Just a couple weeks ago, dozens of business owners came to my company’s headquarters for four days to attend my Warrior Fast Track Academy. While some would tell you that they came to learn how to hire more effectively or how to manage their team more effectively or how to market more effectively, they were all there for one thing: to grow, to shift, to change.
Every business owner wants to transform their company from what it is now to somewhere different. It might be a small change or a big change, it might be a change to start doing something or a change to stop doing something… But change is always on the agenda.
If you’re a service business owner, the question you should be asking yourself is, “How do I create effective, long-lasting change in my business?” Understanding and implementing and MASTERING this process of change will help you daily as you lead your business to greater success.
Here are 5 steps to creating change in your company…
#1. Start With You
A business is only as strong as its leader. You need to lead your company along the desired path, and you need to lead with power. Many service business owners focus externally on the changes that need to happen in their company. Very few realize that a shift needs to occur inside them first. Perhaps you need to develop your leadership skills or even simply start modeling the change before you roll it out to everyone else.
Action step: what change do you want to create and how do you need to personally change to get started?
#2. Develop A Clear Vision
The most effective transformations occur when the business heads toward an ultra-clear future. That means: as the leader, you need to develop a clear vision of the future and write it down. How clear should your vision be? You need to see it, hear it, touch it, smell it, and taste it. (Many people will skip this step because they think it’s too weird to envision a future with this level of clarity but those who create the strongest change will do this.)
Action step: what’s the ultra-clear vision you have for your company’s ideal future?
#3. Create Clarity And Alignment With Your Team
The clear vision you created in step 2 shouldn’t be something you bottle up and keep for yourself. Otherwise, a year or two down the road you’ll wonder why your business isn’t any closer to that envisioned future. Your vision needs to be shared with your team for full clarity and alignment. And when I say “team” I mean everyone – your managers (of course) but also all of your employees. Get them excited and bought into the same vision, and help them see how they’ll benefit from that vision and how they contribute to it. Only then will you see your company working with a singular focus toward your vision.
Action step: book an all-company meeting to share your vision with your team.
#4. Measure Your Progress
A powerful vision is a picture, and by this step, your company should be excitedly working toward it. But, how often do we face obstacles that pull us off our game? It’s easy to forget and lose focus. That’s why you need to build measurement into your vision. Select various components of your vision that your employees and departments can be measured on. For example, if your vision is to achieve a certain annual amount of sales, then you need to reverse-engineer that number to find the per-person amount of sales that each of your experts needs to sell daily. Then measure them on that effort and coach them to help them achieve it.
Action step: what measurements can you apply to your vision?
#5. Education
I listed this as the last step but, in truth, it should be something you’re doing constantly – get educated on how to move your company further toward that vision. Your education might include reading books, watching videos, attending a training session (like the business owners who came to my Warrior Fast Track Academy), or even hiring a coach or mentor to help you. Education is so important for achieving change that my business partner (Rob) and I have invested more than $900,000 into our education. People thought we were crazy to invest that much, but we grew a $30+ million business that will actually surpass our vision sooner than we had envisioned – that’s the power of education!
Action step: how can you get educated to help empower the change in your business?
Summary
Change is constant in every business. Whether you want your team to remember to greet the customer with a smile, or if you need to turn your financials around to start making money and keeping more of it as profit – those are CHANGES. And this powerful 5-step sequence will help you create change, implement it, and keep it going in your business for a stronger, healthier, more powerful business.
