Five Key Cornerstones Of A Business
By Dominic Bruneau | Profusion Consulting
15 Feb 2022
In my first blog post, I questioned the importance of why you are doing what you are doing and I explained that what you, your staff, and your customers will buy into has to be authentically linked back to your why.
Having established the why I thought that over the next few weeks I would cover the all-important first steps to ensure you give yourself the platform to succeed.
Today we start at the beginning of the journey. My blogs are for people looking to take action and for people who are willing to be consistent in building a business with systems at its core; this is what allows growth and scalability.
Having worked with many successful business owners and studied many more, there are similar foundations they all display.
The FIVE key cornerstones that help ensure your success are:
1. GOALS
Make a clear goal that is important to you and that you will recognise when it has been achieved. It should be based on your vision, as well as your values and belief system. Many businesses start without a clearly defined goal. The business owner then becomes involved in the business and doesn’t run the business – it runs them instead. All of this can be avoided by setting the right goal, which gives you and your company a clear direction.
Many of my clients believe running a business is a journey, which it certainly is. However, they also cannot clearly articulate their goal. Have you ever been on a journey without a destination?
2. PLANNING
Once you have established a clear goal, you have to plan your route to achieve this (remember the journey). How are you going to achieve your goal? What ACTION are you going to take weekly, monthly, quarterly to move you forward? How does it tie in with your leadership and management style? How much time can you allocate to ‘test and measure’?
3. SYSTEMS
Many entrepreneurs, high level managers and business owners tell me that everything they do is in their head, or they only tell the staff who need to know. Effective businesses from airlines to fast food restaurants are run by systems. It provides consistency and a process for staff to follow, as well as something customers come to expect.
4. PEOPLE
Have you ever hired ‘the best of a bad bunch’ or panic recruited? Or, even worse than that, have you ever kept an under-performing member of staff? The good news is, if you have you are certainly not alone. The even better news is the solution is easy to implement and maintain.
5. REVIEW
Every successful business has a review process in place. This requires consistency; there needs to be clear staff understanding of what is expected and staff need to be trained to a level of agreed competency. Once the boundaries and expectations have been set, consistent and regular reviews are a must for both staff, customer and product quality or satisfaction. Many businesses spend ages perfecting their product or launch, and then time passes by, and they have not reviewed what they need to do or the standards they are delivering. If we standstill we are effectively moving backwards, as everything, including competition, advances.
The FIVE business building blocks referred to above are essential starting points of new or growing businesses. With them in place you have the foundations to build a robust and solid business. You’ll have achieved aa model which can be repeated by many people in different locations and a system that allows the owner or leader to enjoy their entrepreneurial journey.
Each of the five cornerstones needs to be discussed in depth, challenged, re-thought and committed to. There should be no half-measures.
