwing everything into the air and hoping they will catch them all. So why do business managers feel that they need to do everything at once and then beat themselves up when they drop the ball on a project?
If you want to grow your business, pick one thing and learn to do it well before adding in the next thing.
In business, you will find some business growth tasks are "one-offs" and others are "ongoing". One-off tasks are things like updating your business cards, creating a website. Ongoing tasks are things like blogging, networking, customer nurturing.
I usually recommend that businesses create a business growth/marketing calendar that matches their business planning cycle. In the calendar very loosely jot the two areas of task focus for your business each month – ball one is the "one-off" stuff and ball two is the "ongoing" stuff.
So, for example this month you may choose to pick up as ball one – "redesign my website" as your one-off project and ball two "attend one Chamber of Commerce networking event" as your ongoing event. Generally, website redesigns with great design elements and compelling SEO web copywriting may stretch over two to three months, so make sure you allow for that in your calendar.
Once your site is "live" then choose the next "one-off" project. It may be updating your marketing brochures or business cards or creating a Proposal template that you can use as a base for future Tenders and Proposals. It may be getting corporate photos done, or adding video to your site. The choice is yours – but just do one thing at a time.
Each month check that you are still comfortably maintaining your existing "ongoing" tasks before you add in another ongoing task like blogging or social media. Only add in another ongoing task when you have got to the level of comfort with your existing process that you have created a space for it to be added. Remember, "one, two, space" before you pick up the third juggling ball.
If each month you work on just one "one-off" task and either embedding or adding in one ongoing business growth task, then you will gradually and safely grow your business (and not drop the ball in the process).
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| HR Tip of the Week: Inter-team rivalry |
 Healthy rivalry between work teams is not a bad thing ... except when it degenerates into major warring factions.
These skirmishes become more and more heated, until sniping and backbiting becomes the norm, with ongoing turf wars and fights about resources taking up more time than delivering outcomes.
It is the responsibility of senior management to step in and actively work to resolve the issues between the teams. They need to do this at the very first sign of conflict and not let it escalate until World War 3 is upon them.
To be honest, 95% of all managers do not have the skills to deal with seriously fractured teams, and to be even more honest, in the case of out and out warfare, neither do most HR Managers.
If you have take no prisoners, venom filled, hate sessions happening between work teams, then you need to hire in specialist conflict mediators. Just like you wouldn't try and send your line manager or HR Manager in to try and broker peace in the Middle East, you need specialist skills and techniques that are beyond the scope of regular managers.
And once peace is brokered, then you need to take a very close look at the leadership skills of your senior management team and how they either actively or implicitly encouraged the division to occur. Staying with the being blunt theme - any severe inter-team rivalry is the fault of the senior managers above the teams (and not of the teams themselves).
 If you want to hone up on your productivity skills (but don't want to be writing thousands of to-do lists), then Lorraine Pirihi is the Productivity Queen.
Lorraine has loads of practical ideas and strategies to help you get the job done and enjoy life while you are doing it.
Lorraine covers everything from how to network effectively through to dealing with procrastination and get organised. Her approach is pragmatic, realistic and founded in real world challenges rather than theoretical mumbo jumbo. If you have ever wanted to be more efficient in what you do, then check out Lorraine's website.
Just having a website is not enough. If you have a website but are not getting qualified leads ringing you as a result of your site, here are the 10 areas you need to review to make your site convert.
exuberantly yours
Ingrid
Heart Harmony
PS: This week's Small Business Tips blog included a video post about "The Hidden Influence of Social Networks".
Legal stuff: This newsletter is intended only a general guideline for Australian businesses. You should seek specific advice for your situation rather than relying only on this newsletter
Earnings disclaimer. Some of the content may include advertorial information, which means I may receive financial compensation for the products I recommend. But - unless I know and trust the product, I will not recommend it.
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