In times of crises business owners can tend to have a shotgun strategy approach. There is no rule book on how to respond to unprecedented times, no real understanding of where we are and where we need to go.
Within the last few weeks, your role within your business has undoubtedly changed depending on how the current challenges have affected the industry you are in. You might be a business owner that has had to move to the front line to keep your customers engaged or had to step out of the front line to think about the big picture strategy for the future of your business.
The role you play within your business can be split into 3 stages.
1. Job Stage
2. Business Stage
3. Empire Stage
Understanding what stage you are in is key to allowing yourself to re-align with your business needs through times of both disruption and growth.
If you are in the Job Stage, if you don’t work, you don’t make money. Simple. A great example of being in the job stage is an artist. Simply put, if an artist doesn’t create art to sell, they don’t make money.
In the Business Stage, you have taken a step back from the front line. You are still part of the process of making money, but you have team members alongside you that are active within the running of the business. Someone in the business stage could be a café owner who pays the bills, does the rostering, and hiring and firing, but isn’t actively on the shop floor.
Empire stage. Here you are not needed in the business at all. You are doing none of the tasks that would happen in the job and business stages. You can completely step back from the business and it will still run profitably and successfully. If you are looking to run multiple businesses at once, the empire stage is where you need to get to.
Think of each stage as its correlating number. Within this time of immense change, it is highly likely you have had to change the nature of your job role to suit the new environment. You may have had to move from a 3 to a 2, a 2 to a 1, or even from a 1 to a 3.
So, we urge you to do the following;
Work out what number you currently fall under in your business/businesses.
Then, what number you want to be in in your business/businesses.
What is crucial here is the gap between where you are and where you want to be. Once you have awareness around where you are, ask yourself what the immediate action is you need to take to get to where you want to be.
Do you need to focus on lead generation?
Do you need to start directly dealing with customers again?
Do you need to be more present in company meetings?
If you were a 2 and are now a 3, think to yourself how you can maintain this. How can you get out of the ‘what is happening’ mode and into the ‘getting it done’ mode. If you are a 2 heading back to a 1, think of ways you can delegate out tasks and gain back leverage. Teach your team to step up and deal with crises.