Many construction companies fail, even when the market is booming. Here’s why.
Business owners make the mistake of focusing on the wrong “problems” and “opportunities” in their businesses. Their decisions often result in years of lost profit – until they’re forced to close their doors.
Here’s a little-known secret most business leaders never learn: it’s less about the solution you implement and more about identifying the right critical need – and the right time to focus on it.
To grow your business effectively, you need a process that filters out irrelevant objectives – so you can invest your resources in the right critical need.
Let’s dive into exactly how to do this, using one repeatable process.
Just before COVID-19 hit, I flew back home from a trip to New York City.
As I sat on the airplane, I wondered how the mechanics knew what needs to be maintained, repaired, and replaced to keep each airplane flying safely.
I quickly realized they have processes and data to help them determine exactly what each airplane needs at every given moment.
And believe it or not, your business is just like an airplane. It requires regular attention, maintenance, and repairs to keep it performing at its best.
Just like the processes mechanics follow, the Business Hierarchy of Needs (BHN) details each critical need business owners must address to keep their businesses growing strong.
When each need is met, your business receives the lift and acceleration it needs to be profitable.
But if you aren’t meeting these needs at the lowest level and working your way up, you’ll end up wasting valuable resources focusing on the wrong areas in your business. And this can lead to even bigger problems.
Now let’s return to the plane analogy to identify each essential element in your business, and how they correlate with the BHN.
NOTE: We will be exploring each piece deeper in future posts.
The left engine is sales and the right engine is marketing. This is the thrust your business needs to get off the ground. Successful business owners know they need both to work together in order to grow.
The wings are the products and services you sell. They lift your business up and need to be well designed and frictionless for your customers.
The above elements are related to ‘Sales and Marketing’, the lowest level of the BHN. This level, in addition to ‘Profit’, is as essential to our business as the air is to us.
The fuel tanks are the cash flow, and are directly related to the body of your plane, which is the overhead. Together, they are essential to your profitability (aka the second level of the BHN) and pretty important if you don’t want to crash your business…or airplane.
The next level of the BHN is the Order level. I like to compare this to a couple of essential elements when it comes to your aircraft.
The dashboard is the cockpit that provides all your data and metrics as well as the processes and people impacted and reactive to that dashboard output.
These are essential pieces you need to continually follow and evaluate to determine where maintenance and repairs are required.
But here’s the problem. As business owners, we’re busy! And it can be difficult for us as pilots to determine what we should address and what the best solution is to keep us running far and fast with our businesses.
Stepping back on a regular basis to look at our businesses just as we would examine an airplane or piece of equipment that needs regular maintenance to perform at its best is a great way to ensure we keep growing our businesses strong.
If you’re wanting to narrowing in on where your efforts will get the most results try taking my Business Growth Strategy Scorecard. It is a free quick assessment to help you start narrowing in on your vital need.
You may have noticed we skipped the Impact and Legacy levels of the BHN. Don’t worry, we’ll tackle these at a higher level in upcoming blog posts.
