Chapter Thirty - How To Grow Your Business Without Jeopardizing Your Sanity, Health or Family Life - Judy Whalen
"We Wish We Had Known - Everyday Tips from Consultants to Grow Your Business"
#Work Life Harmony
#Values Leadership
How To Grow Your Business Without Jeopardizing Your Sanity, Health or Family Life
JUDY WHALEN
Center for Strategic Change
Strategy, Market Research, and Communications
CenterForStrategicChange.com Judy@CenterForStrategicChange.com
Do you want to grow your business or non-profit?
What thought raced through your mind as you read that question? Was it something like, “Of course.” Or was it a strong, ear-splitting, “Yes, Yes, YES, YES, YESSS!!!!” Or was it more of a cautious “Yes, maybe, but can I manage more? I’m already so busy.” Or just “Hmmm. If I do grow, what about my family? Will I have time to spend with them?”
Leaders I work with tell me they want to grow. They perceive growth as a measure of success or sometimes a means to an end. While most do grow their organization, I’ve observed other parts of their life either put on hold or disintegrate. I’ve seen stress go unmanaged, energy be depleted, health issues develop, or relationships ignored.
We hear and see a lot in the media about work life balance. Balance implies that everything is equal. Think about two children sitting on a teeter totter. They are in balance if they are similar in weight. But if one child is heavier, the lighter child is higher while the heavier child is closer to the ground. They are out of balance. That image kept cropping into my mind as I juggled building my business, raising a family, and caring for my aging parents. And it continues being a vivid image to this day.
It finally occurred to me life is not about balance. Life is about HARMONY. All you need is a sick child or family member to derail your plans for your entire day. Or a client who calls and needs immediate assistance. Or an unexpected rush deadline that has to be met.
Creating harmony in your life, your family, and your work reduces stress. To achieve harmony requires a bit of strategic thinking about what guides your decisions and actions.
Here’s a tip I wish I had known when I was juggling a family, aging parents, and my business. I wish I had known I could grow my business without jeopardizing my family life, sanity or health.
Get crystal clear about your personal core values and build those values into the foundation for your business’s core values.
Your core values are those fundamental beliefs that guide your decisions, actions and behavior. They manifest in choices you make, in the manner in which you treat people…and yourself.
Your personal core values are typically influenced by your family, your faith community, your experiences.
Your personal core values provide the ethical framework for your decisions and action, determine the norms and standards for acceptable behavior, are enduring and slow to change, and shape your life, your family life, and your work life.
To get clear on your core values, write your core values in a list. Describe how each value manifests in your life. Let’s use “integrity” as an example. You may say, “I live my life with integrity.” What does that mean to you? Honesty? Treating people respectfully? Trustworthy? Then review your list. Continue refining your list of how they manifest in your life until you are comfortable with it.
Use your personal core values as the foundation for your business or nonprofit core values. Make sure the two are aligned.
Your business’s core values guide decisions about which services to offer; who to seek as clients or customers; what behavior you expect from employees; how you will treat customers, vendors, and employees; which opportunities to pursue; who you collaborate with, and more.
Your business’s core values form the culture of your organization. Getting the framework for your organization’s culture right from the beginning is important. Changing a culture after it is ingrained requires a huge amount of energy, effort and focus. It can derail productivity, profits and purpose.
Aligning your personal and business core values can significantly reduce conflict, anxiety and stress. It creates harmony. Alignment allows your energy to flow and your mind to be unencumbered allowing you to grow your business without jeopardizing your sanity, health or family life!
JUDY WHALEN
Judy is a strategic growth expert. Business and nonprofit leaders hire Judy because they want to grow their organization and need a strategic growth plan to provide the clarity about their marketplace so they can make smart decisions.
The Center for Strategic Change, launched in 1992, specializes in strategy development, market research, and communicating clients’ strategic initiatives to their key stakeholders.
Judy and her team design and facilitate strategic thinking sessions, complex strategic planning projects, market research studies, and provide board of directors’ governance training.
The Center for Strategic Change also offers online courses: Accelerate Your Business Growth Using Strategic Planning, Strengthen the Harmony Between Your Life, Family, and Work, and the three-part video series on governance for nonprofit boards of directors, Building the Effective Leadership Team.
Judy’s clients span the globe – from local entities to international organizations. She collaborates with clients in person and virtually.
