Results In Business Can Take Time

Results in Business

Results in business can take time to become visible especially if a major change has occurred.

Have Realistic Expectations

Whether you’ve added something new to your business or you’ve changed something that already exists within your business, it’s important to have realistic expectations. Putting unnecessary pressure on yourself and the team to get the results that you’re looking for is not going to help.

Unnecessary pressure can result in creating a disruptive energy dynamic occurring within your business. This dynamic is something clients and potential clients will likely sense and it will not assist you in achieving the results you are looking for. Your team will also pick up on this energy dynamic and it can often result in mistakes that are not normally made being made.

Adding A New App

When adding a new app to your business operation, it can actually slow things down initially. Apps often require some level customisation before they function effectively with your business. Even if there was thorough testing conducted prior to going live with the app. There can still be unforeseen things that can arise after go-live that need to be worked through and solutions found.

All this takes time particularly if the customisation is particularly technical and external contractors have been assisting with the customisation. These contractors will be working with multiple businesses just like yours at the same time. They will need to schedule in time to diagnose, make adjustments, and test your customisation.

If the app is integrating with more than one app it’s very likely that more than one team of external consultants will be involved. Typically external consultants specialise in one particular app and rarely do they have the skills and experience to integrate more than one app. The greater the number of external teams that are involved with the integrations of the app the longer it can take.

It’s wise to have contingency plans in place just in case hiccups occur after go live with the app so that disruption in your business is kept to a minimum.

Forming Habits Takes Time

When implementing a new app, process or updating an existing process it can take time for those involved to reach the point where the process has become a habit.

We form habits so that we don’t need to exert energy doing repetitive things so we have the mental energy to deal with one-off things.

Another benefit of forming habits is that we are able to complete actions without having to consciously think about them. This results in us becoming more consistent and efficient in completing tasks that have become habits.

However, it takes time for something to become a habit. While a habit is forming the individual can be much slower at performing the actions than they normally would. It can become frustrating for them if they start falling behind their usual work output. There can be a tendency to want to revert back to the old process or app to catch up, delaying them from forming the new habit.

In a study that was conducted by Dr Phillippa Lally, 96 people were asked to choose a new simple daily habit thta they would create over a 12-week period. The habit they were asked to choose was to involve either eating or drinking. The participants in the study were asked to report each day how “automatic” their new habit felt, and if it felt “hard not to do” or if they were able to do it “without thinking.

The results of the study found that it ranged from 18 days to 254 days before a habit became automatic. The average time taken in the study group to form a new simple habit was found to be 66 days.

New Team Members

Finding the right new team member comes about after investing time, energy, and possibly money to find that right person. But have you also invested the time and resources to assist your new team member to become a productive team member in a minimal amount of time?

Too often new team members are added to the team and there is little training provided on how to perform their intended roles. Just because the person has performed a similar role it does not mean that they are going to know how to perform their role in your business.

Each business is uniquely different. Your business’s set of underlying values and how things are handled can be dramatically different to anything your new team member has encountered before. They will need time to learn these as well as the systems and processes within your business.

This learning period can be dramatically shortened by having a well-documented process and someone spending time to provide a gradual handover and introduce the tasks which the new team member will be performing.

If you’re interested in transforming your business and are not quite sure where to start?