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The wood from the trees: what perspective really means for your business
“You can’t see the wood for the trees.”
“The devil is in the detail.”
These overly familiar sayings are about perspective and what happens when you zoom in and then fail to zoom back out. There’s plenty of business advice about this — seeing the bigger picture while not neglecting the smaller stuff that’s important.
However, this advice falls short when it fails to incorporate a sufficient frame of reference in the first place. The perspective may be flawed from the start if the big picture omits certain critical aspects because its context is restricted.
In my experience as a business adviser, many owners and founders tend to see their efforts purely in the context of work, rather than in the broader context of their whole life.
Consequently, there’s an imbalance and a lack of harmony. They haven’t aligned their idea of business success with personal fulfilment and success in life, with loved ones and family.
This isn’t just a philosophical problem. It has real world consequences.
It can cause friction in the home and friction in the business and impact significantly on decision-making. Because, the best decisions, the right decisions, should come from a place of clarity, and you only get this from having a clear perspective.
Busy fools and the dialogue of one
How do you know if you’re focusing on the right problem?
To add to the lexicon of familiar idioms in this article, here’s another: the busy fool. In spite of putting the hours in, the “busy fool” doesn’t get the right things out.
This sense of being busy becomes self-deceiving, because actual productivity is low to non-existent. And we can extend the busy fool analogy to relationships and behaviours outside the workplace — you can be trying your hardest to be present at home yet failing because every time the issue of “the business” comes up, it becomes a source of conflict.
And the more you try to address it, the harder it gets.
Here the question of perspective isn’t just singular. You must start to see things how other people in your life see them.
For them, the business and everything related to it might seem alien, a part of your life that’s closed off, even out of bounds. So, when you attempt to bring it into the home context, it fails to fit and causes friction.
In the workplace context, this failure to see other perspectives is a leadership issue. As an owner or founder, you feel you bear the weight of responsibility and therefore you alone must solve the problem — even if it turns out you’re addressing the wrong problem.
Sure, you might bring it to others, however, in your head, you’re already well on the way to dealing with it. This makes it hard for them to table their thoughts and ideas, because, effectively, you’ve already discounted them.
It’s a dialogue of one instead of a genuine exchange.
The discipline of seeing things differently
Altering your perspective takes effort. It’s not simply about taking in the view. You’ve got to work at it.
It’s not simply a case of broadening your outlook. It’s about genuinely seeing things as others see them and understanding their feelings and motivations — in work and in the home.
So, where do you start?
It’s a process. You must begin by learning to listen better and to do this before you act. By listening, you become more open, in turn encouraging greater openness in others. This is how you build dialogues and begin having proper, give-and-take conversations.
Misunderstandings arise from a lack of clear communication. You minimise and eliminate misunderstandings through the clarity and quality of your conversations. This way, the context includes multiple perspectives.
Now, it comes down to this basic principle: what is your business for? Beyond factors such as profit, turnover and market share, your business should fulfil you personally and provide for your family and loved ones.
Next, ask yourself: if I understand this, do those closest to me also understand and appreciate it? Do they know what my business is for and, if so, what stake do they have in it?
The greater and more transparent this understanding is, the more you can harmonise the different aspects of your life to ensure your business can grow without a damaging cost to your relationships.
Perspective comes first
In combining business coaching with strategic financial advice, we apply a three-part process. This begins with perspective — discovering what your business is about, what it means to you and how it relates to you as a person, including your closest relationships with family and loved ones.
This is our starting point. It could be yours.
Contact us today to see how we can help your business work better for you.
“This is a family business.” You see this a lot on company websites and in their publicity. They see it as a fundamental virtue, conjuring up images of a tight-knit unit built on the kind of intimate trust you couldn’t necessarily take for granted outside your blood relations.
To a greater or lesser extent, this may be true. It depends on individual factors. One definition of a family business is:
A commercial organisation in which management decisions are made or influenced by multiple generations of a family.
Generally, you think of a family business as having various family members officially involved or employed in it. But really, every business is a family business, because the family of the founder or owner is affected by the running of the business.
Business pressures are the cause of stresses and strains in family life. Over half of business owners have experienced poor mental health, working long hours and facing financial worries. Inevitably, this can impact their lives at home and therefore the lives of their loved ones.
Consequently, regardless of whether an enterprise is officially set up as a family business, the family is still a highly significant factor.
The hidden struggle
A problem shared is a problem halved — it’s a glib saying and a cliché but, like most clichés, it contains a kernel of truth.
When business owners and founders fail to share their worries, they seal up the safety valve. The pressure builds. And even though they may think they’re hiding their struggles successfully, the people around them can sense that something’s wrong.
This creates tension. The tension builds. Something must give…
How do you depressurise the situation?
Let’s think about business values. A great many businesses state that trust is one of their core values — building trust, being trustworthy, creating trusted relationships with their customers etc.
Trust comes from transparency. Or rather, without transparency, you can’t have trust.
So, to depressurise their lives, business owners must be transparent at home. They must trust in the relationships they have to support them.
“But my wife/partner/kids doesn’t/don’t understand the business,” you reply.
It’s not about your loved ones understanding the nuts and bolts. It’s about them feeling invested in your success because they know why you’re doing it: for them.
Reframe your purpose
Consider your why:
• Why did you start this business in the first place?
• Why do you still dedicate so much of your time and energy to it?
• Why do you care about it?
In business, as in life, our values can shift. We change as human beings and the world around us changes too.
You might, for example, not have had a family when you started your business, or had a different lifestyle. Your business might have been your chief focus, and you didn’t have as many other, personal commitments to fulfil.
That initial hunger for success at pretty much any cost often dissipates. Life has a habit of getting in the way of our visions and ideals.
Don’t measure success in terms of how well you stick to your original plan. Measure it instead by how well you adapt your business vision to fit in with your evolving lifestyle. What you want from business and what you want from life form a dynamic relationship: there must be give and take, adaptability and compromise.
Flexibility is a sign of strength.
Reconnect your business with who you are as a person and what your family needs you to provide — reframe your purpose to reflect the value your business should offer as a provider.
The next time you start to think about what will make your business more successful, stop. Pause and take a step back. Then ask yourself:
Is my business’s success linked to what I want to achieve in life and how I provide for my family?
Challenge your perspective
Empathy is a prized quality, but it’s much misunderstood. It’s not some cuddly quality to show you care about someone else’s feelings. True empathy means understanding what it’s like to be that other person, to see things from their perspective.
Typically, it also requires you to challenge your own viewpoint. As a business owner, seeing things from your family’s perspective can be hard — they don’t necessarily see the business’s nuts and bolts, only the emotional impact it has on you and them.
You cannot afford to dismiss this non-business perception of your business. It has real, day-to-day consequences for your family’s wellbeing.
Every business is a family business.
The clarity to connect
The Agnentis approach to business growth is about getting to know you inside out, blending intensive coaching with strategic financial know-how and guidance.
We help you gain the clarity to connect your personal needs to your business growth to support you, your family and your business.
Contact us today for coffee and a chat.
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