Beware the Black Holes in Business!

4 Black holes in business to be aware of…

In this Blog I’d like to take a few moments of your time to alert you to something that is quite possibly sapping you of one or more of your resources – Black holes in your business.

A Black hole is simply described as an area of spacetime that exhibits such a strong gravitational effect that nothing can escape from inside it – not even light.

There is a boundary to a black hole none as the “event horizon” the point at which light cannot escape the pull of the hole – often stated as being similar to going over Niagra Falls in a canoe!

By now you are probably asking yourself “What on Earth has such a celestial entity to do with my business”?  Well the answer is that we all encounter Black holes in our business lives and they come in various different shapes and sizes and suck in our resources to a point where it requires a huge amount of determination and raw will power to pull away from them.

Some examples of the Business Black hole are:

The Task Hole: This can be a relevant or irrelevant activity that distracts you from your main purpose of your day, something you prefer to do that allows your mind to trick itself into thinking you are doing something that is more important than it is. These tasks are often plentiful in number and once within your event horizon their pull is so strong that it takes a strong self will to put them to one side and stay on task.

The Information Hole: These are the people that come into our lives and take seek information from us, information that they could get from public sources with just a shade more work themselves. They may be asking for contact details, a date, time or venue for a meeting, or a link to a third party.

They keep coming back with similar requests on a regular basis and before you can spot it happening you are almost acting as an unpaid PA to them and their business. 

The ever-increasing number of requests pulls on our time and can effect our concentration on our own tasks for the day. Many often have a charming personality and we have to really steel ourselves in order to start declining and to override our natural tenancy to want to help.

The Tec Hole: Isn’t modern technology wonderful? Computers, laptops, Smart phones, WiFi, TV on-line at any time of the day! Getting caught in the pull of technology is a wonderful way of having time sucked out of your life and reducing your daily efficiency and effectiveness.

Make sure that you control your smart tec and not the over way around, each time we watch just one more funny animal clip on social media is another few minutes lost earning our living by supporting our clients – avoid being distracted and sucked in!

The Ideas, Information or Skills Hole:  Perhaps the hardest one of all to avoid and yet, in many ways, the easiest one to spot. Also comes under the heading of ‘could you just…’.

These is where your energy, creativity and/or skills are taken up by someone in need of your commercial service who, for whatever reason, are unable or unwilling to pay for it. They may; seek a ‘one-to-one’ meeting after hearing you at a Networking Group, they may ask you if you could just read through or review something done by a third party, they may have a loooooooong telephone call with you, they may enter into an exchange of e-mails seeking your advice or guidance. In whatever guides this happens they are sucking in your creativity, your skills, your time all whilst preventing you from focussing on potential and actual paying customers.

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These are just a few examples, there are more such as the Negativity Hole, and we all need to be aware of them. We also need to set and know our own limitations of how far we will go to help someone and be very aware that we do not pass the event horizon and find we cannot escape from the pull of whatever it is that is draining our energy.

Please now stop for a moment or two and think about who might be impacting on your business/life in any of the above ways and on how you intend to manage that impact – many thanks for reading this Blog, please leave a comment (if you have the time!) and I hope you will drop in again soon.