Take a holistic approach to business growth

Those that know me will know that “Holistic” is one of my favourite words when thinking about business growth. An holistic approach to your business growth is absolutely essential. You cannot effectively grow by just focussing on one area of your business. You need to consider every aspect of what you are doing and come up with a business plan that tackles it all.

Looking at the whole, rather than only one area can be very difficult. It requires you to think broadly and to think about everything that you are doing. You need to consider your wider environment and what is going on in the world. The social and political environment you are operating in is important. It requires you to think about your customers, your competitors and what they are up to. It requires you to think about your team, your product and your processes. All of this should lead you to identifying a very long list of “Things to do”. The trick then is prioritising them.

There are interdependencies

Sometimes the activities you need to focus on will be interdependent. An example might be that your customer service may not be as good as it could be. This may mean your team needs some training in how important good customer service is. It might also mean you need to improve your systems so that you are following up orders, enquiries or complaints quickly and effectively. These two activities are related and if they are not as good as they should be, then they both need working on.

Prioritise

The difficult bit is prioritising and then making sure you systematically deal with the things that need dealing with.

Don’t forget prioritising can mean tackling the things that have the biggest impact as well as tackling “quick wins”. You need to prioritise in both ways.

If you take an holistic approach you should find yourself being able to focus on the most important aspects for growth rather than on trivial or easy to do things.