What Is Business Simplification?

We put so much into our business day trying to make a life for ourselves that is better  – sometime in the future. Why not now?

There is no reason why you can’t have your dream life right now. The danger of building your dream later is, you get so programmed into running your day for tomorrow that you never reach it, or so burned out and dissatisfied with the process, you can’t sustain it.

You’re missing out on building personal relationships, celebrating family milestones and just enjoying life – so you can maybe have that another day? It just doesn’t make sense.

This is the scrambled logic of the hustle culture, and I hate it.

Hustling and grinding are not the be-all-and-end-all for business success. While the work non-stop mode might get your short-term results, it is never going to work long-term or allow you to scale with your growth.

Your business takes incredible commitment – not hours of slog but an ongoing commitment. You need to find sustainable personal energy to keep coming back, putting in your best and taking on the challenges to come.

The way to do this is to simplify your business.

What is business simplification?

Most small to medium employees, CEOs and business owners are overwhelmed with what they are doing, they’re attacking everything at once, rather than tackling one or two important things at one time.

To get results, you need to bring it back to having purposeful goals and great communication. When you get that part right you can leave the work to your team.

You need to know your big business goals and understand WHY you are doing what you are doing, what are the big outcomes you want?  Next, you need to clearly share your vision and goals with your team members about why these goals matter and how they benefit your business.

Getting buy-in from your team means everyone is working towards your goal and making it happen – far faster and more efficiently than you can do alone.

Running around chasing your tail, overspending our time and energy and being overworked can sneak up on us. We accidentally build in flawed systems and operating patterns and keep running them, even though they aren’t time, energy or money efficient.

Stopping to take a look at processes and systems and reconnecting to your business goals is usually enough to start correcting problems and seeing simple, easy ways to move forward.

It is important to have a clear understanding of your business model in order to make informed decisions about your business. For example, your business model will help you determine what products or services to offer, how to price them, and how to reach your target market.

What are the benefits of simplification?

You started your business to get out of the rat race, but if you constantly have your nose to the grindstone, your business becomes that very rat race you were escaping.

To understand why simplification is important in business, you need to look at the effect of overcomplicating things.

A complex business takes more of your time, more of your energy and more things can go wrong.   You also create confusion between yourself and your team and make it hard for them to complete their work well.

When you make everything about your business essential and important – all at once – it becomes impossible to take direction, make strong decisions or reduce your workload.

Burnout slows down your ability to perform, clouds your logical and problem-solving skills and makes it harder to engage – with work, your team and with loved ones.

Simplifying your business goals, systems, schedules and meetings mean everyone has more ability to focus on core business goals and work on getting them right. That means energised staff, satisfied customers, less work and more profits.

By working smarter, not harder, you avoid burnout and:

• Finish individual tasks faster
• Are motivated to get to work on big projects quickly
• Have better empathy and more time to listen to staff needs and issues
• Reduce mistakes, miscommunications and increase quality
• Continue to love and feel passionate about the work you do
• Feel energised, excited and empowered to start work every day
• Get your business moving towards critical goals
• Set yourself up to scale your business when the time comes

How do I streamline my business?

At its most successful point, your business will run without you. When you get to the position where you can step out and have no interaction and still get perfect results, you’ve made it.

Now, that point might be a long way off today, because it takes work and experience to climb to those heights but it’s something that needs to be said now, because it’s the opposite of what most small-to-medium business owners think and do. They take it all on board, do everything themselves and look for how to manage and control the business, not set up a business that will one day be independent enough to run itself.

Here are some quick ways to simplify your business and see real results, not just to your business success but also to gain back time to live your life outside work:

1. Use visualisation to get to your goals

Sit down with your team and ask: Where do we want to be in one-years time? Define a point where you are celebrating reaching some business goals.

From there, work backwards by asking:

• What is the celebration? (beer and early knock-off, lunch as a team, coffee and cake). Really imagine the moment.
• What are the goals you’ve just achieved?
• How did you achieve this?
• What do we need to do today to get started?

Set out a plan that leads you to that celebration.

2. Stop multitasking

Multitasking is an efficiency nightmare. Get out of the habit of having several (or more) tabs open. Set out your day to work on your tasks in blocks, which includes checking emails periodically, instead of every five minutes.

It might help to set a timer where you do one task and one task only for 30 to 45 minutes. You’ll be amazed at how much you get done without any distractions.

3. Use your data to get smarter

You need to know your business numbers. Planning your schedule around your data will help you target the biggest and most rewarding tasks, as well as address the biggest areas of need to get your business moving.

If you’re tracking KPIs, pick a maximum of ten and set your focus there. Pick what matters most to you and your business success and goals i.e. number of leads, lead conversions, average sales, number of transactions – everything else can wait. This prevents you from tackling too much at once.

4. Have a solid business strategy

Business strategies are all about identifying and simplifying every aspect of your business. A big win with a strategy is knowing the work involved for each job so you can accurately seek and hire the people who can support you based on their skill and experience.

5. Employ the team you need to get work done

There are two different employees you need to consider:

• Admin staff who can do the work that’s not important enough to handle yourself
• Skilled staff who have advanced knowledge and skill in an area you are struggling with

Both are important and necessary in creating a thriving business.

6. Keep a clean desk

Walking into a clean, uncluttered desk in the morning will help you think about one goal and one task at a time. It also helps train your mind towards organisation and clear thinking.

Rather than making yourself indispensable and working round the clock, look for ways you can remove yourself from the process or work-list by simplifying your systems, work rules and getting the right team around you to lift the load.

How can we make work processes more efficient?

You are going to be ready to put in some time and effort to make a few changes. Once that’s done, you will quickly see results, so it’s worth it.

Here are the top things to focus on to see bigger work efforts for less time and energy:

• Know your goals – your business goals need to be familiar. Getting behind them will improve your communication, organisation and ability to prioritise and make decisions.

• Get organised – most of the tasks on your to-do list are not a high priority – or at least not a priority that suits your skills. Cut back to only cover the biggest, most immediate tasks.

• Know what success means to you. Not everyone is motivated by money or fame. Maybe for you, it’s helping others or jetting off on holiday. Defining what success is for you means you can build tasks and set goals around key business areas that you feel great about and that keep you motivated.

• Set boundaries on work hours and stick to them. That includes not answering Slack notifications, texts or emails outside hours.

• Delegate work to others. You can’t scale your business if you are a one-person show. Make a point of defining what team you need and employing the best people to support you.

• Schedule holidays. If you are putting in 40-hours+ a week for your business, you need to schedule a break. Have a planned holiday of at least 1-2 weeks where you get away from work and put your feet up. I guarantee this will be when you do your best business planning and come up with new ideas. When you are out of the daily grind you give yourself a breather to see things clearly – without even trying.

There is a flawed belief that hustle culture makes you more successful, valuable, and even indispensable, but constant work won’t always lead to more money, prestige or happiness – just the opposite; with time, it eats into those things and leaves you empty.

If you deprive yourself of any down time or outside passions like family time, hobbies, entertainment and social gatherings, you’ll forget what you are working towards, feel a complete sense of burnout and lose motivation to continue.

The way to succeed in business is not by working harder, it’s by working smarter. Working to simplify your business gives back in multiple ways and frees you up to get more out of life right now, not burn the candle at both ends for some questionable time in the future.

At Evolve To Grow we specialise in business growth and simplification. We have proven strategies to help you get organised and on track to meet your goals. Book a free call to see how we can help you get more out of life and business.