Simple does not mean easy. Complicated does not mean better.
Recently, someone commented that sometimes the materials I use and publish seem “basic.” The person who told me this was surprised that I took it as a compliment!
You might not realize that over 70% of all employment in the United States comes from what the Small Business Administration considers “small business.” That number varies from year to year but for decades the vast percentage of employment comes from “independent businesses having fewer than 500 employees.”
Admittedly that doesn’t seem small to me, especially since I am a one-person shop. Most of my clients do fall into that SBA category. I have deliberately built my coaching and consulting practice to serve this community, because I believe small businesses are vital to our mutual successful existence.
Small businesses tend to focus on their technical skills, the products they produce, and the services they provide. They work a lot in the business and not much on it. This pattern is often due to not having enough time, money or staff. For example, research shows that only 20% of American businesses have a basic strategic plan and even less actually follow it.
Documents such as job descriptions, NDAs, insurance paperwork, organizational charts, governing documents, policies and procedures all tend to be at the bottom of the priority list. After all, you don’t bill the client for those, so they aren’t getting much love.
When this prospect resisted the idea of coaching and made comments about my basic work, I explained why that is exactly the point. Then I said “So, since it’s all so basic… are you doing it?” His answer was “No” and we continued our conversation.
Basic doesn’t mean easy. Simple doesn’t mean easy. I’m not inferring that it should be! We get distracted by shiny objects, new products, ideas from others and so on.
One of the reasons it’s so important to talk about these basics is that they build the foundation of your business. And if you can get the foundation right and standardize your processes and procedures (while you’re small, however you measure that), it’s much easier to scale your business to grow!
You can focus on growth because you don’t have to focus on the “basics.” Your whole process won’t get hijacked every time there’s a small hiccup. I’ll paraphrase my own book, Abiding Strategies: The deeper the foundation, the taller the building can be.
Another amazing benefit: the conversations with your team or partners that you’ll have while building out these basics will be infinitely productive, because it will help you understand everyone’s stake in the situation, and how the decisions impact them as humans.
Understanding the basics of human nature is also critical because, after all, your business is run by humans. But that’s a conversation for another time.
I can help. Just drop me a note: Lisa@AbidingStrategy.com
