Focus on what you do best
One of the keys to successful growth is the ability to stay focused.
With the continual pressures of business, it’s easy to fall off course. It requires a lot of hard work and momentum to stay focused, and then if you do lose it, it’s even harder to get back on track and stay there.
“It’s a discipline more than anything,” Doody says. “It’s the ability to say no more than you say yes. One of the worst things in business is to try to make something better that you shouldn’t be doing at all. Entrepreneurs tend to be optimists so we have to be careful to know what our limitations are.”
A lot of knowing your limitations will come through trial and error.
“You learn through experience, make good decisions through experience and get experience through making bad decisions or observing other people’s bad decisions,” Doody says.
For example, he could have gone out and opened 25 or more restaurants per year to meet the company’s mission. But he wanted to focus on quality, not quantity, so he only opened a smaller number of restaurants that were able to provide the best service to customers instead of a larger number of restaurants that had marginal service.
“We try to focus on the best sites, get the best management teams, get the best designs and work hard on developing the best food for those restaurants,” he says. “The discipline is in the focus.”
Setting clear objectives can also help in keeping your employees focused on the ultimate goal. Objectives need to be based around the mission so that employees know the steps they should take each day to achieve goals and bring success to the company. It takes continual communication with your employees and a lot of tweaking to get those objectives right for each of them and to make sure they understand them.
“If you have the right people and they agree with the direction of the company, they, too, in turn, will fine-tune the focus of the company,” Doody says. “It’s also having a communication system and series of meetings that allow the leaders to determine if they’re staying focused. With experience and success, you get a little more confident in your ability to set clear objectives.”
Remaining focused steers you away from the negative things that don’t bring value to your company.
“One of the hardest things in business is, and I use this line all the time with my employees, ‘Let’s not make something better that we shouldn’t be doing at all,’ and that happens a lot in business,” Doody says. “You get to continue to put forth an agenda in your business that is productive, profitable, relationship building and strengthening, exciting, allows it to be more fun, and allows your employees to know they work for a successful enterprise.
“Always be looking for new ways to create value, but you have to balance that with the importance of staying focused.”
How to reach: Bravo Development Inc., (614) 326-7944 or www.bestitalianusa.com
