Being reflective doesn’t just mean thinking about things before making a decision. You need to assess all of your options and analyze how best to move forward for the benefit of your startup. Take a look at these aspects of your business that you might want to ponder and decide whether you may need to be a little more reflective and embrace change.

If you are one of those individuals who analyze every situation in your personal life, it’s time to try and morph this side of your personality with your work life. By being more analytical, you can often come up with creative solutions to problems, mitigate risk more effectively, and understand the workings of your business more.

As an entrepreneur, you know just how important it is to move with the times. Business is very rarely a stagnant process, and you may find yourself needing to change for a number of reasons. Perhaps your branding has become old hat, maybe you need to market your wares or services to a new demographic, or maybe you have to adapt to a more efficient business model or methodology. Whatever it is that you need to do to make your business more profitable will be worth it in the long run. However, it’s also important to make the right change. This is why it is vital that you are a reflective leader.

File Management

Gone are the days of using your computer hard drive to store important files and documentation. Nowadays the mythical cloud that no one fully understands but knows holds unlimited storage is the place to keep your files. Management of your files can occur in the same way as in any hard drive or (if you are old enough to remember) floppy disk or USB.

Managing your files also mean creating a system that mitigates errors, duplications and risk. By honing a bespoke master data management system for your business, you can have all files, information and contact details in one place. This enables you to draw accurate information from this source to complete whatever task needed. If you don’t have a data management system other than an alphabetized list of files, you might want to look into a more sophisticated platform.

Outsourcing

While many entrepreneurs still view outsourcing as the work of evil, being able to use your initiative and delegate mundane tasks or duties that you are unfamiliar with to offsite specialists shows business acumen. It makes no sense to try and sort the search engine optimisation of your blog and website when you know very little about key wording and metatags and can pay a specialist who will take on board your requirements and fulfill them. At the same time, why spend your Thursday afternoons rifling through payroll trying to calculate pension contributions and tax obligations when you could be working on more pressing aspects of your business vision.

Be reflective and work out how best to utilize your time. This might mean outsourcing and spending your money wisely to increase your productivity.

Staffing

Hiring and firing staff members can be a pretty stressful experience. Recruitment takes time and energy, and you are forever worrying about choosing the right candidate. Sourcing personnel can take you away from more pressing activities, and can leave you rushing to fill a position. To maximize your business success, you might want to consider hiring the services of a recruitment agency who have a wealth of talent already on their books. Having this talent pool at their disposal means that you could find your next marketing manager, accountant or human resources advisor without having to go through the rigmarole of putting out a job advert and shortlisting.

All you have to do is meet with the recruiter, give them a detailed list of your non-negotiable requirements and wait for them to find you a handful of potential candidates. Then all you have to do is interview to find the perfect person for the job. This in itself can be tricky. Don’t go for the crazy questions just to be novel or kooky. Ask the important questions, introduce some scenario based questions and see how the candidates get on with your other staff members. Creating a cohesive team is one of the most important aspects of maximizing business success.

While you might not consider yourself the most reflective leader, it might be time to try and analyze your approach to situations. With a little tweaking and by embracing change, your business could become even more profitable.