Happy 2013! Yes, it's time again to discard the old and welcome in the new! Each year, we have the wonderful opportunity to begin again. In many cases, it's not a true beginning as we have business and issues that seem to carry forward into our new year. However, in general, it's a time to begin anew.
As a fellow entrepreneur, I have decided to begin 2013 focused on 3Ps - Purpose, People and Performance. I'm taking a look at my business and evaluating how close to its' original purpose, or vision as we use in the office, our team remains. It's easy to become so engaged in the day-to-day operations and lose sight of the larger vision. Also, in some cases the vision was established and market conditions have created the need for change. The change has happened, but the team has not stopped to evaluate or update the vision to ensure alignment.
Next I plan to take a hard look at the people - stakeholders supporting or against our business success. Again, there are times when an organization grows beyond the existing internal talent. Recently, a colleague shared that a major computer organization had in their effort to launch a solid retail presence built these very unique retail stores. The success of the initial design and traffic had exceeded expectations. The design for these stores had become more complicated than the staff who had assumed the various roles. This firm had now come to the realization that to foster additional growth they would have to tap in to expert talent in the retail real estate development sector to facilitate further growth and expansion of these stores. This reality does not take away from the team members contributing to your firms growth to this point. It acknowledges that for further growth, it's essential to either have the existing team gain new skills or to seek those talents outside of the organization.
Lastly, this is a great time to consider the performance of the goods and services that you deliver to the market place. Often as business owners we can miss opportunities for growth due to being focused on delivering our existing products. If we use this new beginning to ask our customers questions about how we might improve our performance, often we find nuggets to increase sales. Consider your competitors in this effort as well, how are they performing? Have they made modifications which create opportunities for your product to gain additional market share?
I wish you a happy and prosperous 2013!
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