Step Change to Leap of Faith

Every now and again I look back on my weeks or months and think, where has the time gone.  Over the past few months,  I’ve been focused on the East Midlands Women’s Awards (EMWA).  My biggest annual project.  This year is our third year.

It’s now three weeks after the event and I’ve not stopped.  I was hoping that by now I would have been able to take a week or so off, but that’s not been possible due to the amount of interest in the awards, which is fabulous.  This increased business has made me ask myself if I’ve got my focus right?  If I have got my focus right, then is it time to look at things differently?

Every business, if it’s doing well, will come to a place where it needs to assess how much growth can be maintained using its current level of resources.  Well, that’s where I am right now, particularly with the EMWAs.

In 2018, we were pleasantly surprised with a 30% increase in nominations and a 63% increase in attendance to the gala awards.  This year (2019), we’ve had a 73% increase in nominations and a 33% in attendance.  The growth as you can see is phenomenal. We managed to keep things going smoothly this year, but it has not been easy.  So, what’s to be done?

Putting my consultant’s hat on and looking at things objectively, I need to stand still and to actually acknowledge this growth and understand what it really means.  If I were looking at this growth in anyone else’s business I would ask them if they’d realised that they’ve had a step change?

What does a step-change in one’s business mean?

The dictionary describes a step-change in business or politics as a significant change in policy or attitude, especially one that results in an improvement or increase.  Well, I think a step change has already happened, don’t you?

There has been a significant increase in nominations and the awards attendance two years running, but we have not reflected this increase in numbers in the number of people we have assigned to handling the awards programme.

And most businesses would not have increased the people power required either until it became almost impossible to run the business efficiently.  Many managers just interpret the calls of staff for more help as whinging and may not respond until things are at breaking point.  Unfortunately for the staff involved, disengagement and demotivation can set in.  The deeper result of this is that trust between managers and staff can be destroyed. But that is a topic for another day.

I can hear you say, but there are other reasons why managers and business owners don’t immediately jump to increase their staff levels and you’d be correct.  Most managers:

• Want to know that this is not a fluke or a temporary change
• May not have the budget to increase staff or other resource levels
• Know that an increase in demand does not always immediately create an increase in profits
• Think that current staff can adjust a little and pull things in
• Choose to play the waiting game

These are all relevant and important points because business is about being profitable, even if your project is run as a not for profit.  Every penny has to be accounted for and used wisely.

I spoke at the University of Leicester recently and one of the things I shared was the fact that many of the projects I started years ago and more recently, were started without knowing exactly where all the funding was going to come from.

This is probably not what most business leaders and business schools would recommend that you do, and I can understand this. But I believe that even in business faith is called for.  A little self-belief and a little evidence belief.

Self-belief –

You’ve grown the business or in my case the project and created what you have today.

Believe the evidence –

My wonderful friend and advisor Kevin Urquhart of FU Media reminded me of this at the EMWA ceremony this year.  He said ‘Take the time to stop and look at what you’ve created.’  This is such a simple statement, but a very important one, because in business we tend to just jump from one thing to another without taking the time to look at what we’ve achieved and to acknowledge that we’ve done it.

If you’ve done this from scratch, as I have, you can create what’s needed for the business to grow and flourish at this next stage.

So, all I can tell you at this point is to watch this space as I step up my ‘self-faith, put on my self-belief pants’ and step into my ‘awesome’.  My regular followers will know what this means.

There is a lot to celebrate here and it’s important that the growth is seen in this light and not just in the shadow of more work, more pressure and the uncertainty of the much-needed resources.

For this step change, this growth to continue, when it arrives in any business, managers and leaders need to engage in a step-change within themselves.  How much do we believe in our abilities to do this all again, at a new level? How much do we believe that we can look into the space of what can’t be seen from where we are now, and as we have done in the past, believe again that we can do it?

Faith is called for now.  Some might call it a leap of faith.

Watch me go…