There have been so many books written about how to be a business leader, and there are so many prominent SEOs and bosses to take as role models, that it is easy to think that there is a road map to business success if you’re just prepared to follow it to the letter. The truth is there is no guarantee of success no matter what you do, and from time to time it pays to acknowledge that reading how someone else achieved success offers absolutely no certainty that you will achieve the same. Different people are different, and to a large extent, you need to draw your own map.
That’s not to say that there is no advice you can or should take with a business – just that there is no certain formula. If you want to have the same kind of success Jeff Bezos has had, you’d need to start by being Jeff Bezos. But you can pick up lessons every day you’re in business, and while some of them will come from your own specific situation, others are pretty cut-and-dried and will apply to anyone. For example, let’s take the mistakes you can run into with a business; errors which should be avoided 100% of the time and which are nonetheless distressingly common in 2020s business.
Sticking with a losing formula
The sunk cost fallacy is perhaps one of the most pernicious mistakes business owners make in the modern era. The idea that because you have ploughed money and time into one way of doing things, you should keep doing that until it works, is dangerous for your business and could be the thing that kills it. If your plan for sales isn’t bringing success, it’s no bad thing to seek out agency lead generation and proceed with a new plan. Changing plans isn’t going to harm your business; picking the wrong plan or sticking with one is, and a fresh set of eyes on the problem can be just what it needs.
Presenteeism
More and more public figures are boldly stating that “the pandemic is over” and it’s time for workers to get back in the office. There’s actually plenty to dispute in the first statement, and the latter is even more debatable. There are some cases where having employees back in the office will be beneficial, but there is also a lot of evidence to suggest it’s an awful idea to insist on people’s presence in the office.
Just for one example, if you demand that people come in – and that they do so even when they’re not feeling great – then before too long, you’ll have someone bring a cold into the office which then bounces its way around everyone – and then their family, too. How long will people put up with that when they can work from home for someone else? And that’s a risk you take for, at best, a very marginal gain in productivity in the short term.
Being conflict-averse
Few people genuinely enjoy conflict, particularly in a workplace setting. We’d all prefer to live a quiet life. However, being definitively conflict-averse is not going to do your business any favours, because sometimes you need to be ready to deliver bad news or negative feedback. There’s no real need to be conflict-averse, either. If you can simply say “this needs to be better, and I know you can do better”, or deliver something negative in a positive way, then you will avoid a situation months down the line when you really have to read the riot act – and in which you could have sustained harm to the business by allowing negative actions to perpetuate.