Strategic Coach Resources

Breaking through The Ceiling of Complexity™.

One of the things we’ve heard from entrepreneurs time and time again is that they wish they had a better way of dealing with the overwhelming number of people and things that constantly demand their time, energy, and attention. This is a common problem for entrepreneurs of any age. Complexity grows with success, and without a clear strategy to stay focused, it can easily bury even the smartest of entrepreneurs. Whether it’s staff members who feel they need to talk to you before making any important decision, clients or customers who only want to deal with you personally, or situations you feel require your attention so they can be properly handled, a never-ending sea of demands makes it extremely difficult to capture your best opportunities and plan for future growth. It also drains the energy, creativity, and fun out of your life.

We call this being trapped by “The Ceiling of Complexity™” and it’s important to realize that this dynamic is a normal part of making progress along any entrepreneurial path. In fact, you’ll probably face several such ceilings as your business grows and evolves. If you have more than one business, the likelihood is multiplied. So, in order to continue to grow, prosper and enjoy life, it’s important to learn how to recognize and break through these ceilings. The way to do this is by adopting new habits, attitudes, and skills that help prevent complexity from becoming unmanageable and allow you to immediately, strategically take action when it unexpectedly does. Here are a couple of core ideas that have helped many of our clients:

Strategy 1: Replace Rugged Individualism™ with Unique Teamwork™.

Most entrepreneurs start their careers as rugged individualists — that is, they feel they need to do everything themselves and provide all the energy to propel the business forward. Their passion, skill, attention to detail, vision and sheer hard work are what get a business up and running. However, at some point, being involved in everything begins to produce diminishing returns. As the business grows, the entrepreneur finds that there is simply too much. Messes start to happen, unattended “stuff” starts to pile up, and it becomes increasingly difficult to focus on producing the most important results and recognizing and capturing the best opportunities.

At this point, a paradigm shift is in order, and it’s a difficult one for many entrepreneurs to swallow. If you’ve seen rugged individualism as the key to success, as what’s taken you this far, the need to embrace a new model of teamwork as the way to get to the next level can be scary. Anyone who thinks they “should” delegate more but hasn’t done it yet probably has at least one foot in this boat. The model of Unique Teamwork™ helps replace these fears with a new vision of what’s possible and a new set of goals around how to maximize your own productivity and leverage and greatly increase the capabilities of your company.

The paradigm of Unique Teamwork is based on the notion that everyone has a Unique Ability® — a unique set of superior skills for which they have a passion, and that generate more energy than they use up. Your Unique Ability is what makes people want to have a relationship with you and its application is how you create the most value in all situations. Think about the things you do that give you energy and generate great results. These activities utilize your Unique Ability. Differentiate them from the activities you’re good at, but have no passion for, and anything at which you’re merely competent or even incompetent.

The key to Unique Teamwork is to focus more and more on your Unique Ability and delegate everything else to others who ideally have Unique Abilities in the areas where you don’t. This approach requires that you identify your own Unique Ability first so that you’ll know what other talents are needed to support and leverage it. Then you can begin to identify and connect it with the unique talents of team members and others you work with including suppliers and service providers. Any investment in delegation that allows you to focus more on the things you love to do that produce great results will have an immediate impact on your energy level and ability to focus. This ultimately leads to increased revenue and profitability, and the ability to break through to new levels of success.

Strategy 2: Take real Free Days™.

When was the last time you took a day off where you didn’t even think about your business or anything business related - no calls, no e-mail, no business-related reading? How about a week? How about three weeks like this? If the mere idea of being away from your business for this long scares you, here’s a thought: You never know how good your team is until you leave them alone. If you ever wonder why they ask you about things that they should be able to resolve on their own, the answer is probably this simple: because you’re there. If you’re not available, your team members will be forced to create and take ownership of their own solutions. This builds confidence and capability — yours and theirs — in a way that can’t be achieved if you’re there all the time. Sure, they may make some mistakes, but they’ll also come up with systems and processes for getting things done without you that will free you up even when you’re in the office to focus on the important things that only you can do. And, truth be told, this is exactly what your team wants you to do. It frees them up to do the best job they can do with the confidence that you’re focusing on leading the company and creating a bigger future for them and you.

Of course, taking Free Days also has the advantages of making you feel rejuvenated and recharging your creative batteries. When you take enough good quality Free Days™, the time you spend working becomes much more productive. Maintaining a high level of energy and creativity is crucial to fuel your ability to recognize and break through Ceilings of Complexity when you reach them. If you allow yourself to get run down and reactive, you lose the perspective that allows you to see what you should and shouldn’t be doing. The best time to plan Free Days is right before periods of peak activity, when you’ll need to be at your most energetic and creative. Free Days work best when planned well in advance and protected. Whoever does your scheduling should know that these days are strictly off-limits for business activities. If you have trouble justifying this to your clients and customers, or to your team, focus them on the fact that having this time 100 percent away from them is what allows you to be 100 percent with them when you’re there.

First steps to a breakthrough.

Taking Free Days and making the paradigm shift from Rugged Individualism to Unique Teamwork are both strategies that require commitment to implement. You don’t need to make dramatic changes overnight to see the benefits. Getting started can be as simple as taking a few minutes to set a goal to plan and take a few more Free Days in the next quarter and delegate one or two things that you know are not your Unique Ability. At the end of the quarter, take time to reflect on the impact they’ve had on your productivity and leverage, and decide what your next action steps will be to make further progress.