Listen to Yourself

Sometimes you have to block out all the noise and just listen to yourself.

Personally I found this hard, but sometimes you just need to stop the noise and listen.

When you run a business there is an ocean of noise around you all of the time, good noise, bad noise and just noise noise. It comes from voices inside and outside of your business, it comes from home life and from your own head.

It's impossible not to get distracted without an effective coping strategy.

You need to be listening constantly to the feedback from all around you, from customers, staff and wider environment.

However, you must also make the space to listen to yourself. Here are two important ways you need to listen to yourself.

1 - Listen to Your Gut

In my experience this one is simple..

If you feel like something is wrong >> something is normally wrong!

If you feel like you should speak to someone >>> you should speak to someone!

The gut isn't very good at perspective or scale but its excellent at raising the alarm that you need to reflect and change something (big or small).

People will tell you can't just rely on gut feel, I agree, but you also can't afford to ignore it. Having run businesses for a long time now, I can confess that gut feel is sometimes all you have!

Don't ignore it, do something. Speak to a mentor or trusted friend, fix it early before it becomes something significant.

2 - Your (excellent but forgotten) Plan

Everyone thinks better when they have the time and headspace to think things through.

Day to day life is messy, complex and loud, don't try and 'wing it' with strategy and long term plans. Otherwise you are asking your brain to constantly create a plan in the worst possible environment; distracted, tired, without context, without time, without properly considering risks and impacts. It's destined to fail, or at least succeed less.

If you have taken the time to make a plan, well done you, now listen to yourself, it will be the best solution you have, make sure its kept somewhere visible (even as a summary line or page).

The best way I found to stick to the plans I had made, was to put a reminder on the board directly above my desk. Sometimes as KPIs, other times as a deadline, a large font summary page can be helpful (poster style), or for sensitive items I would write an abbreviation. In big bold red letters if needed.

This is something I still do today. You can speculate amongst yourselves as to what 'SFC', 'CoG', '15->1' or '20pd' might mean. I will tell you I keep a whiteboard above my desk with KPIs, priority items, strategy, values, mission and differentiators. A constant reminder really helps.

Take the time to listen to yourself, then plan and put that plan somewhere you can't ignore it. Otherwise you just get swept up in everyone else's noise.

Thank you for reading. To read other blog posts click here: https://pivotaluk.co.uk/my-blog 

For a free consultation on business strategy or mentoring, please contact me at chansen@pivotaluk.co.uk

 I have been lucky enough to successfully buy, grow, mature, sell and exit my own business. I now use this experience to help other business owners on their journey.

Retained Advisor // Mentor or Coach // Strategy // Business Health Check