MEMBERS IN PRACTICE
NEWS February 2012
What do you really want? I have been working with several clients recently reviewing their business plans and working on various ‘what if’ scenarios. This has got me thinking about what motivates business owners and impacts on their decision making. Over the years I have had clients who have expressed goals for their business, which it turns out were not their goals at all, but goals they believed they should have. One particular example was a very focused, dynamic and forward looking client who was (and still is) a super business person. Their business was becoming successful and they had some surplus cash to spend. During one of our regular reviews they expressed the wish to get a new car. Now I already knew they also had plans to expand their business and to buy a new house. Given there was only the money available to do one of these things, I asked which was the most important to them to do. They immediately said expanding their business was paramount – which, incidentally, I knew they would say. They have since gone on to do just that. It turned out that the reason they wanted a new car was not because it was particularly important to them, but because they had picked up along the way that successful business people have new cars. The lesson of this story is to look hard at what motivates you. What does success look like to you? As members in practice (MiPs) we are very tuned into helping our clients explore what is important to them and helping them achieve what they want, but I am not sure we are always very clear on what we want. After all it is your business and should be delivering against your idea of success, not someone else’s. That is why we start businesses in the first place rather than carrying on in employment where we are working to achieve someone else’s dreams. Fiona Bevan Member, MiP Panel