Thinking Days – The Importance For Small Business Owners

I often wonder if small business owners are more firefighter than business people. Between product development, sales and marketing, management, and general business development, it can be hard for the average Joe to figure what’s just urgent and what is plain important.

Urgent items demand our immediate attention but may not be crucial to furthering our business in a significant way. Important things will move our business forward but are often put on the back burner. We should pay attention to the important things rather than the urgent one, but most small business owners. That’s why we need thinking days.

The Importance of Thinking Days
If you look at some of the most successful leaders in the corporate world, one trend you will see is the prevalence of “thinking time.” In other words, these people set aside a specific time each week or each month to gain new perspective on their business.

For instance, Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, regularly schedules “thinking days” throughout the year that allow him to reflect on his life and his business. These pre-scheduled days are inviolate, meaning he rarely takes phone calls or messages during this time.

The same goes for Tai Yu Kobayashi, former Chairman and CEO of Fujitsu. He once shared the secret of his success: he gets up each morning at 5:00 am and spends an hour in his Bonsai garden, immersing himself in nature and moving in tranquility. Maintaining this state throughout the day allows him to make decisions in a high-pressure situation with detachment.

Questions for Thinking Days
As a small business owner, scheduling thinking days, even if they seem inconvenient, will give you the perspective necessary to sift the important tasks from the merely urgent. In a very basic way, thinking days give you a chance to reflect on your business and ask questions like:

– What’s happening?
– What’s not happening?
– What can I do the influence the outcome?

You will often find that thinking days give you a wider view of your business, and your life. This detachment may give you the necessary insight to make tough decisions for your small business, and choose a new path, if necessary.

What happens if you take on more work than your small business can handle right now? We all like to please and avoid confrontation. So when a new potential customer comes to you with some work and you are completely overloaded are you prone to take on more than you can handle at the time?
 
Are you letting the fear of losing this new potential customer and the work that they bring to your small business, get in the way of your better judgment?As small business owners particularly in today’s tough economic times, we all would like to take on as much work as we can handle.
 
However, if it means taking on this extra work and not having a clue whether you can fulfill this new order, then perhaps this may not be a sound business practice. If you are not able to perform the work in the agreed upon time, then this new customer will be disappointed. Alternatively the existing order that you were already working on  right now has to take a backseat in favor of the new order will not be completed on time, making that client unhappy too.
 
Either way someone is not going to be pleased with the service levels of your small business. I am sure that we all have been on the receiving end of this kind of treatment at some time or another. I can think of many times when I have scheduled to have some work carried out on my home and have been kept waiting, only to get an apology later on in the day. In the meantime, one starts to wonder whether you made the right choice of tradesperson in the first place. After all, if they cannot even arrive on the agreed upon day, then what should one expect of their level of workmanship?
 
Dissatisfied customers are not good for the reputation of any business.
 
Surely it would be better to be honest with your client or customer and perhaps reschedule the work if it is not too urgent?
 
Most customers are very understanding and rescheduling for a more suitable time, should not be a major issue. When the customer cannot reschedule the work and the work is required more urgently, have a backup plan. Perhaps offer the customer an alternative instead, that will still satisfy them today.
 
Get in contact with another business in the same industry and form a loose association, to take over this extra workload when your business is just too busy to take on the work. Hopefully this will be a reciprocal agreement that you can take on extra work of theirs when they are too busy as well. So if you are helping each other out over time it is beneficial to both businesses. Reciprocating ensures that neither your business nor this other business loses out on work.
 
Obviously if you are handing out your extra work on a constant basis to other businesses, then it may be time to start hiring extra hands to cope with the added workload.