Reflection: The overlooked & underrated tool for growth

Self-reflection is a process that is often avoided for fear of having to ‘dwell’ on unfavourable or unbecoming situations in the past.  However, I have come to understand that act of reflection is an overlooked and underrated tool for both personal and business growth.

Of late, I have heard the phrase ‘hustle culture’ time and time again and I have consciously observed the aspects of this ‘hustle culture’.  Essentially, ‘hustle culture’ promotes the idea of working long hours and sacrificing other aspects of personal life in order to succeed, with the embedded promise that if you give work all your time and attention, you can achieve anything and everything.

As a business owner or people leader, it is easy to unintentionally subscribe to the ‘hustle culture’ because you’re trying to do it all for the benefit of the business.  I for one have unintentionally subscribed to this culture for longer than I realised because I like to just ‘get stuff done’ – as I’m sure many  business owners and people leaders do.  The danger of the hustle culture is that we give our time and energy to the wrong parts of the business.  We do what we need to do, to get it all done however, we are blind to the bigger picture.

The process of reflection can assist you in taking stock of how your time has been spent and what proportion of your time in the past month or past quarter was spent providing non-revenue generating support, generating revenue or creating growth and future revenue i.e. the bigger picture!

Now, reflecting on some of my busiest periods (in a former life), I can very clearly see that at times (actually most of the time), I only focussed on getting through the revenue of today with no consideration for the growth or revenue of tomorrow.  In hindsight, had I implemented a process or set time per month or per quarter to reflect on each period, I may have identified that next to none of my time was actively spent working on future growth and then rectified this.

Taking the time to reflect on the business and recognise where time and energy is spent will allow you to reset and identify what is lacking in the business and where time and energy is needed.

As business coaches, we work with clients to ensure the business is fully functional by taking time to stop, reflect and then map out the business workflows and allocate these to the costs, the revenue of today and the revenue of the future (or as we categorise them – the ‘Red’, ‘Blue’ and ‘Black’ of the business).

What Beckon Business loves about this –  we get a front row seat to witnessing our clients unlock growth in their business.

~ Stephanie Toutountzis

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