Author: Tom Aranow, Harrington Daniels Advisors
Change is hard. The older you get the harder it gets.
In fact, for many of us it just seems impossible to break habits we spent years cultivating, even when they are bad habits. For entrepreneurial business owners, the inability to muster the discipline to overcome habits that handicap their businesses can be a fatal flaw.
There is no way around it. Running a business for the long term takes discipline because there are bound to be essential duties that you don’t like. Perhaps you love selling but hate accounting.
More likely, you love interacting with your customers and clients but hate all the details: keeping records, supervising people and getting your goods or services to the right place at the right time. It’s a good bet that if you don’t like a particular responsibility, you won’t do it or you won’t do it well.
This is a common frustration among our clients. Almost all are the very life’s blood of their businesses. They know and understand their customers and their products or services. They love meeting people and selling. They love the identity of “business owner” in their communities. They just can’t bring themselves to do what must be done to achieve long-term success.
Consider the entrepreneur who could sell almost anything. His customers and clients bonded with him almost immediately. He fervently wanted to meet their needs, and his honesty and integrity formed the foundation for a constant supply of referrals.
But once his business really took off, the company began to flounder. He just couldn’t organize his time or his projects.
After years of frustration, he said, “It’s just not me. I just can’t force myself to do the types of plans you’re asking of me.”
The interest and energy that worked so well at first would not carry his company through the critical stages of growth when organization was essential.
At that point, the company was truly at the dangerous edge of a precipice. The options were to change, die or find a way to work around the boss.
Some companies will survive by employing the last option. Most often it will involve letting the boss do what he does best and finding others to be the organizers and planners. The irony may be that the heart and soul of the initial business is marginalized.
Other companies find that the entrepreneur refuses to let go. Like an addict who is not ready to acknowledge the need for help, the owner will ride his company downhill until it hits bottom.
Those of us who are not too old and can muster the will to do things we don’t enjoy are the people who refuse to let that happen. We keep hammering away at mustering the courage and discipline and developing the tools to change our own ways.
We may find that with the help of technological tools or trusted advisors we can achieve a breakthrough and re-invest ourselves as productive members of our own management teams. Change is hard, but sometimes it just must happen.
Tom Aranow has over 30 years of executive management and entrepreneurial experience in a variety of industries and is the author of over 35 published articles and essays on best practices in business and not for profit management. He is the Senior Advisor for Business Strategies at Harrington Daniels Advisors, in Grafton, and Kohls Group Consulting in Pewaukee, he can be reached at 262-376-9507 or by email at tom@hdadvisors.com
Orignally published in the Daily Reporter © 2008 Daily Reporter Publishing Co., All Rights Reserved.