If we’ve met or you’ve spent any time on my LinkedIn profile, you might have heard me say this before:
I help business owners see the wood for the trees.
It’s a familiar turn of phrase I’m sure, one that reflects an aspiration to help you gain perspective on your business, to take a strategic view rather than merely a practical day-to-day one.
But what exactly does that mean for your business? How can you go take action today?
Well, it has to do with something I like to call the ‘busy’ trap.
The ‘Busy’ Trap
Our lives are full. Let’s face it: often fuller than we’d like.
For years, claiming to be ‘busy, so busy’ has been something of a badge of honour for some, a kind of exhausted brag of the ‘woe is me’ variety.
But it’s true that there’s a lot on your plate.
Working for your business, running your business, staying active, kids (if you have them), a social life. All manner of things calling out your name and demanding attention.
It’s easy for it to become quite overwhelming.
But it’s also easy for it to create a cunning deception that might just be holding back your business. Enter the busy trap.
It’s this:
Mistaking ‘busyness’ for effectiveness.
Being busy can dupe us into thinking that because we’re consistently occupied, because the to-do list is longer than our arms, we must be making progress.
But what if this wasn’t true?
Lessons From Texas
Some years ago, a new owner took over a regional airline in Texas.
Immediately, he found himself caught in an endless stream of meetings, updates, and check-ins with staff from all over the organisation.
But, despite his packed schedule, he just didn’t feel like he was getting anything done. He just wasn’t making any real progress.
So, wisely, he sought the advice of a coach. A coach who asked one simple question:
“What’s your job?”
It’s a simple question, but in my experience it can take quite a lot of answering. It also demands a solid answer, because, to be blunt, without a keen understanding of your purpose or mission in a business, what are you doing there?
For our airline owner, clarifying his mission was crucial, and after some thinking he settled on this one: ‘my job is to transform the airline into the most profitable regional carrier in the US’. (Hardly an unambitious goal!)
To keep it at the front of his mind, he wrote this down on a Post-It Note – and proceeded to use this as a litmus test for every decision that came his way.
Every time a meeting invite came across his desk he asked himself: ‘would attending this meeting help me achieve my mission?’
If not, he delegated. Simple as that.
‘Busyness’ in Your Business
The busy trap is all too easy to fall into, and it leaves us stuck carrying out day-to-day tasks whilst making it almost impossible to keep an eye on the big picture.
If you’ve ever come across Harriet Beveridge & Ben Hunt-Davis’s now legendary book ‘Will it Make the Boat Go Faster?’, you’ll be familiar with the principle: that before taking any action, it’s worth asking yourself if it contributes to your core objective. If not, it’s wise to reconsider.
For successful small business owners, the drive to be more successful is often strong.
But that very desire can lead to bottlenecks where you’re so caught up by details that you lose sight of the broader vision.
Because if you spend all the time working with the trees, you can’t see the wood.
It might sound simplistic, but as a business coach and mentor I ask my clients this very question – and time and again it has helped them clear the blockage and get moving faster again.
For one client in particular, for example, I even suggested a new job title: “Tomorrow”. That simple change helped him shift his focus from daily tasks to the future, looking for opportunities and letting others deal with the everyday.
It’s all about shifting your perspective – and it can make a real difference in helping you to get to where you want to go.
So, What’s Your Mission?
Ultimately, that’s the crux of it: define your mission, your job, and run everything through the test.
Don’t mistake being busy for being productive, outsource things you can get done better or cheaper by someone else, and give yourself the space to work on your business, not just in it.
By doing so, you’ll be better equipped to focus on what creates your success, and avoid getting stuck in the busy trap.
Kind Regards,
Chris