How Leaders Can Prevent Running Their Businesses Into The Ground
It’s a sad fact of our economic system that the majority of companies will - at some point - fail. Even today’s mightiest enterprises, like Amazon and Google, will eventually find themselves disrupted by others and ultimately fall into obscurity.
With that said, there is a lot that business leaders can do to delay the inevitable day of reckoning. Their actions, more than anything else, ultimately determine the fate of their companies.
The people at the top, therefore, have a lot of responsibility to do the strategically-optimal thing. Unfortunately, they don’t always know how. In this post, therefore, we take a look at how executives can avoid running their businesses into the ground.
Be More Humble
Leaders get to the top of organizations by projecting an aura of confidence and generating a track record of making the right decisions. Often, they’re masters of strategy and understand how all the moving pieces fall together.
Unfortunately, this can also lead to a lack of humility. After many years making the right decisions, some executives can assume that they’re always right. This arrogance is a bad idea. It means that leaders are ill-prepared for new risks or problems that might come their way. Instead, they must always seek to take a humble perspective, never assuming that they know everything that there is to know.
Plan For The Next Generation
Leaders also need to plan for the next generation to eventually take their place when they retire or move on. You can often trace the success of companies to the unique value offered by a particular leader or CEO. Unfortunately, a lot of enterprises don’t fully appreciate that this is where their primary value stems.
According to https://stevetrautman.com/succession-planning/, companies need to determine the unique value offered by the departing executive before they move on. They must also transfer that value to their successor. If they don’t, then the business risks losing its direction and edge. And ultimately, it stands a higher chance of failing.
Keep Communications Open
So many modern companies fall down on this point, but it is essential. Firms must keep communications open if they want to stand a chance of keeping their most talented people on their teams and in-line with their business goals.
Remember, employees are smart as a group. If they sense that the company will fail - or wrongly believe that it is - then they’ll start looking for opportunities elsewhere.
Know Your Limits
Even the best leaders have limits for what they can do. Sometimes, they need to allow their team to get on with the day-to-day job of running the business so that they can focus on the big picture stuff. According to https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/238747, micromanaging employees is a massive issue for business leaders. The trick here is to let go of the need to control and learn to trust others in your organization. Once you do that, you completely open up the C-suite to focus on other higher-value tasks that are going to make a difference in the long-run.
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Running a successful business can feel like walking on a tightrope while juggling multiple swords at once, both high adrenaline and exhausting. Success requires knowing when and what aspects of business require precision planning versus those you can leave to chance, whether that be startup superstardom or veteran CEOship.