Every day we are forming new habits. Maybe you have the habit of checking your email first when you get into the office. Maybe you always sit at the same place to eat your lunch. Maybe you use the exact same coffee mug every day. Habits like these are not detrimental to your life or your business. However, we can unintentionally form bad habits in our business that blocks us from success. Here are 5 bad habits you need to replace right now.
Lack of Delegation:
Sometimes we try to take on too much. Pulling a 60 hour work week might be okay every once in a while but after some time both you and your business will suffer. Is there a task you are doing that someone with better expertise can handle? Invest in people that you can afford because your business will gain momentum much faster if you are not always bogged down with a variety of tasks piled up on your desk.
Decision Making:
Managers love to have control over the final decision making in their department or business. Often times the flow of the business can be slowed or completely stalled if all decisions have to be made by one person. Hire people you trust and then give them some authority to make some decisions for their department.
Being Reactive:
A company needs to have a vision and a goal for the future. However, organizations sometimes become so caught up the in day-to-day tasks, putting out the proverbial ‘office fires,’ and reaching for the low hanging fruit that they often lose sight of the overall picture. The company gets stuck in “survival mode.” Getting your team to focus back to goal-setting and strategic planning to meet those goals are a key element in moving the business forward.
Unproductive Activities:
Facebook, texting, and constantly checking emails are three of the larger components that take up work time. People justify that they are just going to “check really quickly,” but before they know it, they have lost 30 minutes. Others will try and multi-task which leads to more errors and more time lost. Make it a habit to only check your email and social media only a few times a day.
Fear:
Fear will hold anyone back from moving forward in their life. But an entrepreneur or manager can hold an entire business back. Fear of failure, fear of making a mistake, fear of upsetting other people are all emotions that take time and energy away from production, momentum, and success.
If you are experiencing any of these habits, the time to take action is right now. Make a list of the actions and habits that you no longer wish to have and then create a new list of goals you would like to replace those bad habits with. Break the goals down into daily steps that you can take towards evolving into the manager you want to become.
