The Benefits of Pragmatism in Business
Everyone’s ideas of a dream life and a dream business are different. As mentioned in last week’s post on thinking your way to a successful life, a little pragmatism goes a long way and it helps even further when creating a successful business.
Focusing on what is most important both in your life and your business and looking ahead to the consequences of your actions, not only makes sense, but is absolutely necessary if you are serious about your success. Each aspect of your business makes up the whole – marketing, finance, products and services, your customer base. Though you need to be flexible in order to make your products and services attractive to a variety of people, your focus needs to be on the final result.
Having your own business, while there to help your customers, is to mainly be of benefit to yourself. It’s to make a difference in your life and the lives of your family members. Being realistic about the reasons for your business, how you run it and what the outcome will be, means you can look at the way things really are, take the steps to change the things that need to be changed and be honest with yourself about what those are and why they need to be changed.
While a philosophical view of business seems to be popular at the moment, philosophy is not going to where you need to be to get what you want from your business. Work will do that, so will taking the time to educate yourself and organize your business to the best level of your ability. If you can’t do that, bring in a team in that can do it for you. It will be the smartest money you ever spend. Thinking pragmatically means you don’t spend time on the superfluous and unnecessary, you go straight to the important details, the ones that will make a difference in how well your business does, the details that will lead to success.
Anything that has positive implications for your business is something that you strive to do while ignoring those tasks that aren’t needed to get your business where you want it to go. Satisfying your customers and having tried and true solutions in place for any problems that arise, discovering how your business flows best and automating what you can, should all be priority tasks. One aside – don’t necessarily rely totally on technology and digital. Should there be an outage, even a short term one, this can affect your business negatively. Being there when no one else is available, is a big advantage that you should always keep in mind.
Pragmatism comes down to being efficient, wise with your time and having the ability to say no. It’s being open to change when necessary and knowing when what you have is enough. It’s a balancing act that many have problems with but it will keep you ahead of the competition.
© Chris Draper, DemGen Inc. 2014
