Working in AND on your business

I wish I could tell you that every time I work with a client, things work out great. And their business skyrockets to the moon. But it's not true.

I recently parted with a client that was so busy working in the business, that from the CEO as a model on down, they weren't willing to spend the time to work on the business.

Now, what does that really mean?

They were spending so much time putting out fires, working on the day to day, the week to week, the month to month that they wouldn't put in the time it took to make sure they had a clear vision of the future to make sure they were building the right culture, moving forward, to make sure that they were putting in the right processes for day in and day out accountability.

Now think about that, they weren't willing to put in the right processes for day in and day out accountability, because they were spending too much time putting out fires day in and day out, that would have been solved with a better process for accountability.

So sometimes companies are so busy working in the business heads down, fixing the problems of today, that they never think about tomorrow. And then they're stuck fixing the problems of today, and they don't scale.

Now, I've also seen the opposite problem. I've seen companies that believe vision and strategy is really sexy to talk about, they get a chance to be creative and talk about differentiation against their competition and, you know, new products and services that they're going to develop that are going to just blow the market away two years from now.

But they're not focused on the measurable outcomes. The key performance indicators that are measures of success today. They're not focused on whether marketing is developing enough marketing qualified leads, that sales is closing those leads at the percent they should, that from a customer service standpoint, they're not getting incredible loyalty and high customer net promoter scores.

They're not focused on culture today and making sure their employees are engaged and passionate at work, because they're so focused on this crazy, unbelievably creative, sexy future. And when that happens, you hit a ceiling.

And you can't scale either when you're spending all your time working on the business, but not in the business.

So you need this healthy balance of both working in the business where you're looking at how your functions are working today.

Are you meeting your client expectations?
Are you meeting your team member expectations?
Are you hitting those measurable outcomes every day, every week, every month? And at the same time?
What's your big vision of the future? What are your annual priorities?
What are your quarterly rocks?
What are you doing to move your company to the next level?

That balance is not easy. But that balance is critical to scaling a company.

How much time are you spending working in the business versus working on the business? The answer to that question may tell you why you're not scaling or if you've got a great answer. It may justify why you are scaling. As a business. You need to do both.