Staying in the zone - A word on governance

Staying in the zone

The power of momentum in business.

By Carl Bates

On our trip up Kilimanjaro our Tanzanian guides kept on repeating their most important advice: pole-pole. Translated from Swahili this means ‘slowly-slowly’ and as you ascend this majestic mountain you soon realise that this advice may just save your life. We saw many climbers who had rushed up the mountain, only to be carried down on stretchers in a race to reach the hospital in time. I have witnessed the same scenario in business – go too fast and you run the risk of fatal injury, proceed too slowly and you may never reach your goal.

In The Law of Rhythm, one of the laws in my book The Laws of Extreme Business Success, I speak about the critical role of momentum and ‘right timing’. Achieving the right balance of timing and rhythm can be very challenging, but when you do, you create a wave of momentum on which you and your team can ride. Having momentum in your business enables you to do so much more. If you are stationary, the effort required just to get moving is immense. Conversely, too much change or change at a pace that does not match what the business requires, will destroy your team’s ability to keep moving. The Law of Rhythm therefore is about getting into the zone and staying there.

Rhythm is created through the routines, habits and cyclical activities in your business. Stops and starts kill your rhythm, whereas regularity and consistency build your capability to sustain the right pace. In SMEs, it is rare to find the kinds of routines that build sustainable rhythm. Activities that create rhythm include regular performance appraisals, monthly management reports and meetings, consistent daily start and end times for business operation, team member payments always occurring on the same day every month, accurate financials delivered within a week after the month-end and any other regular routine that creates measured cycles of activity. SME business owners and managers therefore need to implement the kinds of habits that establish rhythm, constantly moving away from a ‘flying by the seat of your pants’ mentality.

Right timing is also a critical part of this law. It is about recognising that there is a critical moment for everything that happens in your business. Taking action outside that time window can result in a fatal error or a lost opportunity. It is always easy to pin-point the ‘right time’ in hindsight, but to take action in the moment requires that you develop your own guidance system.

Daniel Hatfield is a founding director of Edge Growth, an enterprise development company for small business that facilitates the process of corporate businesses investing in small businesses, as part of their corporate BEE scorecard. Hatfield has observed just how critical timing it right is for their small business clients and he likens it to the game of golf where a good swing requires the right balance of components, performed in the right sequence at the right time. You might be doing the right things in your swing, yet if it is out of sequence your output will be less than ideal and you will not be able to hit the sweet spot.

Hatfield describes how this applies to the businesses they mentor: “From a business perspective, there are so many things that are cyclical and require just the right timing. In an SME the balance of resourcing is tight and there are so many balls in the air at the same time, that the margin for error is negligible. Paying attention to your timing is a critical element of business success.”

In my role at Sirdar, it is always interesting to observe just how critical a governance process is for an SME in applying this law. At the heart of effective governance is a board calendar or annual plan that maps out the themes the business will focus on every month. The planning and focused review of the business from this structured perspective ensures that all aspects of the business are given due consideration and that the right amount of change and movement is brought into the business on a regular basis. The governance process also requires that reporting and management practices are stepped up to ensure that the right information reaches the board at the right time. While establishing new routines is challenging initially, the true value of rhythm becomes obvious when they develop into organisational habits.

Getting into the zone of extreme business success is therefore not always about doing something exceptional, but rather about doing it at a time and pace that is relevant to what your business and team requires to keep moving forward. If you keep tripping up, perhaps you are going too fast. If you feel your business is not moving forward quickly enough, consider how your routines and commitment to regularity can mobilise your team into action.

>>>>>>>>>>>>COMPETITION>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

ABOUT THE BOOK

The groundbreaking game rules contained in this book have inspired thousands of business owners to embark on the journey towards Extreme Business Success. As small and medium business owners, we often make achieving outrageous success far harder than it should be. If you know the rules of the business game, it’s so much easier to achieve success in every aspect of your business. If you are ready to take this exciting step you can obtain your copy of The Laws of Extreme Business Success at selected book stores, on Amazon Kindle or directly from Sirdar. 

In this book you will discover:

·         the 12 Laws of Extreme Business Success, and how by understanding and applying them you can turn your ‘mind’ into ‘millions’

·         that the bigger your ‘promise’, the bigger your business can become

·         that to achieve success, you must move your passion from practicing your craft to creating an enterprise

·         why the right timing and rhythm creates momentum for your business, and how you can use this momentum to achieve Extreme Business Success

·         that when you take yourself and your business too seriously, you lose the pleasure of the journey

·         the importance of playing to win and leading your field

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Carl Bates, Founder of the Sirdar Global Group, is a leading international entrepreneur, speaker and mentor who is passionate about rapidly growing small to medium businesses and empowering communities through enterprise. Growing up in a family of entrepreneurs has inspired and enabled Carl to transform the attitudes and practices of business owners all over the world. He challenges business owners to create a business legacy they can be proud of.

HIGHLIGHTS

Rhythm is created through the routines, habits and cyclical activities in your business.

The governance process also requires that reporting and management practices are stepped up to ensure that the right information reaches the board at the right time.

Getting into the zone of extreme business success is not always about doing something exceptional, but rather about doing it at a time and pace that is relevant to your business.