Company Plateau To Plunge: Helping You Find Room To Grow

The climb out of the Grand Canyon is one of the world's epic walks. Over three days of sweat and toil, you scale rock nearly 2bn years old, edging up and out of the Colorado river valley. Destination plateau.

Plateau's are unforgiving. They are hard reached and, inevitably, they end; acceptably level will cede to a mighty fall, be that a new river valley or low, flat grasslands. After the rise, the fall.

As is true in nature, so in business.

The Company Plateau

Plateau in your business comes without the majesty of the Colorado river. It wears the clothes of a slow, steady state existence: sales, energy, conditions, mood, motivation all largely flat.

Hardwired into our psyche, however, is the knowing that every plateau precedes a fall.

If you're atop a plateau, this will be you. A fall is coming. Not necessarily clear when or how far, but coming it is.

Do you wait? Or do you act?

Your Choice

We're hard wired to hold on. Change does not come easy. We build our company working out what works and repeating it on and on, over and over. Plateau is the cruel reward for this success; at some point what worked yesterday will be detrimental to tomorrow. Surviving plateau requires an unlearning; it requires you to stop doing some things you previously took for granted. You'll be required to shift ideas and beliefs you had held true. In some form, you must revisit what you do, for who, how and why.

What Is Your ‘Most Important Thing’?

Wizardy old Buddhist sage, Suzuki Roshi, says it right; when asked by a student what is the most important thing he replied "the most important thing is to know the most important thing".

You might not think a Buddhist sage has much to teach the company owner. You'd be wrong. But that's a discussion for another day.

In your business, the most important thing(s) are your most important customers; the people who buy what you do with the most vigour, enthusisam and delight, time after time, over and over. Their love for you is clear. These are your most important thing, expressing their love with each download, with each product bought. They are your most valuable too, by money invested and words spread. For the social media shy, these people can be your online voice and advocate; they can spread your message far and wide.

From Plateau To New Verdant Farmland.

Chasing more and harder will not get you off the plateau. Refining, reducing and simplifying will. Coming home to these most important folk is your start point.

Lao Tzu - like Suzuki Roshi, the old ideas are best - said a whole and beautiful life can be lived in a small village. What is your small village? Who are your most important people? How are you in touch? How do they know you love them?

Don't take them for granted. That never works out well.

Happy customers (hide multitude of sins) = happy company = optimised energy = virtuous circle of new and more happy customers. And so on.