How to observe and gain strength in business
Everything we do in business improves performance.
People underestimate the power of linking back to performance and truly being accountable for what we set out to do.
Observation is one hell of a tool. Now this doesn’t mean staring at the pretty girl across the office or looking at the clock every five minutes waiting to go home. It means being present in every moment and absorbing information, voices and actions of people around you. Someone’s attitude in a meeting may indicate other issues going on in their life, micro expressions in people faces may reveal opportunities you hadn’t considered before. Active observation can really help your business and make you stronger, just by really looking at what is in front of you daily and not taking it for granted.
Observation has always been my one, not so secret weapon. In my early career I was always the one in the board meetings saying “hold on a minute haven’t we lost sight of the objective?” after everyone had been going off the subject for 30 minutes. I have a pet hate for meetings that last 2 hours that could have been sorted and actioned in 2 minutes - I can’t stand it when people make things more difficult than they should be. I have had to learn to actively listen and observe and use these prolonged meetings and encounters to absorb what’s going on and use it to improve performance in a business.
Performance is how well a person or machine carries out an activity. To know how well something is doing you need a start and an end point with something to measure it all in the middle.
Performance in business is the same - performance of our people, our software, our resource in general, our accounts, our communication to clients and so on.
If you are having a problem with getting new business for example, you have a problem with performance. You aren’t performing as you want to be or need to be and there are reasons for that.
What are they?
Have you set your marketing budget too low?
Have you got the correct resource in place?
Are you cutting back on brand awareness in a hope to save money but no one can actually see what you do or how well you do it?
Have you set clear objectives about who you want to reach, by when and how?
Are your teams aware of your objectives and are totally focussed on it?
The list is endless - if you have a problem you also have an answer and that answer will solve your performance issues too. Set clear goals by brainstorming alternatives with your staff, communicate well to them and get them on board with you, monitor the results and check your timescales, be able to adapt along the way and analyse the results during structured review periods. The key to improving performance is not trying to do it alone; take people with you and you are already half way there.
If you would like to improve your performance contact me today performance@gemmaangharad.com
07568387081