Business Results; Your expectations versus the reality

– By Angela Turton

Why is it that things always take longer than expected?  That flatpack that needs to be assembled, the special dinner recipe that is new to you, the drive to a meeting.  It is common to overestimate what we can achieve in a day and underestimate what we can do in a year. How does this affect our business? This short article takes a look at our expectations versus reality and the importance of and measuring…

There are two key areas that we focus on when working with local business owners/leaders:  Planning and Measuring Results so let’s look at these in more detail here.

Planning

When we take time out of our business to plan properly and decide what we want in our business and our route-markers along the way, we are much less likely to be taken by surprise by the time things take.  Having a clear plan of the actions we are taking, when we need to carry them out, and what actions are dependent on other things happening first, allows us to make the best use of our resources.  It also means you don’t have to think about what you are doing every day as you have the plan and actions already mapped out.

Measuring Results

“No plan survives engagement with the enemy” (attributed to Helmuth von Moltke: “The Art of War”)

Things happen, we don’t always get the results we expected, and sometimes new opportunities arise that we did not foresee.  If we do not measure the results we are getting, how do we know whether the plan is working or if our reality is different from our expectations?

Marketing is a prime example of the requirements to test and measure. All too often our marketing is determined by our own preferences and prejudices without consideration of the reality or our target audience’s reactions.

Say you love Vibrant Pink, you chose to use it for your logo and in all your branding, you are creating a consistent brand which is great, but what do your customers want or react to?  Only by testing several different options do you know what your clients will respond to best.  What if they don’t like Vibrant Pink and it turns them away from your message so you get no advantage from your marketing?  If you test and measure you will have empirical evidence that your target audience will respond to a black and red theme, or a baby blue and baby pink theme, or indeed they may like your love Vibrant Pink!

We are not always aware of inbuilt prejudices, our unconscious biases can be incredibly strong, and only by looking at the reality, the results, and the evidence, can we begin to understand what our expectations were based upon and whether those assumptions were correct.

Time is another area where we find that results are often not as we expected.  We often ask our business owners to do a time audit for a week or two, especially if their main problem is that they don’t have enough time.   Recording the actual use of time can highlight areas of concern or even identify the next best hire.  I used to have to do timesheets when I was working in an accountancy practice, and looking back it was difficult to remember where the time had gone and even why some tasks had taken the amount of time they had.  Without the hourly log, I would have guessed and wondered why I could not account for all the hours I had worked that week. With the log, I fully understood how time was actually being spent and it triggered plans to ensure I optimised my time and put in processes to make other tasks simpler and ultimately quicker.

What areas of your business are you making assumptions about?  Booking into a review with me can help you to challenge your preferences and prejudices around your business and give you clarity around your plans. Schedule yourself in for a free session with me here