Being Disciplined In Your Business Could Be The Difference Between Success And Failure

 

Through my many years of working with various businesses, I’ve found that what determines success and failure mainly comes down to 4 key disciplines…Clarity, Focus, Discipline and Engagement.

When it comes to the word discipline people often get confused.  It does not mean punishment or any other forms of controlling a workforce!  It does mean creating standard practices which will help you to achieve your business goals.

Discipline in outstanding organisations is a deliberate practice repeatedly performed. So, this means planning, having standard approaches to doing things, learning from mistakes and improving how things get done.

Here’s 6 key disciplines that every successful business should be practicing:

  1. Creating and implementing a business plan – but the key here is to involve the whole team in this process.  This will ensure that everyone understands what’s in that plan and what their role in executing it is.
  2. Setting goals and objectives – once you have your business plan there will be lots of goals and objectives.  Work with team members to ensure they understand what the goals and objectives are and what needs to be done to achieve them.  Listening to their feedback is vitally important too as you need all team members to be onboard with the business plan.
  3. Using standard methods of doing things – and make sure they are carried out across all sites and team members.  If everyone is doing the same job differently this could cause issues.  By standardising processes it reduces the possibility of error.   If this isn’t something you already do then it’s a great team exercise to decide on the best ways to do each task.  What you might find is that each team member has a golden nugget and by consolidating these you could end up with an even better process.
  4. Coaching team members on a regular basis – covering these 2 key areas; problem solving and standard ways of working. This will have a huge impact on the business as staff will take more responsibility and will enable them to try to solve problems themselves without needing to refer to their supervisor frequently.
  5.  Communicating effectively – this might seem obvious but communication in businesses is often where things go terribly wrong.  It could be between team members, management, or customers.  Being good communicators this helps us to set expectations and also to complete tasks correctly.
  6. Regular reviews – once you have the other 5 disciplines in place it is important to review them all to see where you’re at and if any changes need to be made.  In business things can change and you need to make sure that any changes are reflected in all your standard practices or they will not work.

 

These are just a few disciplines that will set your business in good stead and help you to be successful and grow.  I have written a series of free eBooks to make your business even better and covers the 4 key disciplines; Clarity, Focus, Discipline and Engagement.  Click here to receive your free eBooks!

 

 

 

 

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