After several years of running your business you may find yourself running low on energy and enthusiasm for the business. You might be taking more and more excuses in for not really handling the bare minimum of chores and responsibilities that you as a leader hold and should upkeep. You might even remove yourself physically and make yourself more and more inaccessible for the employees, colleagues, managers and yes, even customers.
Usually when this happens, it is in connection with the business not developing and not achieving the results that you would wish for. The uphill struggle and the seemingly unending struggles may begin to take a toll on you and strain you mentally and drain you from what’s left of your energy.
But more often than not, the problem is not really the current that seems to go against you or the never ending challenges that seem to heap up against you. No, the problem is usually…
YOU.
If you stop for a moment and think back over the years, you will more than likely agree with me that there were always struggles, that there were always obstacles along the way. So really it’s usually not that things really have changed much, it’s probably more that you have changed. Or rather your attitude towards the challenges and the business has changed.
When you set out, it probably was a big challenge for you and you were probably met with a huge amount of “tests” from every corner. But you were excited and charged head on. You held your ideas and your vision high and it charged you with energy and stamina and a drive that enthused those around you, your employees and colleagues.
But for whatever reason, you got tired along the way and you dropped the strength to keep pushing through and shining that bright light for the others to follow.
What’s more is, that because of that, you are more than likely a good reason that the business isn’t in fact doing so well and may well be in a limbo and probably even has been for some time.
Yes, the world keeps changing and things become more and more disruptive with greater frequency and impact. But really, most of what you are facing is no more challenging than what you had to face earlier in your career – at a time, I might add, when you were even less experienced and knowledgeable.
The problem is that you haven’t changed. You haven’t developed. You stayed still and remain the same as always.
A business – any business – really does need a leader.
No let me correct that.
A business – any business – really does need Leadership.
People (employees and yes, even the customers) really need a bright shining light that will lead the way. That will take the charge and show the vision and making the claims as to where you as a business are heading. People need someone who will show the strength and courage even when things get tough and when obstacles seem insurmountable.
If you business is seemingly going nowhere (or worse going backwards) then you need to take a long look at yourself as the leader.
It’s often not really the business that is the trouble. It really is the leader.
You as the leader holds the ultimate responsibility (well, ultimately the responsibility rests with the board of directors and the owners of the business), so if you are not up for the task any more, then now is the time to remove yourself from the business. You are no longer serving it well and you are actually hurting its chance of survival at worst or chances of getting decent results any time soon.
In fact, you are already a bit late in making this decision to remove yourself and you really should have done so long ago.
By the time you have reached this point and have seen this described development of your business (or rather lack of) and you recognize what I’m stating here, then it’s probably been already way too long like that. You have probably, in fact carried on with this state of affairs for several years. And everybody has suffered.
That’s right, everybody has suffered along the way. The business has suffered, which can clearly be seen from the results and your books. The employees have suffered, for the have been left wanting for better leadership and better inspiration and the lacking results have probably caused lacks of wage development or possibly even decreases in compensation and other benefits. The atmosphere within the company has more than likely suffered.
And along the way more signs have shown up that tells the same tale of a business going down. Tell tale signs of employees claiming more sick days, dwindling sales, more mess in and around the work space, and employees assuming less and less responsibility on their own.
But it all might not be too late.
Changes are needed. Sometimes radical changes.
The best recommendation might well be to start by removing yourself from the position of leadership and instate someone capable. Yes, that’s right. The best cause of action might well be to fire yourself.
This really is no different that when companies are bought and you often see that the management are fired. They are usually fired to make way for new changes, better growth and more speed at which to reach new and higher results.
Yeah, you may not really like to hear this and you may not really like to have to face this. But trust me, you are not really very happy where you are at for if you were your business more than likely would be showing it via better results and better growth. But the great thing is, that once you have fired yourself and instated capable management in your place, you can let go of a lot of the daily hassles and soon you will find new streams of ideas and energy leap into your mind and body and can actually now begin to add much more value once again into the business via your conversation with the new management, strategy meetings and possibly board meetings.
Your quality of life is very likely to improve and the results of the business likewise. Of course rightening the business and bringing it back on the course it should be at may sometime take a bit of time. It’s sometimes kinda like a supertanker in that way. Change the steering now and it will take a bit before it will actually take effect. Unfortunately to add to that pain, it is often not easy to find the right candidate to take over the management, but trust me, more often than not, the biggest problem is just that you are clinging onto it for too long and too hard.
But imagine for a moment a situation and a new lease of life in which you remain a business owner, but have removed yourself from the daily nitty gritty chores of the business and really just work on it from the perspectives that are more concerned with the vision and the strategies of how to get there. But you leave it in the hands of someone else who more than likely actually are very capable and who has the enthusiasm and the drive. You will be awarded time and freedom to seek other interests of yours and explore where were precluded previously because of the workload. And you might even find renewed energy and strength to expand into new business ventures and exploits.
Yes, if any of the above rings true, it may be about high time that you fire yourself and remove yourself from the daily operations of the business. More likely than you might wish to hear, you are in fact the cause of the stand still of the business and your are in the way of its progress. Remove yourself and achieve a better quality of life and recommence working on yourself, for obviously, you actually need to progress and evolve too – and you haven’t.
The time to fire yourself is long overdue, so now go do it.
