Working On Vs. In the Business
What is the difference between working ‘in’ your business and working ‘on’ your business? Traci and Rob discuss how an owner needs to pause revenue producing activities to look at the big picture and think about the company’s purpose and vision for the future. Now more than ever, these strategic pauses can lead to a more focused, disciplined, and profitable business.
Transcript
Announcer:
Welcome to the Overly Human podcast, where we discuss all things human in the workplace. Because it's not just business—it's personal too.
Traci:
Hey, Rob, I was just reading the KPMG's 2020 CEO Outlook. They just did a special COVID-19 edition, which, if you have a chance, you have to read it because it's fascinating. They surveyed like 1,300 CEOs in January and then went back and surveyed like over 300 of them in late July, early August, and are kind of comparing their thoughts and how those thoughts have evolved moving forward since COVID. And 79% have had to reevaluate their purpose. And they believe that reevaluating that purpose is helping them to better understand the needs of their employees, their customers, the community around them.
And I just find it so fascinating that that bubbled to the top, that throughout all of this, what company leaders are realizing is we need to know what is our purpose, how has it changed from when we started the business or what the business was even last year to what it is today? What's our purpose going forward? Where are we going? How are we going to get there? It's fascinating that that's top of mind for them right now.
Rob:
I think that the current events in the world has given a lot of us this kind of reset moment to think about are we still doing the right things? And when I think about like the difference between what you just kind of said and then doing the work, is this whole idea of working on the business versus working in the business and how those are two really different things that I don't think that most people who get into running a business think about at first.
Traci:
Yeah, it's true. It's true. Because a lot of entrepreneurs that we know, and I'm sure this is true for you guys, is you start out as practitioners and you work to get that business off the ground, and it's scrappy, and it's every person for themselves trying to build something, and then you have a business. And hopefully it's thriving and it's operating, but if you want it to sustain itself, you need to take that pause, that strategic pause and actually work on the business, rise above the business and look down on it and make some key decisions by asking some really important questions. But you have to know that you have to do that, right?
Rob:
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that as I'm here listening to you talk—and this comes out in almost every single one of our conversations—intentionality, right? You have to stop and think about it and spend time to do something different than what you think you should be doing and how important that is.
And I think that a lot of us, like you said, we're practitioners, we get into this business because we're really good at a thing, and maybe we just don't want a boss anymore, or we could do it better or differently or whatever the case may be. And a lot of times, I like to refer to us as like accidental entrepreneurs, almost. Like it wasn't my intent to start a company with 50 people in it, my intent was to start a company that would do great web development and do the best job ever.
And before I knew it, I wasn't doing any web development at all anymore. And that didn't happen at first intentionally, but all of the things that were pulling me to spend my time on became less and less of the practice of the work that we did and more of it was designing the business in an intentional way so it could survive.
Traci:
And I think that, that sort of ethic of entrepreneurship, that creativity and that fun that you have when you're building the business and building these products or services, that's a very exciting time that oftentimes leaders and owners don't want to let go of, and they think, "Oh, well, if I start working on the business, that's going to mean more process and that's not as fun, and maybe I'm not gifted in that area, and it's going to kill our creativity if we become too focused on sort of strategy or goal-setting, or even measuring our profit margins. That's too business-y."
And I totally understand that. It's like we don't want to get rid of the creativity or to squash the innovation, but what we want to have is this balance, like we want to have a culture of focus and discipline while maintaining that ethic of entrepreneurship. And you can have both. And actually, the companies that have both, and I see this in Sparkbox, definitely are the ones who not just sustain themselves as a company, but thrive as a company, especially through times of challenge and crisis.
Rob:
Yeah. And I think that winds up pretty well with the model that I think about what the stages of business, right? This whole idea of going from a survival stage, into a growth stage, into a thriving stage. And then if you continue growth, you kind of iterate between growth and thriving, and that's where you need to live. And there is a financial component to that surviving stage and having the time to work on the business instead of in the business.
And I think we ought to take just a little step back before we continue to talk about what do we mean about activities that are in the business versus on the business. So interview style, so Traci, define what working in the businesses to you.
Traci:
Working in the business, it would be just being a producer. It's basically what the business does. What are you guys, what services, what products are you creating? What are you selling, marketing? All of those things, that's in the business. It's your day-to-day activity, the whirlwind of the day to day, and everybody, for the most part, is involved in that in one way or another. That would be working inside the business.
Rob:
Yeah. I've always defined in the business as revenue generating activities.
Traci:
Yes.
Rob:
So what about on the business then?
Traci:
On the business would be asking these big questions, who are we, where are we going, how are we going to get there, who are we getting there with? Right? It's those bigger, it's the strategic pauses, I like to say, rising above the business and asking ourselves these bigger questions, and then answering them. That's working on the business and creating the space to answer those.
So that could be just for the leaders of the organization, especially the owners or CEO. The CEO need to provide space for themselves to think and wrestle with those questions, but then it's also having those strategic sessions where you have the team of kind of diverse leaders that you bring together to answer these questions so that you can develop a purpose, actually articulate a purpose, articulate a vision, articulate a plan, and say, actually, “Where are we going, how are we going to get there?”
Rob:
I think that's right. And I think it's really important to, one of the things you said was creating space for that to happen, because this stuff, working on the business is taxing in a different way than working in the business. Working in the business, revenue generating activities, at least in my experience, it's a labor of time. You've got to put time into it and you're focused on other people's problems a lot of times—especially in service type businesses. But working on the business is that focus on self and how important that introspection is and how much space it actually requires to be able to have an ask and answer honestly for the questions that need to be asked, sometimes really uncomfortably.
Traci:
Yes.
Rob:
Like I know for us right now, that's been a lot of what I've been focused on in our business during this time, is calling timeout on things and saying like who do we want to be next? What is the company we're becoming and what does the shape of that look like? And having those conversations with my business partner and our leadership team and members of our team to gather input because what got is here may not be what gets us to where we want to be next.
And I never want to say that the decisions in the past were all mistakes where we did the wrong things, but I also recognize that if we continue to hone our purpose and our purpose changes over time, that we may need to become something different to continue to thrive, to be in that thriving place.
And I do think there is something interesting going on with what the situations in 2020 have dealt us, with the pandemic specifically, of this stop, this moment to have a little bit of extra time and clarity to ask those hard questions and to force other people on my team to answer them. Because one of the things that I've learned over the years is there's not a lot of people at my company who will stop and ask these kinds of questions because they're so involved in the work.
Traci:
And you keep saying the word time and all that keeps popping into my head is that it's so wise what you're doing calling this kind of timeout to use your time in a way that is strategic and forward-thinking, and looking at yourself a little bit closer under the microscope, right? And bringing your team along with you in that process.
Oftentimes what I see are people are so busy working in the business, that even when I mention to them about taking a day to have a strategy session, or even taking a moment within one day to talk strategy, it makes them nervous because they feel so busy and that they don't have time, and that taking the time away from producing or working on those revenue generating business items will be sacrificed if they take a pause to work on strategy.
But what I like to remind them of is, actually, when you do work on the business, it actually makes things run smoother. You end up having more time, you're more efficient, everybody's more aligned, there's more clarity, and there's definitely more trust. I think when we talk about being overly human and creating strong teams, one of the things that working on the business and being strategic does is it builds a more trust-filled environment.
Because think about it. When I use those questions, where are we going, how are we going to get there, think about when you're going on a road trip with your kids, right? They want to know where they're going. They want to be involved. They want to be part of the trip. And when you do tell them where we're going, how we're going to get there, be more involved, maybe here's the map, follow along and tell me what city's coming up next, they're way more into it. It's a much better road trip.
Well, it's the same thing in business. It's the same thing with the team. If they know that you have a vision, they're trusting you more because they know they can look to you and know that you're thinking about where this company's going. And if they know how we're going to get there and the part that they play, they feel like they have purpose too within the company. So we're thinking about the greater purpose of the company, but we're also thinking about individuals within that company feeling like they play a part, there's purpose. They're not just coming in like robots and working, and then getting a paycheck and going home, but they actually feel like they're part of something bigger and they have a voice and they can speak into this who we are, where are we going, how are we going to get there? And clarity, it really does give people the sense of kind of safety and security.
So yes, we're working on the sustainability of the business and making it more profitable and making sure that we have our P&L straight and our goals and visions outlined, but we're also doing something that strengthens culture. And, as we know, culture will eat strategy for breakfast. So we've got to be looking at both sides of the business here, but I think that's the remarkable thing about working on the business and not just in the business, is that it actually works on both sides, sustainability and trust.
Rob:
Yeah. I mean, absolutely, like it gives people a sense of ownership over something. And the people, if they feel a sense of ownership, if the humans feel like they're a part of creating something, then they are going to want to help see it through. And that's a huge part of everything that we do.
It has to be as part of creating and maintaining these businesses as they are. They are groups of humans that are loosely held together by common ideals and values and purpose, right? And by strengthening those things, you are strengthening the bonds between the humans involved to achieve the goals that the company has set out. And I've never been a part of a company where the sole purpose has been profit or efficiency or any of these things. It's always something else that profit and efficiency and all these other things are byproducts of, right? A well-run business that is designed to meet its purpose and all of that.
And it's just fascinating to overlay the human aspects of what it means to figure these things out and work on the business and put your hands on it and look at it objectively to say, "This works for us. This doesn't work for us. This serves us well, this doesn't."
One of the common mistakes I see my peers make is thinking that working on the business is like a checklist, that you can say, "Well, this is what I need to finish this week. Let me check this off." And very rarely do I see like purpose and unity and ownership to be something that you can time box. And that's why I think time is so important is because sometimes it requires marinading in these ideas and these problems with other people, that you may have a discussion and then need to walk away for two days and come back to it because the magic happens when you're cutting the grass or in the shower or working out or in the car by yourself, or wherever else your magic happens that like creativity sparks.
Traci:
Yeah. And I think you always should have this space and time to marinade— as you say—and to come back and look at things and have people speak into it when they've thought on it harder or they've processed it harder.
I think it makes me think when you're talking about it, of how do we know the right questions to ask? How can we go deep? How can we actually have successful discussions or strategic sessions? And obviously this is what Navigate the Journey does. We lead these sessions and we help teams really answer these questions. And one of the reasons why we find that people like working with an outside facilitator is because we create the environment and we force you to go deep.
So one of the mistakes that you can make in working on the business is to be very shallow in your thinking. So, like you said, it's just a checklist and you kind of go through and you answer these questions and then you move on, and you're not really going as deep as you need to go. You're not really asking yourself the hard questions. You're not really allowing every voice in the room to speak openly and honestly. And you need to have healthy conflict and you need to really wrestle with some issues in deep, you know, "What did we get wrong in the past and what's not working?"
And so we always, we have a tool that has been really handy in kind of kicking off the day, which is what's right, wrong, missing, and confused? So it's what's right with our business that we need to optimize? Because there's always things that we're doing that are great, and we need to optimize those things. How can we? What's wrong that we need to change? What's missing that we need to add? And what's confused that we need to clarify?
We also use SWOT analysis, which I'm sure a lot of people have heard of and used, looking at what are our strengths, our weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.So you need to have tools, and there's lots of them out there that are great, to help foster your discussion.
And if you feel like you really, really want to go deep and you want to create an environment where actually the owner and the leaders can just participate as opposed to lead the session, then think about getting an outside facilitator. That's going to allow the owner to sit back and just say, "Okay, I'm going to participate in this. I'm going to be an equal voice in this as we go deep and answer these questions."
But either way—whether you lead it yourself or you have an outside facilitator—you must create a safe environment where people feel like we can be honest, we can go deep, we can challenge each other, we can call ourselves on each other, call us on our issues and stuff that are holding us back, and we can be bold and really creative.
So we deal with a lot of creative agencies and studios, and those sessions are so fun because we want creativity in there. Just because you're not creating a website or a product or a service, it doesn't mean you can't be creative in your strategic planning process. And you and I have talked about this a lot, that leadership is an opportunity to use those creative skills, and it's the same with working on the business.
Rob:
Yeah, I absolutely agree. Another thing that I like to do a lot is use this concept of like spiral thinking, that we're going to have conversations, and every conversation we have may not result in a decision or a direction, but it may just be exploring the problem space and how that is a productive use of our time. And sometimes we may, we very often, I guess, will not end up with a decision, and that's okay, and permission to not drive towards solutioning, which I think a lot of us are so driven to. And it's that permission to take another pass, to give it time, to give it space, to keep going and find a place where we can arrive together on the best solution.
Traci:
And that is absolutely what you should be doing, and we call it perspective gathering. We also call it identifying the actual root of the problem. So you cannot really arrive at the right longterm solution if you haven't done what you're talking about, if you haven't really discussed the problem and looked at it 360, right? And actually said, "Is this really the root of the problem we're talking about? Is this the root that we're getting at?"
Too often, the problem that's presented or the idea that's presented is not really what we need to be talking about. We have to keep circling, circling, circling until we actually get to the real real, and then we can move on to a solution.
But, like you said, it takes time. The bulk of your time should be spent on that, and then the solution, actually, will be much faster and easier to come to because you've spent that good amount of time circling the problem and really understanding it.
Rob:
And so much of this is figuring out what problems to solve and where do we want to be headed as a business, as humans, as a group together, that making sure that we have the shape, we have the direction we want to go, that's just so, so important. Because there exists problems in every single business that I've ever been a part of, that I've ever talked to, and if we spend too much of our time just solving those problems, we may miss opportunities to just...Those problems may not exist in the new world of where we're going, so it's okay to take that time and step back and just dream.
Traci:
And then execute upon that dream so it doesn't just stay a dream, really hold each other accountable and really say, "We're going to do it, and let's make sure we have a one year plan and we're holding each other accountable to get there. And then we can celebrate our successes, even the small ones, as we go along."
But I think probably the most important part of this conversation is where we sit today. And we're recording this in 2020, and it's really a difficult year. And I think if you're listening to this and you're thinking, "Oh my gosh, I've never done this before, or maybe I have, but I don't know how to do it now," don't lose heart.
Like this is really important. And start by bringing together your most diverse strategic thinkers that you have around you in your company and start asking these bigger questions. And know that you, as the leader, as we've talked about so many times, don't have to have all the answers. You don't have to have all the answers, but you do, as a leader, have to ask the questions, ask the questions and go there.
Because otherwise, sadly, we're seeing some companies, and you and I both know companies that are really, really struggling right now because they haven't stopped and asked these questions and figured it out and really pushed themselves on these bigger business questions of where are we now? Where are we going to go? And really defining some things for themselves and for their team.
Rob:
Yeah. Very simply, I always ask who do we want to be when we grow up?
Traci:
Exactly. Important question to ask.
Rob:
Yeah. And I think that a couple of things are it's always open for change and learning and perspective differences. Because I can either believe that we're getting smarter and better, or we're getting dumber or the same, and I'd like to believe we're getting better. So what that means is, with more perspective and more learnings, that I'll know more tomorrow than I know today.
And if that's always true, then even decisions that we made six months ago about purpose and direction may need to be called out and not be tied to the sunk costs that we've already invested in the wrong thing. Because continuing to invest in the wrong thing is the bigger mistake once you realize it, rather than just saying like, "No, that's where we were, that's who we were at the time. That's what we thought was our best idea. Now this is the path forward." And always taking that fresh perspective of like, "No, the people in the room made the best decision based on the data available, we have better data now."
Traci:
Yeah, exactly. And everything you just said reminds me that it's more about the journey than the destination. And I think it sounds like you guys really know how to enjoy the journey. And that's the main reason we named our company Navigate the Journey, is because we want you to find joy in your work. And I think it's possible to enjoy the journey and not just wake up one day at the destination and be like, "Wait, how did we get here or how did we not get here?" But really understanding that we have to take these pauses to know where we are and to know who we are and to appreciate that along the way.
Rob:
There's a whole episode we could do about something titled, ‘if you don't like where your business is at after a certain amount of time, it's your fault.’ But we don't have time left to get into that today.
Traci:
That's hilarious, and so true.
Rob:
Yeah. But no, thanks, Traci. I appreciate it.
Traci:
Thank you. Fun conversation as always.
Announcer:
This podcast would not be possible without the amazing communications team at Sparkbox. If you like what you've heard, please subscribe and tell your friends to listen as well. The Overly Human podcast is brought to you by Navigate the Journey and Sparkbox. For more information on this podcast, or to get in touch with Traci or Rob, go to overlyhuman.com. Thanks for listening.
