We’re knee-deep in Q4, and preparing for 2025 is top-of-mind for many business owners. If you’re ready to set you, your team, and your organization up for success next year, consider preparing in these three ways.
1. Prepare yourself: Lead your business with more confidence, intention, and clarity in 2025
Most businesses reach an inflection point where their normal way of working isn’t… working. They’re not getting the same results as they used to, and it’s not always clear why. This symptom is a signal that the business is ready to graduate to the next level, but most business owners don’t inherently know how to lead their businesses (or themselves) through that change.
Professional management is a proven system for scaling a business from getting-through-the-day-to-day to thriving-for-the-long-term. It helps business owners, leadership teams, and the whole organization level-up their focus, confidence, and competence for running a highly intentional, highly successful business.
Common reasons business owners choose to professionally manage their businesses include:
- They feel too busy to focus on the most important parts of the business.
- They’re overwhelmed by the complexity of being a business owner.
- They feel trapped – like the business is fully dependent on them to be in the weeds making decisions.
- They find the organization spends too much time and energy putting out fires and being reactionary.
- Their business lacks clear focus; there’s no shared vision or strategy.
- The business is stuck; they can’t figure out how to break through to the next level of growth.
Becoming a professionally managed business might sound daunting or unclear, but it doesn’t have to be. Aileron has helped thousands of business leaders move from in the weeds and putting out fires to intentionally leading their organizations with confidence and clarity – and it all starts with Course for Presidents, our nationally recognized flagship program.
The Course for Presidents program includes a two-day workshop where you’ll learn the foundations of professional management – what we call the 7 disciplines for running a thriving business – from an Aileron Facilitator. You’ll learn alongside and connect with a small group of other like-minded business owners, and after the workshop, you’ll have time to process your business one-on-one with an Aileron Business Coach.
2. Prepare your leadership team: Develop your leadership team to lead alongside you
Your business is only as strong as the leaders beside you; after all, no matter how hard you try, you can’t do it all yourself. Investing in developing your leadership team means investing in the sustainability and scalability of your business.
For most leaders – and likely those on your leadership team – the work of doing the business comes naturally for them; your leadership team might be staffed with excellent marketers, engineers, analysts, and salespeople who are highly skilled at marketing, engineering, analyzing, and selling.
But leading is an entirely different skillset – one they might need to develop in order for the business to grow. And you might not have time or energy to teach them yourself.
Aileron partners with business owners to develop their leadership team’s ability to lead through two services.
Explore Conscious Leadership is our one-day workshop that introduces participants to tools and frameworks to improve their emotional intelligence, better navigate conflict, reduce blame, have more productive conversations, and get better business results.
For business owners who really want to invest in their leadership team’s development, we offer Becoming a More Conscious Leader – a transformative 12-month program through which participants develop the leadership mindset and emotional intelligence they need to lead themselves and others, build trust and connection, and drive results for the business. Your leadership team can go through the program as a cohort to learn and grow together.
3. Prepare your strategy: Get your organization aligned to a shared vision for the future
When was the last time you took a look at your strategy: your vision, mission, purpose, and strategic priorities? Having strategic clarity is critical to your business getting where you want it to be, and if you go into 2025 without direction (or without a path to finding direction), you’re leaving your future to chance.
If you’re not sure how strategically ready you are for 2025, consider how true each of these statements are for you:
- I am clear on where the business should be in 3, 5, and 10 years.
- Our vision, mission, and purpose are clear.
- Our team knows our vision, mission, and purpose and uses it to inform their day-to-day decisions and work.
- Our priority issues are clearly defined.
- We have actionable plans for each of our priority issues and are actively moving each issue forward.
If you’re not able to confidently say “yes” to each of those statements, Aileron can help. We’ve been studying and refining our approach to small business strategy since 1996. We specialize in working with small business owners and their leadership teams and guide them through strategic planning and – just as important – the execution of those plans.