Stage 3 of Business Success: Recognizing Your Blind Spots

When you’re driving, the blind spot is the portion of your view obstructed by the frame of your car. If you don’t know where your blind spots are when operating a vehicle, you could find yourself in an easily avoidable accident.

In life and in business, we also have blind spots, and if we ignore them, eventually we will get sideswiped. Some people are great at balancing checkbooks but terrible at laundry. You may be a great soccer player but a poor golfer. You may love traveling but find yourself lost in new destinations.

No one is good at everything, even when we try really hard. The fact is that most of us have a set of talents that we have nurtured because we are good at them. Being good at something makes it enjoyable to do it more often. We avoid things we are not so good at because (no surprise here) it’s no fun doing things for which you have no aptitude.

Nobody Possesses all the Skills Needed to run a Successful Business.

Most of us have a few businesspeople we admire. Steve Jobs is usually recognized as a business icon, but Jobs left the software development to others while he focused on branding, design, and marketing. Virgin founder Richard Branson championed the company’s strategy and vision for decades, but he left the finance, HR, accounting, and development work to other people.

It could be argued that the most successful people aren’t necessarily the best at “business,” but they are good at self-awareness. They know how to play to their strengths and compensate for blind spots by bringing in experts to run various parts of the business.

How to Determine Your Strengths

We like to do things that we are good at. What part of your business do you love? Why did you start this kind of business in the first place? What activities, no matter how demanding, inspire you to get out of bed, energize you, and give you the greatest sense of satisfaction?

Your goal is to determine your strengths–what you do best–and delegate the rest. That means you’ll also have to recognize your weaknesses.

I overheard a conversation the other day between an accountant and a photographer. The accountant told the photographer, “I would hate dealing with demanding people all day. How do you stand it?” The photographer looked at the accountant in amazement. “You sit alone in your office with numbers all day. How do YOU stand it?” Different people love working in different parts of a business. Your challenge is to find people who enjoy their roles and are appreciative of others who are doing what they consider the “hard work.”

Personality DISCoverY        

Understanding your personality, your strengths, and your weaknesses is complex and requires a fair amount of analysis. For the sake of brevity, we’re going to skim over that task here and focus on the heart of Stage 3 of Business Success: The Specialty Stage.

Once you know where your strengths lie, you have to be comfortable admitting that there are things you’re not great at, and you’ll need to accept that you need help in these areas. Generally, most businesses can be divided into four quadrants: Direction, Income, Systems, and Controls, or DISC.

You’re probably good at one of these quadrants. You might have skills in all four, but as a business owner, your goal is to find an area you want to spend time in and identify experts to lead the other three areas.

Direction

People who are good at Direction like big-picture planning. They enjoy creating a vision for the business, an inspiring mission, and a ten-year plan that gets people excited. People who excel at Direction are usually good at long-term planning, competitive analyses, new product or service ideas, and sharing their visions with others.

Suppose this is not the area you excel at. In that case, you’ll need to find a consultant or business strategist who understands how to create strategic plans, identify long-term and short-term growth opportunities, see gaps in your competitive set, and position your business for continued success.

Income

Business owners who excel in Income are not necessarily financial experts. They are the sales and marketing wizards who know how to find prospects and convert them into, you guessed it, income. They are relationship builders, networkers, salespeople, and account management pros, and they can close a deal.

If you don’t love sales and marketing, find a team that can ensure steady customer acquisition and reliable customer retention rates.

Systems

What is needed to run your business? What needs to be done daily, weekly, monthly–even if no customers call on you? Who answers emails, manages IT, pays the rent, or sweeps the parking lot? Who is receiving deliveries? Who is ensuring the machinery is in good working order?

While many business owners know what needs to be done, they won’t be able to do it all in a growing business. If Systems is not the part of your business that brings you joy, find others who can manage this area. Whether you give a qualified employee the title of COO or office manager, they can be vital to your business’s continued success.

Controls

What checks and balances are in place to ensure your business is running correctly? To analyze performance? To prevent embezzlement? Controls protect your business in the form of insurance, legal counsel, a good credit report, and proper employee training.

Controls can also help you optimize business in the form of analysis. What percent of sales efforts converted into income? How long do people stay at your company? What does the average sale cost?

Some owners love handling Controls. It’s their comfort zone and the area that feels most satisfying. Other owners despise it. As we saw in the example of the photographer and the accountant, the same job can seem perfect or intolerable based on your skills and personal preferences.

Focus on Creating Structure for Each Area of DISCoverY

?While you, the owner, may feel more comfortable spending time in one or more of these areas, as the leader of a growing business, your initial focus will be finding leaders for at least three quadrants, and eventually, you must find leaders for all four. Instead of focusing on doing, in Stage 3 of Business Growth, you must concentrate on building specialties. You want to find a leader to drive the Direction of your business. You’ll look for another individual to lead the Income functions. A third expert will focus on Systems, and a fourth will handle Controls.

While you are shepherding each of these four areas, you will naturally gravitate towards spending time on one or two specialties. Nobody loves doing everything. While that’s not necessarily a bad thing, it comes with a few “watch-outs.”

If you spend a lot of time in one or two areas, you’re spending less time in others. That means that the leaders in those other areas must be exceptionally competent and trustworthy. And even though you have resigned yourself to the fact that you’re not good at everything, that doesn’t give you a pass to ignore it. 

Weaknesses are not Permanent

We all grow, learn, and change during the course of our professional lives. Things that seemed difficult or tedious in the past can now become your passion. (I’ve known many business owners who developed a newfound love for bookkeeping when their own P&L statement was involved!)

So if you’re not great at something right now, don’t beat yourself up about it. Weaknesses are not permanent qualities. They are areas where we can improve. If you hate your phone system, research new ones or find a consultant or employee passionate about the project and put them on the task.

If you can’t keep up with equipment maintenance, work out a schedule, talk to experts, or promote your most enterprising mechanic to develop a better system.

When you allot 10% of your energy towards identifying issues and 90% toward rectifying them, you’ll see real progress quickly.

Stage 3 is an Investment Towards Stage 4: The Systems Stage

In Stage 3, you bring in some important people to shore up your business. Oftentimes, revenue doesn’t immediately jump to cover these new expenses, which means your margins may be lower in Stage 3. However, as you train team members in core competencies, you define and refine your corporate structure. You are setting yourself up for the incremental growth that comes at Stage 4: The Systems Stage.

Want to find out more about the 7 Stages of Small Business Success? Take a look at my best-selling book, listen to my podcasts, or watch for me as a featured speaker at your next big business event. And if you want personalized coaching from an industry leader, contact 7 Stages Advisors for personal assessments, coaching, and recommendations.