For those of you out there who utilise the services of Business Coach or Mentor, you will most probably be very familiar with the phrase ‘Working ON your business rather than IN your business’.

Essentially this is a goal for many SME business owners and managers; an ideal situation where valuable time, thought and energy is being applied, more holistically, to the future development of the company, rather than just simply being used up in the daily routine of the job itself.

Now, we all know that any business needs a degree of planning and strategy if it is to succeed. Staying constantly busy with day-to-day workload without looking towards future development can make us ‘busy fools’ who will sadly struggle to grow and prosper before burn-out sets in. That said, how many of us deliberately set aside time to take a step back and look at the bigger picture and see where improvement is possible, and growth is stimulated? Not many we’d say, but most know they should…

So what tasks generally constitute working ON the business? At The Awards People we’d say simply those which do not directly involve the delivery of your product or service to your client. They will vastly IMPACT your product or service in the longer term but, essentially, it’s the bits you do which wouldn’t be your routine tasks. Some examples might be: –

• Improving the system of tracking orders or invoicing clients
• Identifying and maximising client satisfaction
• Updating marketing literature or internal documentation
• Refreshing website content and social media presence
• Considering employee engagement levels and potential ways of improving them

The common thread running through any such development activities is that they should have a POSITIVE IMPACT on your company and will aid future success (be it externally with clients or even internally with recruitment and retention of staff) – and as a result help vastly with the bottom line!

So what has this got to do with awards we hear you ask? – Lots!

We’ve spoken at some length in past blog posts about the hugely positive effect that award wins can have on companies, both in terms of visibility and employee morale. Few things grab the attention of a target market like an award accolade and few things bring a team together quite as obviously as having received very public recognition.

More than that however, the actual process of award consideration and award entry is very much a case of working ON the business. In order to choose a particular award or category to pursue, a very effective business review is kicked into action – What’s important to you: What are you good at: Where have you excelled: Why should clients come to you: What differentiates you from your competitors…

So, all of a sudden, rather than just looking casually at an awards event, you are matching your best features against specific criteria; benchmarking against the rest of the field and identifying what makes you great. It may even be that an initial foray into a particular category’s requirements reveals that you may not be as strong as you might have believed you were – room for improvement, room for development, planning for future success.

At The Awards People we believe that it is no co-incidence that most of the companies who we work with are fast-growing, ambitious businesses who are focussed and plan for success. Few could be described as busy fools, but many are just plain busy – and that’s why they welcome the fact that we can help them with their award entries and the presentation of their fabulous business stories.