Take Time Out to Win
The Alchemists Forum chair Alan Branagh, outlines below how ‘taking time out to win’ is a highly effective business performance method for CEOs and business leaders. From experience, Alan believes that adopting this business model will drive greater decisions, greater thinking and greater performance.
“I have participated in various park runs for a number of years and recently came across an interesting fact relating to peak performance. Almost all distance runners have the wrong idea about how to run fast, with most believing that to run faster, you need to work harder. This reminded me fondly of performance coaching, which suggests otherwise. In business, in order to run fast, it is key that you stop forcing it to happen.
In business, the observation is a simple one; when we really start to ‘dig’ and force change, we become tense and end up fighting with ourselves for small portions of extra speed or growth. However, when we learn how to stay consistent and make simple adjustments to our business strategies, we will grow faster and experience less damaging repercussions to both ourselves and our businesses.
Whether it is within our personal or business life, our natural inclination is to bear down, work late, give up that all important work – life balance and force our way through to improvement. Yet whenever we feel ourselves forcing our way towards success, the reality is that we are just like the runner attempting to work hard to run faster. More often than not, we end up tightening up and producing sub-standard work and decisions that ultimately won’t help us with business growth at all.
Putting in effort leads to gains that compound over time. However, we should also be aware of when we go from working hard to forcing it.
It can be extremely easy to become consumed in the day-to-day challenges and tasks of your business to try and force growth. However, as a business leader it is important that you understand that taking time out to work on your business has many benefits for both you and your business, which can improve performance, growth and profitability.”
Being a member of a business performance group like The Alchemists Forum gives you a chance to disconnect and work on your business, rather than in it. This is especially true if your business performance group has an experienced chair who can help guide and advise you through tackling the issues that will ultimately drive the greatest economic impact in your business.