Time for a Spring Clean?

I may be showing my age here, but back in the day it was a real thing to ‘do a spring clean’.  Some say that it originated in Iran where local people celebrated the new year with a cleaning frenzy known (roughly translated) as ‘shaking the house’!  Others say it was to do with Easter, and the idea of resurrection and rebirth.

Wherever it came from, you’d know it was that time, when the weather started to get warmer and women (yes of course it was always women) would be outside, beating their carpets to get rid of dust and dirt that had been accumulated over the winter.  You’d see windows being washed and thrown open, door steps being scrubbed (yes really), old unwanted items being thrown out, and every area of the house gone through with a fine tooth comb – a proper deep clean!

Wouldn't it be great if we had a similar spring clean of our business?

Rather than just ploughing on, living from day to day, reacting to things as they happen, planning only short term – maybe even accumulating clients, team members and systems that are a bad fit for our business… what if we stopped once a year, and had a good old clean up and clear out?  Got into that helicopter and had a really good look at the landscape of our business – the good, the bad, and the ugly of what we’d made, or allowed to, happen over the past 12 months.

Had a good look at our client base and rated our clients from profitable to costly, from a joy to work with, to a real pain for me and my team, from ideal to ‘should really let go’!

Had a really good think about our team and assessed them based on their time with us, their performance, and the level of trust we had in each of them. Asked ourselves who’s a good fit for the team, who’s right for it, and who am I settling for? Who causes me, and the rest of the team stress?  Who do I moan about when I get home? Who really needs to go?

Had a look at our systems – the consistency of our customer experience, our hiring and training, our feedback, our sales – and asked ourselves if we had one right way to for everything? If everything was done consistently day to day? If we could take even a day off and know that our business would run like clockwork without us?

What if we did all of this, and then acted on what we found – had that good clean up and clear out with our key team – really ‘shake the house’, ready for new growth in the year ahead? 

What might that annual spring clean do for your business?

Something to act on maybe?

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Marianne Page

Marianne is the author of three books, and is currently working on her fourth, whilst regularly writing her blog, we hope you enjoy it :-)

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