How well are you controlling your business lifecycle? Are you achieving what you want at this point in time? Is the future looking positive?

Where Are You On Your Business Journey?

The success drivers of your business vary according to where your business is along the business lifecycle. Recognising where you are along the journey is an important step towards working priorities and planning your smartest course of action. Our member Stewart Clark demonstrates it clearly in a post he published on his website recently. Click to read it here The 5 life-cycle stages of a business.

Is Your Business Roadmap Still Relevant?

That lifecycle is a challenging journey through diverse often complex situations. Along the way we enter new territory that requires diverse skills and kinds of practical experience. Have you taken the time to update your roadmap? It is not always easy to step back from the fire of the day and take a calm unbiased look. In fact, at any of the 5 life stages of an organisation, you may find it hard to take enough time to work on your business as well as in it. How many of us start the year with a great strategy and a good action plan, and then daily events take over…We can be too close to the issues to see the options, the risks and the opportunities; that makes it harder to make the right decisions. And when challenges are significant, it is easy to feel overwhelmed and loose the passion we had when we started. That exciting vision we first had suddenly is no longer so exciting. Yet we need that passion throughout the start, growth, expansion, maturity and all the way to exiting the business one day.

6 Benefits Of A Good Sounding Board

Wherever we are on that business lifecycle journey, and whatever kind of organisation we are running, we make it harder for ourselves if we go it alone without the benefit of unbiased advice, of wisdom from experience.Even as solo business adviser, it is easy to forget to do the right thing for your own business if you operate in isolation. Everyone needs a good sounding board, in both rough and good times. What would you want from a good sounding board? Here is my benefits wish list, what is yours? For me he/she is someone who

• Listens, challenges and understands
• Helps me see the wood for the trees
• Casts a new constructive light on the situation and business phase
• Offers guidance to take smart steps for today
• Helps me keep tomorrow and the ultimate goal firmly in mind
• Keeps me accountable and positive

And 4 Personal Attributes

If you are like me, you also look for a combination of personal qualities:

• Someone who cares and who supports without taking over
• Also someone whom I can trust to kindly and firmly ask the tough questions that I may conveniently forget to ask myself
• A wise person who applies intelligently his/her experience of the next business stage to my own need
• An open-minded person who keeps looking for creative solutions

Is your "shopping list" similar? Do you have that kind of support?

Are You Alone Or Supported Along Your Business Lifecycle?

If you don't feel well supported, if you don't have a thinking partner to help you negotiate the challenges of today and those ahead, ask us how to get effective support. The members of The Network of Consulting Professionals have years of experience in all kinds of organisations and industries. Why not get in touch with us? Contact us