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Business leaders like the idea of their businesses soaring to the moon.

But many actually get bogged down in the day-to-day stuff, never really able to spread their wings and fly.

When this happens, it can be annoying. You know your brand should be doing better than it is, but you keep getting stuck on the inconsequential stuff.

That’s where this guide can help. It runs through some of the things you can do to prevent your business from getting bogged down in the minutiae so you can finally fly and find your freedom.

Outdated Processes

One of the things that might be slowing your business down is your outdated processes. If these are inefficient, it can give you more work than you want to deal with.

For example, your retail business might be losing sales because of slow restocking due to manual stock checks. This process can’t keep up with demand and could be leading to missed opportunities.

The trick to solving this problem is to audit your business and look for where inefficiencies are occurring. Automation tools are great for this, like Zapier, because they can work between programs and allow you to find solutions within your existing app framework, instead might have a great product or service, but if you lack authority, that can also really bring you down. If customers don’t see you as professional, you’ll be fighting an uphill battle.

If you don’t have authority right now, there are several things you can do to improve the situation. The first is to write industry-leading content that helps people and go on a speaking tour. Literally meeting people and being face-to-face with them builds trust and respect.

You could also use a professional virtual office instead of a home address. These are great if you want to show people that you’re a real business. These services forward all your mail to wherever you need it, while helping you avoid the high cost of a regular office rental.

Poor Team Communications

Getting bogged down can also sometimes occur because of poor team communication. If people can’t talk to each other, then they can sometimes duplicate their efforts and miss deadlines.

This problem gets even worse in remote or hybrid situations. Teams often don’t want to talk to each other or don’t trust each other because they can’t see each other in person.

The fix is to improve communication channels by using Microsoft Teams or Slack. These apps reduce the friction involved in team communication and make the entire process significantly more straightforward.

Another approach is to define who needs to be in the loop on each project. Putting these management structures in place makes it less likely that someone critical will be missed out of email chains.

Overloaded Employee Schedules

You might also run into issues if your employee schedules are overloaded. While it is good for staff to have a lot of work, it can also slow things down at your enterprise and prevent you from getting things done.

The worst thing to do is to get your employees to multitask. Asking people to do several things at once can prevent them from producing any quality output and make it much harder for you to succeed long-term.

Fixing this is possible if you relax management constraints and get employees to block their time. Focusing them on one thing at once and dealing with bottlenecks should sort out these issues.

If you want to use the Eisenhower Matrix where you get staff to arrange their urgent and important tasks, you can use that, too. Time-tracking tools can help with this, or you can outsource, whichever is easier.

Lack Of Employee Training

Relating to employees again, a lack of training can also make you feel like your business is being bogged down. Things just aren’t getting done, and that’s hurting your bottom line.

For example, if your sales team doesn’t have training on how to use CRMs effectively, they may miss out on your most valuable leads. Similarly, if coders can’t produce the systems you need quickly, you might lose out to a competitor in the same space.

The fix for this is to use LinkedIn Learning or other online course programs to help you. If staff are intelligent, they should be able to use these to update their skills quickly and get with the program. Training may take up to six months for some skills,but once learned, it can be highly valuable.

Resistance To Change

You might also be feeling bogged down in your company if you or your staff are resistant to change. Sometimes, firms can get into the habit of staying stuck because that’s what they know, rather than doing what’s good for them.

For example, you might still be doing manual route planning instead of using GPS, which could be holding you back. You could also be scared of what the change might mean.

You can usually fix this problem by introducing new tools slowly. Using a “slow burn” approach is often the most effective and something that can make a big difference in the long-term. You can also use friendly tools, like Google Workspace, before transitioning to more challenging apps that may intimidate staff (but increase productivity overall).

Weak Decision-Making

Finally, you might be getting bogged down because of weak decision-making. If you’re making decisions based on gut feelings, that’s usually a bad sign. Businesses that operate this way often succeeded in the past, but today they are struggling to keep up.

The fix is to use data to drive decisions. Analytical instruments, like Google Analytics, are ideal for this, as they can boost business intelligence from the ground up, and provide tools that almost everyone in the organization can use.

If you can train leaders to interpret relevant metrics, that’s even better. This ability gives them an anchor they can use to monitor firm performance over time, and get the best results.

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