Three steps for achieving sustainable success
As the leader of a business, your efforts can be too easily consumed by operational challenges, that will only bring short-term results. This is understandable, because these tasks often seem most urgent, rather than focusing on less pressing, longer-term targets such as your growth strategy. However, it is vital that specific time is dedicated to considering the future and preparing your company accordingly, otherwise, your victories will only ever be short lived and you will not achieve sustainable success.
What is sustainable success?
Making your success sustainable means producing outcomes that are reliable and consistent. For example, your team might cobble together a new solution to an outdated process, but unless this fresh thinking is implemented moving forward and even optimised to yield better results, this only represents a short-term win. Analysing this fresh solution and embedding it into future activities makes it sustainable.
During my time as a coach, I have observed that the most successful companies are constantly updating each of their functioning aspects to improve efficiency and profit. Therefore, I have made it a primary focus of my work to help ambitious leaders to sustain their success, so they feel confident for whatever the future may hold.
Observe the three philosophies I advocate below to prepare your business for sustainable success:
1. Curiosity is the key to growth
Growth may seem universally desirable; however, many businesses that want to grow, do not have the correct conditions in place to achieve this. Their organisational structure might be prone to overloads, their offering may be insufficiently unique to sell, or their stakeholder relationships might be too one-sided. To make a company sustainably successful, you have to prepare for growth phases, so the new techniques can be embedded effectively and higher demand can be met.
The key to this drive for improvement is curiosity. Ambitious business leaders should be asking themselves the following questions:
Are the people, processes and systems we have currently sufficiently strong to take the next step?
If not, what actions to take we take to improve this?
Once these actions have been identified, how can we ensure that this new initiative is embedded for continued results?
Curiosity is the first and fundamental step for achieving sustainable success, because ongoing evaluation must be present, so you can navigate any external factors and anticipate your market trends. Assess your business as objectively as possible, collaborating with another party, if you think this is relevant.
If you would like a tool for identifying which areas of your organisation are running optimally, and which might require some attention, follow this link to the Future Fit Scorecard, specifically designed for this purpose:
https://futurefit.scoreapp.com/
2. Get clear on your strategy
Strategy can is an often-neglected aspect of running a company, falling to the wayside as other operational fires must be extinguished. This vital planning stage cannot be skipped, otherwise the subsequent actions you take will not deliver your desired goals. Leadership and strategic thinking should be inseparable if you are aspiring for sustainable success.
These three measures will help you clarify your strategy:
Ringfence specific, non-negotiable time in your schedule for interrogating current performance and related future plans.
Consult your team and department heads (or just experts in certain areas, if your company is smaller) to get their feedback on what could improve.
Set deadlines and performance targets, so you can measure success.
If you are interested in considering new ideas on how best to strategise and grow your business, I have written and published Better before Bigger for you. Check out a free sample chapter and the option to buy the book below:
https://dl.bookfunnel.com/rty3rvtgdq
https://www.nickcramp.com/book
3. Make decisions with confidence
The major benefit of having a clear strategy is the confidence this will give you moving forward. You will have plotted each eventuality, and even if an unexpected complication arises, you will be in a far better position to tackle it. Having this assured approach is indicative of sustainable success, bringing you greater personal fulfilment as a leader, as well as increased profit in your endeavours.
The investment in time and energy, may not yield instant results. You have to be patient. Nevertheless, I guarantee that by improving your business incrementally, step-by-step, you will see increased profitability. You can feel confident that your systems are more efficient, your employees more motivated and your sales will be higher.
Don’t fall into the success trap
Sustainable success is the goal to reach for, but the success trap is the situation to avoid. This is where your business can appear outwardly successful but its suboptimal aspects, that can develop imperceptibly, are left to run. At first this will only inhibit your company growth, which although frustrating, can be navigated, but if unattended, the influence of these imperfections will increase to become far more damaging and can even result in decline.
If you would like to discuss sustainable success and how best to avoid the success trap, please book a FREE, no-commitment discovery call with me below. I am always happy to talk and interested in new opportunities and challenges.
https://www.nickcramp.com/contact
It is well within your reach to achieve sustainable success. Get curious about how to do this, commit to the improvements you want, so you can surpass what you thought was possible.