This past year, I had an experience that so many business owners and leaders can relate to. I created a well-thought-out business plan with all of the bells and whistles. I researched, vetted, documented, and hired the people I needed to successfully implement our 2022 business plan. As you can imagine, everything went perfectly, right?

Wrong. Within 6 months everything changed, and my plans basically evaporated. 

Give yourself some grace and time for rest

Looking back at it, I kept asking myself the same question: “did I really have to do all that?” I could have stayed where I was and avoided all of this extra effort, time, and especially cost. Fortunately, the demise of my plans aligned with Summer, which gave me time for a break, and quieted my mind for a few moments. This short break gave me time to give myself some grace and it allowed me to really consider what I was creating at Symplicity Communications. 

So to my business owners and leaders, does this situation sound familiar? If so, I just want to let you know IT’S OK! We have to accept that plans can simply go away, but it’s what we do after the plan fails that defines us. Sometimes the hardest thing to do after a failure is to give yourself a break. But rest can create magic.

Be Resilient

The external factors that I faced that contributed to the downfall of my plan are ones that are impacting nearly every business. A talent shortage has forced us to get accustomed to paying 30% more for someone with 30% less experience. Add in an increase in customer demand, and we’re left with the need to hire more people at these higher rates. During my moments of reflection, I realized that adding more people was not the answer for my business. I could see that there were so many manual processes that were not necessary, allowing us to save a lot of time and money by replacing these manual processes with technology and automation. 

Whether it’s your customer service, cybersecurity, or business analytics, Symplicity Communications can help you automate them and allow you to get quicker results, and not add to your labor expenses.  Having these automated processes allows you and your team to shift your focus on those plans that you weren’t able to finish before.

The point I want you to leave with is that plans can succeed, but they can also fail.  The lesson that I learned was that it wasn’t personal, and this failure brought me to a place where I was able to think creatively and come up with a better plan. But you’ll only see these things if you follow this pattern: 

• Grace
• Rest 
• Resiliency 
• REPEAT

If you want to hear more about automation for your business or any other projects, we’d love to chat with you.