Why Your Business Is Slowly Dying
(And How to Stop It)
Most businesses don’t fail overnight – they wither away because they stop improving. Frazer Mackay explains why Continuous Improvement is the key to long-term survival and how to make it work for your business.
My friends in Quality Management will be so happy with me for including this concept. I’m a huge advocate of Continuous Improvement (CI).
If we want to make our “What” better and stay ahead of the competition, then we have to assess our “How” and make changes. If we don’t, the competition will learn and overtake us. The concept of Continuous Improvement is essential to keeping the business “thing” special.
How many times have you seen businesses wither and die? Customers drift away, and a family restaurant closes. It’s normally because they didn’t apply any CI or adapt to changing circumstances.
The Hidden Asset
You know your product or your service inside out. You have sold customers your “thing” via your delivery model. All that hard work put into Business Development and sales, yet you still have the opportunity to mess things up.
If you don’t learn from your experiences, then you are wasting a massive asset and a resource that will enable you to stay ahead and maintain your advantages. It’s called Lessons Learned.
If customer relationships are pots of gold, then Lessons Learned are what protect those pots of gold from being stolen by others.
The Simplest Way to Improve
Nothing gives a customer a better feeling of being valued than seeing their comments, feedback, or even complaints being turned into improvements. By doing so, you’ve made the “What” bespoke to them – perfect.
So, let’s think about this. Imagine that you have just made a big sale. What do you do next? Bash on and get started with delivery?
Or you could take a little bit of time and ask the customer for their feedback to find out why they selected you for this work.
With this information, you will know the strengths and weaknesses of your proposal, and more importantly, you will also know the success criteria that the client will use to judge you at the end of delivery.
Two Simple Questions
Once your product/service has been provided, it’s pretty obvious to ask, “How did we do?”
It’s less common to ask the question midway through the delivery phase, “How are we doing?” but both questions will generate answers that reveal a lot of scope for improvement.
My advice is to ask these questions frequently and consistently, to consider the responses carefully, and to apply the changes that you think will result in benefits to the business.
Why This Matters
Whatever your technique may be, please don’t neglect CI; it’s vital to the long-term sustainability of any company. By improving “How,” you make “What” even stronger.
Success is addictive, but it only comes to those who are willing to adapt, change, and continuously improve.
The Business Wheel Is Complete
So, here we are. The wheel is complete. You have:
- Defined your “What”
- Identified your “Who”
- Established your “How”
- Mastered Business Development
- Learned to make the right sales using the Six C’s
- Committed to Continuous Improvement
What’s stopping you?
Well, there is one last part of the model that cannot be ignored: you! You are the lifeblood of this enterprise. You understand it better than anyone else. You walk the talk and live every moment of what is happening.
Some Final Advice:
- Never compromise on what you believe to be the key components of your success. Communicate these points to your staff and create a culture around them.
- Always consider fresh inputs and feedback, but follow your gut. Your mental dashboard is rarely wrong.
- Trust your instincts and try to trust others where you can.
- Hope is not a strategy.
- Wishful thinking is not a plan.
A Personal Note
I didn’t write this book to chase entrepreneurs or to make a quick buck. I wrote it because I’ve spent my career rescuing failing businesses and turning around underperforming teams. I’ve seen too many good ideas, innovative products, and dedicated teams fail simply because they lacked focus, poor guidance, or disillusioned management.
Everything in The Business Wheel is 100% original and self-generated. There is no copied theory here – just real-life experience and the practical techniques I developed over decades.
I’m offering advice, call it support if you like. I’ve written it as if I was mentoring, not talking down to, the reader.
Honestly, what I would really like out of this is just one message back saying that the book has helped someone.
You don’t get much these days for £9.99, so it’s certainly not a lot to pay for a whole career’s worth of lessons learned.
Good luck, and don’t give up!