Top 5 Easiest Ways to Fail

03 Jan Top 5 Easiest Ways to Fail

I’m always asked what are biggest “pitfalls” of business that lead many businesses to fail. I came upon this list and here are the top 5 reasons why we fail.

1. Absence of trust. People want to be around those that they trust. In business, trust is everything. If you have not established trust in your business relationships, your business will fail. This includes having consistent follow through and being open with others. Being transparent and vulnerable are the easiest ways to build trust in any relationship.

2. Fear of conflict. Too often people think of conflict as a negative concept. If you do not embrace conflict, then you will not reach your full potential. As soon as you can address conflict, then you can learn from it and move past it. If this is an area of development for you, reach out to me and I can help you implement some easy conflict resolution strategies to get you started.

3. Lack of commitment. Getting to where you want to be in business (and in life) takes hard work and a healthy dose of sweat equity. You have to be focused and dedicated on putting forth the effort. Nothing worth having will come easy, so stop trying to find a shortcut. When you put in the work, you will learn and grow to reach high levels of success.

4. Fear of accountability. If you want to be a peak performer, you must welcome accountability. This is one of the few ways that you will continue to grow and propel yourself forward. When people shy away from or avoid being held accountable, it is usually because they either can’t or refuse to live up to what is expected of them. For your business, you want to have employees that ask to be held accountable and are willing to go the extra mile to hold their feet to the fire, when needed.

5. Inattention to results. Do you know where you stand within your company? Compared to your competition? To succeed in anything you do, you must make tracking and measuring a top priority. How else will you have an accurate picture of how well (or how poorly) you and your teams are performing? If you don’t have a tracking system in place now, get one and stick to updating and evaluating the results to determine what areas need improvement to take your performance to the next level.

For this week, go through this list and identify which “failing” principles you may be doing and correct them now, before they have a chance to derail your progress in 2019.