Why a quest for perfection can really hold your business back

“Don’t miss out on the opportunity to be great because you’re trying to be perfect.” And that’s why I want to cover today.

So, when you started your business, the chances are probably doing everything yourself and you probably took a lot of pride in it and you probably got it to a point, every single activity you did, you got it to a point where it was just right. And you kept doing that and the standard of your work would’ve been absolutely excellent. So, what would then have happened is, at some point, you would have started to bring your own staff and you would have started out sourcing stuff to suppliers.

And what would’ve happened is your standards would’ve dropped slightly, not in a way that was noticeable to your customers, but the chances are that the way you did something, when you passed it on to a member of the team, they have done it in the same way. There’ll be instances where they actually do it better than you, by the way. So, I’m not assuming, by passing something on to a member of the team, it won’t be as good as if you did it. But what I’m saying is, at the very least, it would be different from the way you did it. And where a lot of business owners go wrong is, when a member of the team does something and they achieve an objective and they get something dealt with for the business, many, many business owners out there still jump in and provide corrections, even though what was achieved was still very effective for the business. And it’s a form of micromanagement. But what it actually does is, by jumping in and providing those corrections to that member of the team, it does a few things.

Firstly, it lets that team member know that they’re consistently being supervised. Obviously you always want a team to be supervised, but there’s ways to do that through review processes, you don’t have to have an active level of supervision on every single task. But what it does is, if a team member believes they’re being actively supervised, then their standards are going to naturally drop anyway. So you want to make it clear that they are absolutely responsible for delivering on that particular task. The other thing it does is it actually reduces their motivation because they might have really pushed themselves to achieve that objective for the business in their way. They even have innovated and used their initiative. And then, when you jump in and then correct it all anyway, then the next time they’re just going to think, “What’s the point?” So that’s another reason why actually stepping in and changing things that your team does, if they are correct but they’re just not perfect the way you would’ve done it, that’s another problem.

And really the other third issue with it is you are then using up your valuable time. Time you usually would have been spending on growing the business and you are then micromanaging it. So, you are then looking inside the business instead of looking out. So, that’s going to hold back the growth of your business in quite a few ways. So, what I want to say is something can be right even if it’s not perfect, and it can even be better than the way you would’ve done it and you might still consider it not to be perfect.

So, if you really want to start growing your business, what you’ve got to do is then start stepping away and saying, “Okay. Look, we’ve got values and standards in the business. What I’m looking at when a team member does a particular task is not whether they’ve done it exactly how I would have done it. What I’m looking at is, the way they did that task, is it aligned with the culture values and standards of the business?” That’s what you’re really looking at. So, once you make that mindset shift and, instead of looking at the specifics, look at how the performance of your team member is aligned to your overall values and objectives. Then, that’s when you’ll really make amazing progress in your business.

What I’d like to do is just offer you a free strategy session. So, if you actually want to talk about how to build your team up and automate a lot more of the work in your business, and get the processes in place so your business runs without you, then we are the experts at doing that. So, use the link below and we will book that in.