On Saturday, I was transfixed by the pundits’ post-match passionate discussions following Manchester United’s painful defeat against local rivals Manchester City.

Roy Keane claimed Man Utd’s bad performance is down to a Buying Problem; they’ve spent £400m but not wisely.

Graeme Souness disagreed, stating it’s a Player Problem; players are not committed, not doing their job, not wearing the badge as they should be.

Micah Richards felt it is a Manager Problem; a new manager would get the most out of the players.

Finally, Gary Neville argued it’s a Board Problem; they’ve had the best managers and invested in decent players, so the bad performance must come from the top, the Board.

So that’s 4 different problems! How can the club ever fix it if no one knows what the real problem is?

And the same goes for business. 91% of business owners are actively trying to fix the WRONG thing in their business, 100% of the time.

But if you don’t know what the problem is – what’s not working – how are you ever going to fix it?

And if you don’t know what you don’t know, then how are you meant to get that knowledge in the first place?

Let me give you another example…

Liverpool FC were struggling for many seasons. What changed? Klopp happened!

• He had a vision and a purpose that he drove from the top to the very bottom.
• He instilled belief in his players, the fans, the Board.
• He took his system and organised his players into this. He only ever bought new players that his system needed. And got rid of those players that didn’t fit into his system.

As I always say, the only REAL challenge in business is the Leadership.

A leader will address any issue of business by either directly understanding it and creating a plan to fix it, measuring the outcomes, and amending the plan OR putting someone in place who can do it.

And this starts with YOU.

If you have a functional role and are 100% stuck IN the business, that business will suffer.

So, this week, take a step-back and take time out to really look at your business to pinpoint the core problem that’s holding you back, causing you overwhelm, isn’t making your business run as it should – and be that Leader.

If you’re not sure where to start, take a free Fix Build Sell Evaluation that we developed – in less than 5 minutes you will know what could be holding you back > https://scaleindex.scoreapp.com/

BW,

Martin

Martin Norbury

Investor | Business Mentor at Advocate | Author of I don’t work Fridays

Manchester United image by nmoodley from Pixabay