Working in the business, to work on the business

The world feels wild atm and life sure does through some curve balls.

I’ve been thinking about the saying of “CEOs” needing to work on the business, rather than in the business. I completely agree with this as an ideal, but also sometimes life is not ideal.

Often what gets talked about in public are “the ideals”, yet the reality is very different. Sometimes you have to get stuck in and work in the business to get it into a state that you can work on the business! This can even happen after you think you’ve made it to “working on the business”.

And this has been my life for the past 9 months. I dropped everything to work in the business. To reacquaint myself with the team. To re-evaluate everything. To look at what we had and make decisions about what to do.

It’s been intense, but necessary. It’s meant be getting hands on. Having tough conversations. Working with people to make decisions. Having weekly 1:1’s with everyone in the business. And perhaps most importantly, creating a new culture, one decision and conversation at a time.

But now we have stability and growth, I’m ready to step back to work on the business. The next stage begins and it feels exciting.

I share this, partly for openness, but also as a reminder that our paths to business success is squiggly. It will never look like how others preach.

I also share it as acceptance, for myself. As a reflection on where I have been recently and where I’m heading to next.