A colony of flying foxes lives not far from us. Every evening at dusk they emerge from the trees and fly over the suburb in their hundreds to find native trees to feed on the nectar and pollen. They have well-developed vision to see at night and a great sense of smell to find their food. By contrast Australian fruit bats use echo location and are nearly “as blind as a bat”.
Are you a business owner or manager struggling to find time to step away from the “doing” to allow time for planning and review? As a business leader if you are not allowing “thinking” time you are flying blind, and unless you are a fruit bat, you will struggle.
Planning and Review are Essential
Without strong processes and systems that incorporate planning and review, businesses are operating in the dark, and subsequently managers will struggle to emerge into effective leaders.
A simple 3-step system introduced in my recent book 10% Better looks at the key actions required to enable an organisation to move towards excellence. They are summarized as:
Inspire
Empower
Enhance
To implement, each of these requires associated processes that can be embedded in routine business activities. The bigger the organisation, the more sophisticated the implementation may be, and for smaller businesses it can be kept simple.
The Inspire step requires consideration of purpose, clear direction, and contribution by the team. The Empower step requires good systems combined with training and development of your people.
And finally the Enhance step requires measurement of appropriate performance data and response to the information it is giving you. By following these steps and implementing the processes that deliver them, managers will find themselves able to allocate time for that much needed planning and reflecting, resulting in improved organizational performance.
If you are a manager who wishes to emerge from the dark, you might like to consider how you are implementing these 3 steps.