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Zen and the Art of Business Maintenance
The best thing to make your business a success is to stop working in it for a day - regularly, as James Butler explains.
As a diligent small business owner, you may well have already followed the text-book advice of creating a vision for yourself, translating that vision into goals and getting into action.
So why does it sometimes still feel like you are wading through treacle trying to get the success you have planned for yourself?
The story of Roy Lyness a few months ago (Better Business 108, p12-13) showed the power of a systems approach to business, but how do we ensure we truly start to work on the business and not in it?
Something that has worked for some of my small business clients (and me) is very loosely based on what might be called a "Zen" approach to business maintenance (after the title of Robert Pirsig's cult 1970s book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance).
Stop wasting energy
The Zen approach is to stop wasting energy on trying to remember to do it, or beating ourselves up for not doing it, and just create a way of making it happen effortlessly.
This means we can channel the energy saved into the strategising, systems building and business creation instead!
Imagine your week if you had no diary, or schedule on your computer. That is, you had to remember every appointment and meeting in your head. I guess it would soon be chaos.
So why not treat working on your business in the same way as you do managing your schedule - having something that makes it happen automatically, without you having to remember?
That can be as simple as putting a firm appointment in your diary, and sticking to it, or it can involve developing the habit so that working on the business at certain times is your natural state - and it would seem odd to do anything else.
So what can we all do to make this happen? First we should recognise the change will take some investment, but that the pay-off will be a lot less wasted energy, stress and pain.
Next, we take our diary and schedule regular reviews - monthly, weekly, whatever suits - but block the time in your schedule.
When the appointment comes, get out of the building - work in a hotel lobby, at home, or an enterprise centre. The change of location reduces interruptions, ensures focus and frees the mind to think more laterally.
As you develop this habit, think through what you need to make this effortless every time (more admin support, etc).
Focus on implementing these to allow you the space to do what you do best - building your business.
Habits take time to break and time to create, but when you have them they happen without effort. When was the last time you arrived at a business meeting with your slippers on?
Hopefully never - because it is so habitual to put shoes on as we go out, it almost happens without thinking. The same can be true of working on our business. Now, that would be a Zen approach!
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[Published in Better Business, December 2003]