Strategies For Resilience & Resolution: 4Dimensional Assessment - Conciliation

Sigrid Caroline Schroder, J.D. - US/CAN (877) 462-4035

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CLARITY 
AT THE 
HIGHEST LEVELS® 
FOR ENTREPRENEURS
 

 

IT'S A RACE:

Entrepreneurship sometimes seems like an extreme sport.  One can feel alone out there, even when one has a team.  You as the entrepreneur are inevitably spread thin, and at then end of the day, or in the middle of the night, it all comes down to you:  what you can envision, imagine and do.  However large your business gets, it still comes down to you.  Please read my Harvard Business Review article, "Small Ponds Aren't For Everyone", at the link to the left.  I know many others like you.  I understand.  
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YOU WRESTLE WILD HORSES
When wild horses threaten to drag you off-program, call me.  When outlier issues distract you from your work and undermine your plan, you need help before they can consume you.  You do what you do well.  You have your model honed.  You attend to the plan, the industry and the technology, high or low.  You juggle your time and balance demands.  But sometimes it feels as though the world will not let you just get it done.   Equipment breaks, people leave, systems stall, a virus hits the network and weather disrupts the world.  And then the real stuff hits:  just when your buffer of time for distractions is depleted, real trouble hits.  A supplier is disrupted, a key customer hits a wall, your lender changes terms and someone is infringing on your space.  You have time for what you do and what you need to know. I t is a struggle to wrestle the time and concentration free to understand the surprises and looming outlier issues. I can help. Whether contending with the other side's refusal or inability to make good on terms, disruption of your work, or interference with your customers or team, let's deal with it early.
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YOU DO THE SAME THING AGAIN AND AGAIN
At a certain point a well worn trail becomes a rut.  Even if it's the path which has led you to success, eventually it won't.  I can help you identify both unhelpful habit and profitable change. A  major challenge for an entrepreneur is to not get trapped in habits.  Doing the same thing the same way ad infinitum will eventually trip you up.  Hard.  How do you break free?  The lean entrepreneurial model means that you are short on people, time and radar.  You do indeed need processes, methods and procedures which work again and again.  When these work well, their success can still become a trap:   You miss the subtle weaknesses, overlook the flaws or don't see external changes about to wipe competitive advantage from your books.  You don't prepare to adapt.  You need to analyze room for change.  I can help.
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IT TAKES TEAMWORK
More than likely, if you have had time, you have built a team, but teams run thin in the entrepreneurial world.   The right mix of skill sets can be hard to find and expensive to add.  You have gaps.  I can find and bridge those gaps, help where you run a little blind or when you need a sounding board to determine whether you are seeing what you are seeing and doing what you think and need to be doing.  I can help you triangulate missing support.   In lean entrepreneurial  teams what I see most is neglect of  the outside world. Teams not only overfocus on doing what they do, they fail to objectively analyze the opportunities and the threats.  From economic forward thinking to direct and indirect competition, they miss the creeping trends and eroding barriers.  Entrepreneurs and their teams tend to view competition very personally, watching a competing shop or a handful of people they know personally, talking to themselves.  They overlook their changing need for innovation until they're behind the wave and are so rapt in changing a corner of the world, that they not only miss the creeping flood, they miss the asteroid.
Image©Fifranck.Fotolia

 

 

GETTING TO THE NEXT LEVEL 
People are good at different things.  For some the challenge of starting up and doing everything themselves is what business is all about.  I can help when that no longer works.  We call this moving on to the next level.  As big as the business may get, some  entrepreneurs cannot move up.  They cannot detach from the day to day and feel each delegation is a wrench.  They may hire staff; they may outsource; but when it comes to the day to day, they have to be right in there touching everything.  Sometimes in the progression of growth, no one quite notices this problem.  They notice all the other problems and wonder why they are all working so very hard.  It is because the founder is still right in there, at the top, in the middle and down there on the ground, possibly undoing what was done days before.  No order may be an order very long and no delegation may be an order.  I can help you distinguish this-- and determine whether the business is ready, champing at the bit, to move on to the next level and how.
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