On my Business owners and Entrepreneurs podcast – Transition Guy I interviewed Simon Severino, CEO of Strategy Sprints. We talked about how to run an agile business.

Running a Business is Hard

There’s always something changing. Hiring is a lot of work, and it is hard to find, keep and train good people, to ensure they are productive and that there is good workplace culture. So how can we make it easier on ourselves?

What do we Mean by Agile?

Agile is not the biggest, it’s not the strongest, it’s not the fastest, it is the fittest. How do you fit with your clients in terms of the market? If the market shifts then can you shift as fast as they shift? When their needs change, can you shift your offer accordingly? Build your company more like LEGO than Duplo, in small parts. Direction is another part of being agile.

Get rid of your big 3- 5 year plans and make your plans smaller, three months or even smaller. Reporting systems that work in chunks of seven days are really useful when making your business more agile. All work gets organised in chunks of seven days: marketing numbers, ops numbers, sales numbers.

The Three Habits: Daily, Weekly and Monthly

Daily Habit

The daily habit is to write down how you spend your time. For example: 6:30: running, 8:00: breakfast, Write down your flow of tomorrow’s day, and tomorrow after you’ve done it, ask two questions. Of all the tasks that I did, which one should I give to somebody else because they can do it better than me?

The second question is if I could live more freely and intentionally, what would I do tomorrow? So the first one helps you to identify what to systemize, cut or delegate tomorrow and the second one helps to challenge your own limiting beliefs.

Weekly Habit

Get your weekly numbers. Know the figures behind your business as well as the weekly revenue figures. Know how many sales conversations you have had, how many have closed, how many keynotes you have given. Know what your marketing numbers are. How happy are your customers from 1-10.

What else might they need? Get a system where you record your weekly figures so that you can see patterns and a clear way forward. This gives you the ability to know where to spend in the business and where to pull back. Don’t avoid numbers because you are avoiding reality.

The Monthly habit

Strategy – check positioning, strategic landscape and your mindset. Once a month for one hour is enough. Ask yourself who is around us, is it relevant, do we need to change anything?

How confident are we that we are solving the right problem for the right people at the right price, right now, with the right solution? Do you need to improve the product, the sales, the marketing, the operations, the management, what do you need to improve?

If you want to discuss how to make your business more agile get in touch

To listen to the Transition Guy podcast click here

Remember, failing to learn is learning to fail.