How To Not Swim Naked

Rupen Kotecha | WA Leaders

It’s relatively common for businesses to encounter some success or even a lot of success without ‘understanding where it came from’.

However it’s also common for businesses to be successful, but not sustainably successful. Warren Buffet famously said “only when the tide goes out do you learn who has been swimming naked”, so it’s critical for businesses who want to maintain success, to actually build a foundation that sustains success.

Below are 5 very vital pillars to build sustainability for business success:

1.  Hire, retain and grow the right talent

It’s been said that most businesses are in the ‘business of people’ – meaning it is more critical for businesses to be experts in people than they are experts of their craft. And in many cases, how much a company grows, how successful or sustainably successful it is depends on its talent.

It is essential to ensure you are hiring the right talent, but equally understanding how to retain them and if you’re interested in growing the business; you have to also help your talent grow so they can take the company to greater heights.

It’s also important to review your talent and structure (functional matrix) to identify opportunities and gaps and invest in being a people business.

2.  Operational & Tech Efficiencies

To enable a scalable business, leaders need to focus on ensuring the business is operating at optimal efficiency. It is vital leaders analyse key workflows and processes to identify efficiency improvement areas and set efficiency targets as they grow.It’s also beneficial to explore and invest in technology to assist in improving efficiencies.

Another important aspect often forgotten when working to improve efficiency is to build a culture that seeks to improve efficiency.

3.  Ideal Client Percentage

Working with ideal clients is crucial for the success of any business. Ideal clients are those who align with the values and goals of the business and are more likely to benefit from its products or services – which generate the ideal profit margin for the business, because they are the ones who appreciate the value the business offers and are willing to pay for it, and cause the least distractions for the business.

Working with ideal clients can also lead to long-term relationships and overall allow the business to focus on growth.

Another advantage of working with ideal clients is that it makes the work more enjoyable and fulfilling.

4.  Opportunity Tracking and Risk Management

Another key pillar in ensuring business success is sustainable, is to maintain a healthy and disciplined culture of identifying risks and mitigating risks. Business leaders need to make it a strategic priority to review risks regularly – including making sure it maintains relevance and doesn’t become another Kodak.

And likewise, to ensure the business is sustainably growing, business leaders need to actively seek and assess opportunities to grow and not just react. As cliché as it may sound, the best businesses are always actively working on their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

It’s also important to have a strong desire to grow – with a healthy respect to risks.

5.  Actual Leadership

More than a thousand pages have been written on how true leadership is critical for sustaining growth in a business. Leadership provides direction, motivation, and inspiration to employees to carry the vision, execute it and even build on it! Good leaders empower their teams and build a culture, and an environment for the business to grow.

Leadership is the most important factor in sustaining growth for a company.

WA Leaders helps provide the foundation for business leaders and businesses to succeed by offering a holistic platform for growth, to learn more, contact us.