A recent study by accountants Haines Watt reveals that finding and creating a management team that are fully aligned with the business owners vision and purpose can be really challenging. Often it seems that creating such a team is far out of reach. There are two main reasons why your management team might not be aligned.
- you don’t have the right people at the management table,
- lack of clarity of the business purpose and mission caused by a lack of planning, or strategic focus.
The fact is, UK business owners are not spending enough time on their business, rather they are spending a vast majority of their time in the business. This focus on the day-to-day is preventing business owners from planning effectively. And here’s the rub. Failing to plan is planning to fail.
A properly formed strategic plan can ensure businesses grow faster and more sustainably. In fact, our study validated that business owners who are able to step back and focus predominantly on strategic planning are twice as likely to run fast growth businesses.
Developing a fully formed, strategic plan ultimately frees up more time to drive towards a common purpose and innovate along the way. Unfortunately, UK business owners are holding too tightly to the everyday functions of their companies, reluctant to let the management teams, who should be at the heart of the company, take their rightful place.
The theoretical role of the management team is a far cry from reality. The study found that nearly half of business owners are not confident that their business could survive beyond a single week if their team were left to run it. Wow, what a revelation and a telling sign of how little trust business owners put in their team. Imagine too the stress that creates for you, the business owner, when you feel that you are single handedly shouldering the responsibility for the business.
One of the most telling findings in the research was a widespread fear of exposing vulnerability, with business owners refusing to open up to their management team regarding their concerns or future plans. Without enough communication, the result is siloed working, leading to, and exacerbating, a lack of coordination within the team.While the causes of disunity can vary, the result remains the same – stagnated business growth. It is imperative that business owners make the time to identify the aspirations they hold for the business they’ve built. Once identified they can strategically look towards the future and place their management team at the centre of that vision.
If you’d like to get clarity on your purpose then let’s schedule a chat, because without a clear purpose your business will just drift along and never achieve its full potential and you will be unable to leverage the full potential of your team.
Julia Felton (aka The Business Wrangler) is the founder of Business HorsePower. Business leaders, entrepreneurs and executives hire her to accelerate their business performance by harnessing the energy of their people to work more collaboratively together. By aligning purpose with actions the team achieves exponential results as everyone starts pulling in the same direction.
Julia believes that business is a force for good and through designing purpose-driven businesses that leverage the laws of nature, and the herd, you can create businesses founded on the principles of connection, collaboration and community that make a significant impact in the world.
