In business (and perhaps every other walk of life), the ability to adapt to new challenges and opportunities is pretty key to success.
Sometimes, what you need to do is to pause and take stock of where things are up to – but how can you do that when just keeping everything going day to day absorbs all of your time?
I don’t think this is an easy problem to solve, so I’m not really sure how helpful a list of handy hints will be. Fundamentally, business as usual work needs to get done if your business is going to survive…yet sometimes the business as usual gets in the way of what really needs to get done.
I guess you might want to try talking to your people about what’s going well and what they are struggling with. You could think about giving your people permission to let something BAU slide for a short period so that they can focus on new initiatives. But even finding the time to turn these things into reality can be really difficult.
Ultimately though, what you might need is a second pair of eyes; someone who can talk to your people, look at your processes and review your performance for you. Investing in a diagnostic of your business operations could unlock incredible insights for you, while you continue to focus on keeping the business running.
My best advice is to find yourself a ‘critical friend’ who can take a look at your operations and give you honest, supportive and practical feedback about what’s really going on – and how best you can enhance your business operations for future success.
Cara Halliwell is the Director of CE Change Ltd, a consultancy that specialises in helping businesses understand and solve their people, process and technology challenges. For further information about the services we offer, click here.