Transcript #151 Three Red-flags Confusion is Creeping into Your Business

Arise2Live Podcast

Transcript for Episode #151  ‘Three Red-flags Confusion is Creeping into Your Business’

Intro:  Welcome to Arise2Live Podcast, episode 151. Today Scott talks about a challenging topic, how to spot if indecision and uncertainty is creeping into your business and impacting results. Arise2Live’s purpose is to bring clarity and perspective so you can have freedom in both your business and family life.

Let’s get started with today’s episode.

Scott R. Weaver:    Hello everyone, thank you so much for listening in today. My name is Scott Weaver, the Arise2Live business coach and this episode 151… on the topic of recognizing the red-flags that confusion is creeping into your business. Yeah, it is a subtle and challenging thing.

Please subscribe to this podcast and share this episode with others or leave a comment. I’m always glad to hear from you. Check out the show notes on the Arise2Live website for outlines and links. And a big thanks for all the people and well-wishers who expressed their congratulations for reaching 150 episodes—I’m most appreciative, very grateful.

Today, I am both excited and dreading this podcast. Excited that sharing these red-flags of confusion could have a huge, positive impact on your business once you become aware of them.  I’m dreading it because I might have bitten off more than I can chew. This is a tough topic to explain in a podcast, at least for me.

Oh man, when will I ever learn?  Maybe I should do a podcast on the three steps on ‘How to put a postage stamp on an envelope’.  But that’s not what the Arise2live podcast is about.  I feel that it’s important to talk about real life, things that we face in our business because facing up to things is how we grow better each day.  Unfortunately, some things are often hard to describe and talk about. The subtlety and insidiousness of confusion is one of those topics.

My goal here is that you will be able to recognize the red-flags of confusion because these things can end up costing you a lot of money.

Every experienced business owner or executive has been there before. A place where good things like business growth and success somehow morphs into the unexpected. There’s a transition, change, or setback throws off the compass needle. Not by much, but just enough to get off course that you don’t notice until 6 months or a year down the road. Then even bigger uncertainty and overwhelm takes hold.

I’ll give a strong statement now: All business owners can become confused.

I know that nobody likes to be told we are vulnerable to confusion. After all, aren’t we masters of our own business, we control everything don’t we?

Now please bear with me. This is subtle, a subtle topic. Confusion is hard to see or detect or even describe, but it has real impact on the results of your profits.

In this episode I’m not going to talk about the obvious cases of uncertainty and confusion that business owners face from time to time. No, not talking here about facing the uncertainty of launching a new business or like when the Covid pandemic first hit and the government locked-down businesses. Those are obvious cases of confusion, uncertainty, and anxiety.  Things about what is going to happen. No, I’m not talking about that level of confusion.

I will be talking about a much more insidious, more subtle version of confusion and uncertainty that comes to the business owners. Often the first clue is a feeling that things are just off and decisions are taking longer than normal, but you can’t put a finger on why. Of course if you mention it, everybody around you tells you that everything is huncky-dory.  If you don’t take action on your feeling, you could end up paying a very high price because this type of confusion is very expensive.

My goal is for you to be able to recognize the red-flags of confusion that is creeping into your business before you get the feeling things are off.

So, how do we business owners become unknowingly confused?     5:08

Maybe that is not the right question.  Experienced business owners recognize the early signs of uncertainty that is starting to impact the performance of their business.  They know that in times of transition or an unexpected setback, whether in business or in life, those things can cause doubts and uncertainty.

They know we have pleasant phrases for this: “No worries, it’s just a speed bump,” “We will get back our mojo,”  “Man, so-so is giving us problems, let’s get rid of him,” “You’ll bounce back quickly.” However, for business owners, sugar coating the situation can’t hide our self-doubts that lead to worry about the future. Worry leads to waiting and indecision which ultimately leads to missed opportunities and mismanagement. This slippery slope is subtle and can catch us unaware in its nasty trap.  I’ve fallen into it.  I know many other business owners who have fallen into it.

I will make another strong statement: “If you are experiencing any type of transition now, whether in your business or in life, you are experiencing some kind of confusion.”

It might be a low level confusion, but visibility into the future is limited and therefore there is going to be some uncertainty and uncertainty always has a component of confusion.

And this is to be expected. In many sport games, the coach can take a timeout to remove confusion among the players or use halftime to regroup and nobody faults them for it. If sport coaches are allowed to take timeouts to regroup, why can’t business owners?  The secret is we can.  But often our pride and our ego and faulty expectations lead us to think that we need to be the hero, to always know the answer, to see into the future more clairvoyant than Cassandra from ancient Troy.

The point here is that there is a nasty, subtle kind of confusion that creeps in because of two reasons: 1) transition or change 2) our egos blind us.

What is confusion?       7:35

It might be a good time to take a brief moment to define what confusion is. Now again, I’m not talking about the major and obvious kind of mental confusion, but the unclarity that can take its toll on a business performance before we recognize it.

At its basic level, confusion is difficulty understanding a situation or having unclear thoughts that leads to uncertainty or even bewilderment.

 In business there are at least two levels of confusion:           

The first level is the day-to-day effort where something has to be done and it is not clear. This is seen in new business startups or perhaps a new product launch. You know where you want to go, just that the technical details are getting in the way.  For example, let’s say a goal or task has five steps to do, but you don’t know how to do steps three and four. Once this type of uncertainty and confusion is spotted, most business owners will roll-up their sleeves and go figure out it and go do it.

The second level of confusion is regarding future vision and it’s much more insidious. This is where you know how to do things, you have been successful in the past, but the direction of the company is on auto-pilot or you don’t realize that a new destination is needed. This shows up in day-to-day operations as going smoothly but sales are off and the employees are mindlessly doing the same thing or every employee is trying to fix things on their own.  This price of confusion becomes very expensive over time.

Oops, I just gave away a red-flag. Well, let’s just jump in.

Here are three red-flags that confusion is creeping into your business. There is no order to this list.

1. Confusion in our future vision prevents us from fully committing, producing lack-luster results.
   This can be a very subtle ball-and-chain for the business owner, and any business leader. If you have any uncertainty in your vision, that uncertainty is amplified to distorted fuzziness in your business and employees. If you halfheartedly run your business, then the law of entropy says your team and business will have much less energy. In other words, if the business owner with the compass can’t give the heading or provide the inspiration, where is the team and business going?  That’s a tough question.
2. Confusion sets the wrong race pace in our business, either too slow or too fast to win.    10:23
   Without a clear picture of the future, a business owner can set a business operation’s pace that is too slow or too fast in order to win in the long run.  This subtle confusion can set a fast pace, maybe to grow at all cost because nobody knows what else to do or keeping busy at something because people don’t know exactly where to go.  Or the pace of decision-making slows to a halt in search of more detailed information to solve a compass direction question. Things like focusing on purchasing equipment itself is more important than the purpose of the equipment. The business can really get out of hand if the owner let’s things go on auto-pilot.
3. Confusion causes dedicated employees to rush off in multiple directions and end up tripping over each other, or worse, fighting for their own goals. Role Confusion      11:17
   Without the clear picture of the future, day-to-day problems become bigger than they should. The business owner is fighting way too many fires and starts falling down the slippery slope of self-doubts leading to worry about the future. Then worry leads to waiting and indecision, which leads to missed opportunities and mismanagement and frustrated employees. The clue to the red flag is a lagging company performance. This might be seen in the decision process to buy a particular piece of equipment. For example, when the growth goals or the customer avatar is unclear, there is confusion among the employees on the specs of equipment to buy and the business owner is called in to make a tech judgement or settle a dispute.

   To experienced business owners this inability for employees to make the right choice is a red flag that there is confusion in the overall vision. Maybe from a lack of a future directions or lack of communication but there is something going on that  needs to be fixed.
   Again, I’m not talking about things like figuring how to buy a piece of equipment on a budget, but which equipment to buy in the first place to meet customer needs.

In closing, I hope that this podcast identifies a few red-flags so you can spot the dangers early on before the cost of confusion creep becomes too expensive.

We talked about how transitions, change, and setbacks can trigger a subtle type of confusion that can directly impact your business.  This is an insidious confusion that often creeps in because transition or change in the business or life and at the same time, the business owner is blinded by ego.

It’s not an if confusion creep arrives, but when.

Experienced business owners can see the early red-flags and can set aside their ego to make counter-measures against confusion creep.

Whatever situation you are in, I ask you to take some time to see if you are seeing any of the following three red flags .

1. You, the owner—are you feeling not fully committed and experiencing lackluster results in your business? Maybe you’re not having bad results but not what they could be. It may be good for you to check your long-term vision of your business and your life.
2. Are you sensing your business pace is too fast or too slow for long-term victory? Is somebody else setting the pace in your business?  This could be indicating a confusion over the future direction or just indecision among your employees.
3. Are your most dedicated employees off doing their own things and not contributing to a unified goal? If so, what vision and goals are you communicating with your employees?

Now, the enemy of confusion creep is clarity. Have clear eyes. Communicate with simplicity. Have a crystal-clear vision because clarity helps you Arise2Live.

If you are experiencing confusion creep because of an outdated business vision, Scott has released a new coaching package on creating your vision story that aligns business and life.  Race into the future with a clear vision and direction.  Check out the details at arise2live.com/vision.