Work ON it, not just IN it!
Working ‘in’ and ‘on’ the business has been part of business vernacular ever since Michael Gerber coined the phrase in his book “The E-Myth Revisited”. A principle that is arguably more important today than it was when the book was first published back in 1985. Experts suggest that business owners should regularly spend 20% of their time working on their business rather than in it. The Pareto Principle supports this, suggesting that 20% of our activity generates 80% of our results. Research also confirms that not spending sufficient time working on the businesses is one of the underlying reasons for business failure.
In simple terms, working in your business is spending time managing your business day-to-day, often undertaking tasks that could be assigned to someone else. Whereas working on your business is investing your time to develop the strategies, plans and activities that will help grow and develop the business to be more successful in the future. When was the last time you dedicated time to working on rather than just in your business?
It may sound simple but as everyone in business will know, it’s not easy when you are on the merry-go-round of being busy, rushing from one task the next with little time to consider the bigger picture. Forcing you to spend considerable time and long hours working as an hourly employee in your business instead of the CEO - just to have a business at all. Does that sound familiar to you?
Caterina Fake, the co-founder of Flickr said: “So often people are working hard at the wrong thing. Working on the right thing is probably more important than working hard.”
How many times throughout the day do you hear yourself saying “If you want a job done right, do it yourself?” When running a business, it can often seem that you have no other option but to take on a mountain of tasks to just keep the business moving. Unfortunately, taking on too much can prove to be a major distraction from the important job of growing a business.
To grow a business, you need to know where you are going, why and how you get there so you can make the important strategic decisions and create the high-level plans to get there and overcome the barriers you will face along the way. The fact is, whatever business you are in you need time to focus on the business, learn how to delegate non-critical tasks and eliminate tasks that are simply low or no-value distractions.
Working on not just in the business is about how you spend your time and working hard on the right things. It’s about creating a business that doesn’t depend solely on you to get things done, a business that can generate results without you having to do them personally. It’s about a shift in perspective.
