How taking a helicopter view of the business can be useful…

Every business develops and grows in a very similar way. There are incremental stages to the growth as the business changes and expands over time. Development challenges are faced at each stage which a business needs to overcome before it can move into the next stage of business growth.

But, what happens when a business is ticking along nicely but has just stopped growing? If a business is happy with staying on that trajectory, there is no problem. It’s when a business is static, kind of like a Groundhog Day – the same thing is repeatedly happening, and there’s no actual improvement, then that’s when things need to change.

If a business is going to have problems, people, systems and processes, are going to be the areas that will need to be looked at. Most times it’s affecting the efficiency of the business, so the focus is not where it needs to be for effective growth.

But, if something has worked for so long, how does a business owner know what is no longer working? Sometimes it needs a helicopter point of view.

Often people are working so hard in their business they can’t see “the wood for the trees”; what needs to change for them to step up into the next growth phase, particularly if things have been working so far.

A helicopter view means finding someone from outside the business, someone who is not in amongst the detail, someone who can have a broader perspective or see the bigger picture and then help to identify some of those challenges that are holding the organisation back.

For example, why does the end of month finance processing take ten days when it could take three days? How could someone alter that system to run more efficiently? Or, why do four people need to do the work of one person? Could one of the people be put to better use somewhere else in the business?

It’s amazing how many business owners find a third eye perspective will jolt them into another way of thinking which they may never considered before. But the key is, no one expects them to know it all. It’s a matter of trusting another perspective.