(Time to read this article is about 60 seconds)
Managing any business or department often calls for making tough decisions. Some of the toughest are about what and who to ‘let go of’. What and who do you need to ‘let go of’ to make 2019 your best year ever? The list could include…
- Products or services that are out-of-date, losing you money or hurting your brand. Fix them, or pitch them.
- Customers that are not making you money, taking too much of your time or are driving your staff nuts with unreasonable demands. It takes guts to ‘fire’ customers but sometimes it’s the right thing to do.
- Suppliers who keep letting you down or making you look bad to your customers. Give them 3 months to get their act together and, if they don’t, give them the axe.
- Branches or locations that no longer make sense…or never did. Shut them down. Just make sure you treat the staff who work there honestly, respectfully and fairly.
- Employees who are toxic or non-productive. If you can’t ‘fix’ them, show them the door.
- Policies that make you look uncaring, unreasonable, dishonest. Policies that tick off good customers or frustrate good employees.
- Management practices that used to work…but don’t any more. Or, that never worked and you never noticed. Do you need to evolve from being the ‘boss as the cop’ to the ‘boss as the coach’? Do you need to move from ‘always knowing and telling’ to ‘always listening and learning’? Your employees know stuff and they hate it when you don’t ask.
- Negative attitudes or incorrect assumptions about people, places or things that may be closing your mind, hardening your heart and hurting your business.
- Maybe you need to let go of your entire business model. Perhaps you need to rethink what you do, for whom you do it, where you do it or how you do it. Perhaps you need to be the disruptor in your industry or market…rather being the one who gets disrupted by someone more innovative, more gutsy…or both. If your business model is fundamentally out-of-date or no longer profitable, fine-tuning and fiddling with it won’t solve the problem. It needs a rethink and a re-do.
So, what do you need to ‘let go of’ in your business to make 2019 your best year ever? What are the tough but necessary decisions that you’ve been putting off…and when will you make them?
