Mastering Reflection And Using It As A Tool For Business Growth

Reflection is a process that we often avoid for fear of having to dwell on unfavourable or unbecoming situations in the past.  However, I have come to understand that the act of reflection is an overlooked and underrated tool for both personal and business growth.

In 2023, we have grown to embrace ‘hustle culture’ which promotes the idea of working long hours and sacrificing aspects of life in order to succeed.  Embedded within ‘hustle culture’ is the presumption that there is a correlation between how hard you hustle and the success you reap.  Reflection has taught me that this isn’t completely accurate.

As a business owner or people leader, it’s easy to unintentionally subscribe to the hustle culture because you’re trying to do it all for the benefit of the business and the benefit of the team we lead.  

I for one have unintentionally subscribed to this culture for longer than I realised because I like to just ‘get stuff done’ – as I’m sure many other business owners and people leaders do.  However, the real danger of hustle culture is that we give our time and energy to the wrong parts of the business.  We do what we need to do, to get it all done but we are blind to the bigger picture.  

The process of reflection can assist you in taking stock of how your time has been spent and what proportion of your time in the past month or past quarter was spent providing non-revenue generating support, generating revenue or creating growth and future revenue i.e. the bigger picture and the three fundamental aspects of a functional business. 

We categorise a functional business into three colours:

•  the red (non-revenue generating support);
• the blue (revenue generation);
• the black (future revenue aka strategy and growth).

Now, reflecting on some of my busiest periods (in a former life), I can very clearly see that at times (actually most of the time), I only focussed on getting through the revenue of today (the blue) with no consideration for the growth or revenue of tomorrow (the black).  

Because of this, there was a real risk that as a result of no time spent on strategy or growth, in the future, I could have very well woken up one day with no revenue of today to actually work on and generate.

Taking the time to reflect, whether that be on the business or on the team you lead and recognising where time and energy has been spent, will allow you to reset and identify what is lacking in the business or in the team and where time and energy is needed.  

As business coaches, we often work with clients to ensure that a business or a team is fully functional.  We do this by getting our clients to take time out to stop, reflect and then map out the business workflows and allocate these to the red, the blue and the black.  Whilst doing this with our clients, we get a front row seat to witnessing our clients unlock growth in their business or in their teams.