Four Enemies of Progress in Your Business

You might think the enemy of progress is decline. By definition, decline is the opposite of progress. But I would argue that decline pushes us faster and farther toward progress than many other obstacles. 

New Year's resolutions are the product of decline. Were you slacking on exercising and eating poorly over the holidays? Spending more money than usual? Feeling unfocused as you rush to get everything done? During the holidays, we often feel a decline in our “performance,” which motivates us to improve ourselves in the new year.

Think about it. As soon as you start declining in an area of your life or business, you take notice and “lock in” as my daughter would say. You start to Get It Handled^®…and quickly. 

So if decline is not the culprit, what are some true enemies of progress? In my experience, four major enemies of progress are:

• Status Quo
• Perfectionism
• No Right Answer
• Overwhelm in the Midst of Change

These sneaky inhibitors cause resolutions to fall off and progress to stop. Let’s talk about why and how you can overcome each one.

Status Quo

When things are going just fine, we tend to take our foot off the gas. I see this with many small business owners who don’t think they are ready for LVL-Up. They say, “I have a good client base, I am making enough to gain a small profit, and taking on any more now would be overwhelming.” This is a sure sign that they are close to capacity.

When things are going well, you will gain popularity and receive referrals. If “taking on any more would be overwhelming,” then you better set up your operations to build your capacity and accommodate your growth. 

Why? Because the status quo doesn’t stay status quo for long. 

Eventually, you will reach your capacity and your customer service will suffer as you try to keep up. Or you will decide you need an exit strategy and you don’t want to lose everything you’ve built so far. Or you will stagnate because you’ve stayed comfortable for too long and, as clients move on, you won’t have a pipeline of new business coming in. Any way you look at it, if you feel comfortable with the status quo, lift your head up and realize this is the time to be working on your business. 

Start pushing through the status quo toward progress by automating repeatable service activities so you can send out proposals and onboard new clients quickly. Or document your processes so you can easily share and teach them if you have to hire someone to help out.

Perfectionism

How many of us try to build something perfect before we launch it? 

I am someone who likes to have my ducks in a row before moving forward. I like to be prepared for any scenario. But being in the Foreign Service has taught me that perfectionism is a blocker. Landing in a new country with a new language is probably the fastest way I let go of perfectionism and learned to make progress through my mistakes.

You can’t know everything about a culture before you push yourself out that door and engage with your new environment. There isn’t time for perfectionism because you need to enroll your kids in schools, buy groceries, set up your doctors and specialists, etc. Instead of perfect, you have to be ok with making mistakes and learning as you go. 

Perfectionism kills progress in a business too. Many of our mid-size clients are paralyzed by perfectionism. Often they are stuck at 60% and afraid to launch any levels of beta testing. But getting to 60% and beta testing is how many start-ups make it to mid-sized companies. Why do we forget about MVPs once we are bigger? Yes, we have to consider more perspectives, and yes, we have to make decisions by committee. But having more insight, more beta testers, and shorter feedback loops should mean we are making progress faster.

It is the fear of failure as a leader that pushes our mid-size clients to perfectionism and stalls their progress. If they failed as a small start-up, no big deal. But now they have employees looking up to them as those who hold the answers. What if they find out these leaders don’t have all of the answers? 

Guess what? That's exactly what your team needs to know. You have to be transparent from the very start and let your team know that you don’t have all the answers. Announce that the company is implementing or launching something new and you need all hands to get this done well and efficiently. Excellent leaders don’t pretend to be perfect. To achieve progress, they create safe spaces for learning, growing, and tripping up along the way.

No Right Answer

When faced with an issue that doesn’t seem to have a right answer, the initial response may be to abandon the issue altogether. We’ve all had experiences where we don’t know the next right move. We aren’t sure of even the smallest increment forward. We are stuck asking ourselves, “What should I do?” and there is no clear answer. 

Being stuck is certain to kill progress. So, what if instead we asked ourselves, “What should I not do?”

You may not know what to do, but you probably know what not to do. So, reverse-think your next move. Make a list of all the things not to do. 

In larger companies, government agencies, and non-profit organizations, the progress can be slow. Moving as a container ship navigating icy waters. Quick, clear progress is harder to make when rigid rules and compliance requirements are important. 

I teach my large company clients to use their rules and requirements to guide them toward progress when they can’t uncover the next right move. I know they have a number of boundaries that show them what they can’t do. So, together we make a list of all the answers that they should not do until we have carved out a path of what they can do to bring themselves even 10% closer to a resolution. 

Sometimes in order to find the right answer, you have to go with the best answer. That often means moving by inches in a direction until you reach a point where you can see a clear right answer.

Overwhelm in the Midst of Change

Yes, even progress can inhibit progress. How many times has an innovation not made it to fruition for you or your company? I would guess it happens so often that the mere mention of anything new yields groans from your team members as they plan to wait out the arduous adoption process until things can go back to the way they were before or dare I say: status quo. Even your team knows that change is exhausting, and sooner or later it will be pushed aside without any progress. I see this with teams all of the time, and it is why there is an entire industry built on managing change. 

I also see teams struggle with their own professional progress. Leaders attempting to grow their team members professionally might not anticipate how difficult this is for the person growing. The discomfort of realizing your own incapabilities is so overwhelming that the urge to quit and choose an easier path is strong. 

At LVL-Up (using GiANT leadership tools), we call this the pit of despair. If you hear a co-worker complaining about all of the reasons they can’t get something done, they are in the pit of despair. If you see a team member pushing off a task and missing deadlines, they are in the “pit of despair.” Whatever you do, don’t leave them there or one of two things will happen: They will quit before they’ve tried (and tell everyone that your company is a terrible place to work) or they will stay and be ineffective (and tell everyone that your company is a terrible place to work). Take the time and energy to extend them a ladder and help them climb out. Be a guide as they work through their vulnerability and prove their capability to themselves. 

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At LVL-Up, we believe in progress so much that we have made it one of our guiding principles. It could be easy for any of these hidden enemies of progress to stop us. But thanks to this guiding principle, we are always checking ourselves and our clients. Are we making progress? If not, what is stalling us? What actions do we need to take to move forward?

Focusing on the process of progress keeps you from falling off course. And usually the result is even better than you imagined. If you need help making progress, don’t worry – we’ve been there with our clients. Reach out to me and LVL-Up to help you Get It Handled^®.