Entrepreneurial or chaotic: Which one are you?

Thinking you are too busy to plan ahead is a sure sign you are slipping from entrepreneurial to chaotic. Here are some more signals. POLLYANNA LENKIC

By Pollyanna Lenkic

• An entrepreneur is a person who has possession over a new enterprise or venture and assumes full accountability for the inherent risks and the outcome.
• Chaotic: A state or phenomenon characterised by chaos.

Are you using your entrepreneurial flair as an excuse for operating in chaos? Too often one can lead to the other, as I am discovering by reflecting on the challenges that face some of the entrepreneurs that I know and work with.

Over the past few months I have witnessed some consistent themes that are stifling the success of businesses and causing anxiety for their owners.

They are:

• “I’m too busy to plan ahead”, or “The business is growing too fast to plan” – this is all the more reason to plan. Seemingly successful businesses can fail just as easily as less dynamic ones.
• A lack of focus and clear goals.
• A lack of defined processes and rigour in your business dealings. This increases the level of risk you are facing, and for most entrepreneurs that risk is very personal and costly. Poor processes leads to a lack of productivity, chewing up your time, the most valuable resource you have.
• “I am the best person to make all the important decisions” – this delusion is often about a fear of losing control. The best businesses have the right people making the right decisions at the right time.
• “But it’s not my strength” – often a convenient comfort zone that needs to be addressed by either delegating, outsourcing or just doing it.
• Never creating time to work on your business because you are too busy working in your business.
• Poor time management.
• Not taking the time to invest in personal and professional development.
• Promoting yourself and your qualifications rather than promoting your services or solutions.

For some more insights on where you can improve on what you are doing, read 30 entrepreneur mistakes.

If chaos is the state of play for you, then it’s time to reassess and make some changes. What are the changes that you need to make today to improve your business success?

Small businesses have many advantages and are often well placed to do it better than their larger corporate cousins, with some reflection and addressing the key areas that hold you back you can continue to thrive.

Jack Welsh talked about the advantages of small business in an article in Canadian Entrepreneur.

In summary:

• They communicate better.
• Small companies move faster.
• The leaders show up very clearly on the screen.
• Smaller companies waste less.

Schedule some time in your diary now to assess whether chaos is stifling your business success.

Pollyanna Lenkic is the founder of Perspectives Coaching, an Australian based coaching and training company. She is an experienced facilitator, certified coach and a certified practitioner of NLP. In 1990 she co-founded a specialist IT recruitment consultancy in London, which grew to employ 18 people and turnover £11 million ($27 million). This blog is about the mistakes she made and the lessons she learned building a business the first time round and how to do it better second time round. For more information go to www.perspectivescoaching.com.au

For more Second Time Around, click here.