Welcome to episode 50 of The Executive Edge with Rick Heyland.
Rick is a successful consulting Executive who has built a business and sold it. With an MBA and many years’ experience, his business emphasises the importance of continuous improvement and small business success. He has written a white paper called ‘the 7 strategies for small business to solve the biggest challenges of 2021’ and it’s that topic I asked him on to the podcast to discuss.
Rick realises many businesses are struggling to come back from Covid and drive their growth in order to succeed or return to previous levels of turnover. He begins the podcast with his first recommendation; that of looking after yourself first. Daily rituals executed with a view to giving a leader personal time, are essential, he believes. We all need to look after ourselves well but never more so when we’re tired of strain or problem solving. It’s this risk that has affected a number of small businesses coming out of the pandemic. Not everyone has managed to pivot their offering, but Rick feels some essential strategies are vital
What else?
He also recommends having a regular business strategy meeting to review progress, and creatively brainstorm solutions to issues. This is what he called a performance management meeting. In it there are strategic issues so that you have a plan of action. Planning and feeling you have a plan are both creative, but essential processes to feel you’re making progress. He separates that from a tactical meeting which is more on an operational level.
I made the point of avoiding getting sucked in wherever you can. It’s very easy to watch the news, listen about events and look at your leading indicators for success yet feel deflated or anxious. Monitoring your success by looking at your daily progress can work the opposite way, let alone mean you get caught up in events happening around you, rather than to you.
The world is in a phase of adjustment right now. Some countries are doing better than others and some industries. If you’re not lucky enough to be in one of those then you can get sucked in to negativity that upsets confidence at best and makes you want to increase your grip, at worst. Increasing your grip means you tend to take over or forget to delegate. It’s an understandable thing to do when things are very up and down but it’s counter intuitive. The same people you brought in to the business and need to manage, are the ones who will help you navigate out of it, but it helps to delegate sufficiently to get this to happen.
If you’d like to hear more from Rick, you can hear this episode and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Google play and iHeart.
