Your business needs you at 40,000 feet!

Today I spent a second day in a boardroom with my business partner Chris and a business strategy coach discussing our company ProTraining.com. We decided to take on a third party company to facilitate some strategy sessions in order to evaluate our business and determine where we are today, and where we need to be going tomorrow.

I've not been through such an intense strategy session before, and although it was an exhausting exercise, the end result is everything we could have imagined and more, and has gone a long ways to help us refine a vision that we both believe in and can continue to carry forward.

After thinking about what we went through in two days, and what we accomplished, the thing that continually surprises me is how much a few engaged minds can accomplish and sort out in less than 2 days of concentrated effort.

The other thing that I've come to realize, that is probably a weakness of most small, busy organizations, is that it is so easy to fall into the trap of spending all of your time working IN your company (day to day operations), and not at the 40,000 foot level working ON your company. Some might think that this level of thinking isn't really that necessary in a small company....I beg to differ. It might be tough. It might be seemingly impossible. But every time we visit the 40,000 foot level, there is most definitely a payoff.

Try and remember what those creative, entrepreneurial days were like when you first started your business. If you haven't been there in a while, force yourself to go back there. Do what it takes. Hire a coach. Whatever it is, take the time. Trust me, it will make a difference.